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After having closely inspected the banks of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro, where the granite everywhere pierces the soil; when we reflect on the total absence of volcanoes in Brazil, Guiana, on the coast of Venezuela, and perhaps in all that part of the continent lying eastward of the Andes; we contemplate with interest the three burning volcanoes situated near the sources of the Caqueta, the Napo, and the Rio de Macas or Morona.
For nearly a minute it remained as before, till gradually its head began to drop, and finally it fell to the ground. Duppo ran forward, and taking a pinch of white substance from a wallet which he carried at his side, placed it in the bird's mouth, and then carefully pulling out the arrow, put some into the wound, just as our Napo Indians had done when they shot our monkey, Nimble.
So he sent Orellana in the vessel, with fifty soldiers, down the Napo to the larger river. There Orellana was to get food and supplies for the army and then return. Pizarro waited and waited in vain for Orellana to return, and at last he and his men had to find their way back across the Andes with scanty food and undergo great hardships.
In spite of these difficulties, which would have discouraged any less energetic explorers than the descubridores of the sixteenth century, they persevered in their attempt and descended the Rio Napo or Coca, an affluent on the left of the Marañon, as far as its confluence.
The chiguires were not the only gregarious animals observed by our travellers in their ascent of the Napo. Others of a very different order appeared in the peccaries, or wild pigs of the montana. These are true pachyderms, and in reality pigs; though naturalists have seen fit to separate them from the genus Sus, and constitute for them a genus of their own.
In the evening they arrived alongside a narrow island, called Napo Island, from the name of the river which here comes in from the north-northwest, and mingles its waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth about eight hundred yards across, after having watered the territories of the Coto and Orejone Indians.
Of this fact our travellers had ample proofs having frequently witnessed, while ascending the Napo, encounters between the peccaries and the jaguars.
The river Napo is one of the largest of the head waters of the Amazon, and one of the most interesting since, by it, most of the early expeditionists descended in search of the country of the gilded kings, and the gold-roofed temples of Manoa. Though these proved to be fabulous, yet the existence of gold dust among the Indians of the Napo was true enough, and is true to the present hour.
At the same time he corrected some of the measurements of La Condamine. But then the mouth of the Napo was sensibly increased by the floods and it was with a good deal of rapidity that its current, coming from the eastern slopes of Cotopaxi, hurried fiercely to mingle itself with the tawny waters of the Amazon. A few Indians had wandered to the mouth of this river.
Brokaw opened his mouth and laughed, and David saw the havoc of his blows. "You'll do what, Hauck? Nothing that's what you'll do! Ain't I told him you killed that napo from MacPherson? Ain't I told him enough to set us both swinging?" He bent over David until his breath struck his face. "I'm glad you didn't die, Raine," he repeated, "because I want to see you when you shuffle off.
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