ind, by making the toldo higher, render this
construction necessary for vessels that go up towards the Rio Negro.
The toldo was intended to cover four persons, lying on the deck or
lattice-work of brushwood; but our legs reached far beyond it, and when
it rained half our bodies were wet. Our couches consisted of ox-hides or
tiger-skins spread upon branches of trees, which were painfully felt
through so thin a covering. The fore part of the boat was filled with
Indian rowers, furnished with paddles, three feet long, in the form
of spoons. They were all naked, seated two by two, and they kept time
in rowing with a surprising uniformity, singing songs of a sad and
monotonous character. The small cages containing our birds and our
monkeys--the number of which augmented as we advanced--were hung some to
the toldo and others to the bow of the boat. This was our travelling
menagerie. Every night, when we established our watch, our collection
of animals and our instruments occupied the centre; around these were
placed, first, our hammocks, then the hammocks of the Indians; and on
the outside were the fires, which are thought indispensable against the
attacks of the jaguar. About sunrise the monkeys in our cages answered
the cries of the monkeys of the forest.

In a canoe not three feet wide, and so encumbered, there remained no
other place for the dried plants, trunks, sextant, a dipping needle, and
the meteorological instruments, than the space below the lattice-work of
branches, on which we were compelled to remain stretched the greater
part of the day. If we wished to take the least object out of a trunk,
or to use an instrument, it was necessary to row ashore and land. To
these inconveniences were joined the torment of the mosquitoes which
swarmed under the toldo, and the heat radiated from the leaves of the
palm-trees, the upper surface of which was continually exposed to the
solar rays. We attempted every instant, but always without success, to
amend our situation. While one of us hid himself under a sheet to ward
off the insects, the other insisted on having green wood lighted beneath
the toldo, in the hope of driving away the mosquitoes by the smoke. The
painful sensations of the eyes, and the increase of heat, already
stifling, rendered both these contrivances alike impracticable. With
some gayety of temper, with feelings of mutual good-will, and with a
vivid taste for the majestic grandeur of these vast valleys of rive