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Updated: June 25, 2025
There are no traces of a mast, though the size of the boat must have made it difficult to manage with oars alone. One of the pirogues preserved at the Copenhagen Museum is made of one half of the trunk of a tree, some six feet long, hollowed into the shape of a trough, and cut straight at both ends.
The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were going to do. "Good!" replied he; "I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the body. Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and make a start." Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita's room.
As they passed along it they saw multitudes of Indians darting up and down the lake in their light pirogues, eager to catch a glimpse of the strangers, and they were amazed at the sight of the floating islands, covered with flowers and vegetables and moving like rafts over the waters.
In the meantime, in order to lighten our burdens as much as possible, we determined to deposit here one of the pirogues, and all the heavy baggage which we could possibly spare, as well as some provision, salt, powder, and tools. This would at once lighten the other boats, and give them the crew which had been employed on board the pirogue."
The humming-birds and wild bees are the favored ones, however, for they get the ultimate distillation of all the racy and fragrant elements from root to bloom. The Indians knew the value of the tulip-tree as well as its beauty. Their most graceful pirogues were dug from its bole, and its odorous bark served to roof their rude houses.
Que dire si l'on voyait dans un autre genre de mechaniques, entreprendre le radoub ou la construction d'un vaisseau de ligne avec la seule theorie, avec les seules resources des Sauvages dans la construction de leurs Pirogues!"
It was in this difficult task that Benito and his companions were employed till the evening. The ubas and pirogues, worked by the oars, traversed the whole surface of the river up to the bar of Frias. There had been moments of excitement during this spell of work, when the harrows, catching in something at the bottom, offered some slight resistance.
A universal shout of joy greeted his appearance; the Indians in the pirogues hurled their lances at him, whilst we, upon either shore of the lake, fired a volley. The bullets rebounded from the monster's scales, which they were unable to penetrate; the keener lances made their way between the scales, and entered into the cayman's body some eight or ten inches.
The torches threw a lurid glare upon the exaggerated, semi-nude figures of the giant bronzes on the beaks of the pirogues, their arms raised in the poise of the weapon, each outlined against the darkness of the night, glorious avatars yet of their race that had been so mighty and was so soon to pass from the wave.
We would see this old church as it stood at first on the wild bank of the James, and the families of those early planters gathering in. They would come from up and down the river; some in pirogues and pinnaces and sloops, and some on horseback with the fair dames on pillions behind. Or, somewhat later, lordly coaches would roll to the door bearing colonial grandees.
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