Through the wilderness of Brazil, by horse, canoe and float by Cook William Azel

Author:Cook, William Azel
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Brazil -- Description and travel
Publisher: London [etc.] T.F. Unwin

Brazil.

were more easily captured by the starving people. The heat during the drought was insufferable. In the coolest shade in the town, the thermometer stood frequently at one hundred five or ten degrees Fahrenheit, though this gives little idea of the consuming strength of the vertical sun.

Our good balsa was like a wreck when we went to re-embark, as the hides forming the roof had been removed; furthermore, this so weakened the frame-work that we could not again swing up our hammocks. But we spread the fly of our tent for a roof, and succeeded in making our ship comfortable once more. We floated on all day, and by moonlight until two o'clock A. M. As the river was now broad and clear of obstructions, I, only, remained on guard one night while the others slept; so I enjoyed many quiet hours as we moved silently onward in the dead calm and stillness, and in the beautiful moonlight. We journeyed the entire night, the following night, in order to reach Therezina the next day.

About noon, the last day, the scream of a locomotive whistle suddenly reached us—the first I had heard in fourteen months—another pleasant reminder of civilization; and shortly afterward, as we swung around a bend in the river, the Capital of Piauhy stood revealed to our admiring gaze a few miles down the river. It appeared perfectly white, as do all Brazilian cities when viewed from a distance, and very beautiful and charming in the brilliant sunlight as it loomed above the green trees and wild vegetation that surrounded it. Yet, when one enters the streets of these cities, they are usually found to be filthy and ill-smelling. Therezina, which is a medieval-like town of six thousand inhabitants, is not an exception to this rule.

We encountered at Therezina, a flourishing mission of the Presbyterian Church, the first permanently organized mission work we had met with in more than a year.

We disembarked and abandoned our faithful balsa on the opposite side of the river from Therezina, at a village called Sao Jose das Flores, from which point we traveled the next

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