. But there was little
need of paddling on this trip.

The Napo starts off in furious haste, for the fall between Napo village
and Santa Rosa, a distance of eighty miles, is three hundred and fifty
feet. We were about seven hours in the voyage down, and it takes seven
days to pole back. The passage of the rapids is dangerous to all but an
Indian. As Wallace says of a spot on the Rio Negro, you are bewildered
by the conflicting motions of the water. Whirling and boiling eddies
burst as if from some subaqueous explosion; down currents are on one
side of the canoe, and an up current on the other; now a cross stream
at the bows and a diagonal one at the stern, with a foaming Scylla on
your right and a whirling Charybdis on the left. But our nervousness
gave way to admiration as our popero, or pilot, the sedate governor,
gave the canoe a sheer with the swoop of his long paddle, turning it
gracefully around the corner of a rock against which it seemed we must
be dashed, and we felt like joining in the wild scream of the Indians as
our little craft shot like an arrow past the danger and down the rapids,
and danced on the waters below.

In four hours we were abreast the little village of Aguano; on the
opposite bank we could see the tambos of the gold washers. At 5 P.M. we
reached the deserted site of Old Santa Rosa, the village having been
removed a few years ago on account of its unhealthy location. It is now
overgrown with sour orange and calabash trees, the latter bearing large
fruit shells so useful to the Indians in making pilches or cups. In
pitch darkness and in a drizzling rain we arrived at New Santa Rosa, and
swung our hammocks in the Government House.

Santa Rosa, once the prosperous capital of the Provincia del Oriente,
now contains about two hundred men, women, and children. The town is
pleasantly situated on the left bank of the river, about fifteen feet
above the water level. A little bamboo church, open only when the
missionary from Archidona makes his annual visit, stood near our
quarters. The Indians were keeping one of their seven feasts in a hut
near by, and their drumming was the last thing we heard as we turned
into our hammocks, and the first in the morning. The alcalde, Pablo
Sandoval, is the only white inhabitant, and he is an Indian in every
respect save speech and color. His habitation is one of the largest
structures on the Napo; the posts are of chonta-palm, the sides and roof
of the usual mater