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Updated: June 1, 2025


Notwithstanding the length of their journey up the Napo, our travellers did not deem it tedious. The lovely tropical scenery, ever under their eyes, together with the numerous little incidents which were constantly occurring, relieved the monotony of their daily life, and kept them in a constant state of interested excitement.

Still the story of a rich country, inhabited by a populous nation, was told by the wandering Indians, but it was always several days ahead. Pizarro at length decided to stop where he was and feed on the scanty forest spoil, while Orellana went down the stream in his brigantine to where, as the Indians said, the Napo flowed into a greater river.

Two months elapsed before they accomplished this terrible journey those of them who did not perish on the way, although the distance probably' did not exceed two hundred leagues; and they at length reached the spot so long desired, where the Napo pours its tide into the Amazon, that mighty stream, which, fed by its thousand tributaries, rolls on towards the ocean, for many hundred miles, through the heart of the great continent, the most majestic of American rivers.

In ascending the Napo, our travellers had an opportunity of visiting some of these old missionary establishments; and observing the odd rigmarole of superstitions there practised under the guise, and in the name of religion a queer commingling of pagan rites with Christian ceremonies not unlike those Buddhistic forms from which these same ceremonies have been borrowed.

For several days we continued our voyage, till we began to fear that some accident might have happened, or that, not hearing of us, they might have pushed onwards, with the intention of sailing up the Napo. Sometimes we slept under the awning in the montaria; sometimes we built huts, according to our usual custom, on the shore.

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