ny voyages throughout the whole north of Brazil afforded him numerous
subjects to talk about. The man had certainly seen a great deal, but
his observations were those of a skeptic, and he often shocked the
straightforward people who were listening to him. It should be said that
he showed himself much impressed toward Minha. But these attentions,
although they were displeasing to Manoel, were not sufficiently
marked for him to interfere. On the other hand, Minha felt for him an
instinctive repulsion which she was at no pains to conceal.

On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left bank,
forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which it pours
its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after having
watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot the Amazon
appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is more than ever
encumbered with islands and islets. It required all the address of the
pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from one bank to another,
avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and maintaining the advance.

They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal, which
goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and re-enters the
principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on by the Rio Japura;
but if the larger portion of this measures a hundred and fifty feet
across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and the raft would there have
met with a difficulty.

On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro,
passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the east-southeast,
brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred feet wide,
and admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in color, with
cinnabar-red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts produced by
the palm-trees from which the river derives its name, the travelers
arrived on the 18th of July before the little village of Fonteboa.

At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a rest
to the crew.

Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not
escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves
them about from one place to the other. Probably the hamlet has
now finished with its nomadic existence, and has definitely become
stationary. So much the better; for it is a charming place, with its
thirty houses covered with foliage, and its church dedicated to Notre
Da