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In the black river, flowing past within a stone's throw of the hotel door, sounded the loud snorts of dolphins and the hideous night call of the foul beast of the mud the alligator. Out from the matted tangle of trees and brush and great snakelike vines behind the town rolled the appalling roars of guaribas, raucous bird calls, dismal hoots, sudden scattered screams.
In the midst of such a solitude, the roar of the cataract seemed fitting music. September 17th. We commenced early in the morning our downward voyage. Arroyos is situated in about 4 10' S. lat.; and lies, therefore, about 130 miles from the mouth of the Tocantins. Fifteen miles above Guaribas, another similar cataract called Tabocas lies across the river.
Those that our travellers saw were the "guaribas," nearly black in colour, but with their hands covered with yellow hair, whence their name among the naturalists of "yellow-handed howler."
These creatures are enabled to produce this vast volume of voice in consequence of a hollow bony structure at the root of the tongue, which acts as a drum, and which gives them the appearance of a swelling, or goitre, in the throat. This is common to all the howling monkeys as well as the guaribas.
We were told that there were in all fifteen of these obstructions to navigate, between Arroyos and the mouth of the Araguaya. The worst was the Inferno, the Guaribas standing second to it in evil reputation.
We arrived at Arroyos about four o'clock in the afternoon, after ten hours' hard pull. The place consists simply of a few houses built on a high bank, and forms a station where canoemen from the mining countries of the interior of Brazil stop to rest themselves before or after surmounting the dreaded falls and rapids of Guaribas, situated a couple of miles further up.
Tree frogs and crickets clacked and drummed and hoo-hooed, guaribas poured their awful discord into the air, and on one bright breathless night there sounded over and over a call freighted with wretchedness and despair the wail of that lonely owl known to the bushmen as "the mother of the moon," whose dreadful cry portends evil to those who hear it.
These creatures are enabled to produce this vast volume of voice in consequence of a hollow bony structure at the root of the tongue, which acts as a drum, and which gives them the appearance of a swelling, or goitre, in the throat. This is common to all the howling monkeys as well as the guaribas.
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