Pevas. At this place they were received and treated with so much kindness by the Portuguese missionary and monks, that they almost forgot they were in the centre of America, and more than a thousand miles distant from the countries inhabited by Europeans. Hitherto in the villages adjacent to the Amazon, they had seen only houses and churches that had been coustructed of reeds; but, at San Paulo, these were built of stones, bricks, and earth, and were neatly whitewashed. All the Indian females wore a kind of dress formed of British linen. These people had also chests with iron locks and keys; looking-glasses, knives, scissars, needles, combs, and other European articles, which they had procured from the settlements near the mouth of the river. In fact, the commerce of these Indians with Europeans, gave to them an air of ease and opulence which the voyagers had not before witnessed. Their principal articles of commerce were cacao or chocolate nuts, which they gathered from trees growing wild on the banks of the river, and with which they made regular voyages downward, to the distant settlements.

The canoes used by the Portuguese, in this part of the Amazon, were considerably larger than those of the Indians. Some of them were sixty feet long, and seven in breadth, and had two masts.

In one of these canoes the voyagers proceeded from San Paulo to Coari, one of six settlements occupied by Portuguese missionaries of the order called Carmelites; and, in their progress, they passed several large rivers which fell into the Amazon, and which were navigable to a considerable distance from their mouths. It was somewhere in the vicinity of Coari, that the Spaniards formerly pretended that they had seen many ornaments of pure gold upon the inhabitants. Hence they named one of the rivers "the golden river," and one of the Indian towns" the village of gold."

In the course of their navigation the voyagers had carefully examined the Indians of different nations, re

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lative to those Amazons, or warlike women, whom Orellana pretended he had met with and had fought on the banks of the river. These people asserted that their parents had informed them of the existence of such a race, stating, that they had lived by themselves, without any males among them; but that they had latterly retired far into the inland country. One Indian, who was about seventy years of age, informed the voyagers that his grandfather had seen a party of these females: they had come, he said, from the river Cayamé, which falls into the Amazon, and one of them had a child at her breast. Another Indian offered to show M. de la Condamine a river, which would have led him within a little distance of the spot at that time inhabited by the Amazons, or women without husbands," as these people called them. All seemed to agree, that the place of their residence was among the mountains in the centre of Guiana, a region into which Europeans had not then penetrated. If the existence of the Amazons be at all credible, M. de la Condamine thinks it may be accounted for in the slavish lives of the women of America, and the resolution made by those of some of the tribes to escape from the hard yoke of their husbands, and provide for themselves a settlement where they could live in a state of independence. There can, he says, be no greater difficulty in accounting for this, than there is for the fact of slaves, when ill used or discontented, running away in whole droves into the woods, and there passing many years, sometimes even their whole lives.

On the 20th of August, the voyagers set out from Coari in another canoe, and with other Indians. They shortly afterwards passed, on the south, the mouths of the Purus, one of the largest rivers which flow into the Amazon. At the distance of seven or eight leagues below this river, the Amazon was free from islands, and between a thousand and twelve hundred fathoms wide. Here, with a line six hundred feet in length, M. de la Condamine endeavoured to ascertain the depth, but

was unable to reach the bottom. Two days after this they entered the mouth of the Rio Negro, or Black River, so called from its clear and limpid stream, distinguished from the whitish and troubled waters of the Amazon. The Rio Negro, like a sea of fresh water, falls into the Amazon on the north side. The voyagers ascended it, about two leagues, to a fort constructed on its bank by the Portuguese. This, the most distant settlement which the Portuguese possessed on the north side of the Amazon, had been established somewhat more than a century. Here they carried on an extensive trade in slaves, and had a detachment of soldiers constantly stationed for the purpose of keeping the Indians in awe, and favouring this traffic. At this fort M. de la Condamine was informed that there was a communication, by water, betwixt the Rio Negro and the Oronoko, and consequently betwixt the latter river and the Amazon, a fact which has since been ascertained, by several persons having navigated from one river to the other.

The limpid stream of the Rio Negro had hardly lost its transparence, by intermixture with the waters of the Amazon, when the voyagers passed, on the south side, the mouth of another river, not inferior to it in magnitude. The Portuguese had named it Rio Madeira, or "the river of wood," probably on account of the great number of trees which, at the time of its inundations, are floated down its stream. So great is the extent of this river, that, in the year 1740, some Portuguese adventurers ascended it as far as Santa Cruz, a Spanish episcopal see, in Upper Peru, and in seventeen degrees thirty minutes of south latitude. But the most remote source of the Madeira is near the mines of Potosi, and not far from the head of a river, which runs southward, and falls into the La Plata.

Below the mouth of the Madeira, the Amazon is, in some places, two or three leagues wide. It is here that the Portuguese first begin to give it the name of Amazon; for, higher up, they know it only by that of Rio de Solimoes, or the river of Poisons,

from the envenomed arrows of the Indians which inhabit its banks.

On the 28th the voyagers landed at a Portuguese fort called Pauxis, on the northern bank of the river, and at a place where the stream was confined within a strait, somewhat more than nine hundred fathoms in width. The ebbing and flowing of the tide was perceptible as far as this place, six hundred miles from the ocean. They were received at Pauxis with great hospitality, as indeed they had been in all the dominions subject to the king of Portugal. The commandant of the fort detained them four days, one of which they spent at his country seat, and he afterwards accompanied them to some distance on their voyage. In their progress, he pointed out to them a large island, the inhabitants of which were almost the only remains of a powerful nation called Tupinambas. This people, two hundred years before, had governed Brazil; and in that country their language was still retained. On the 4th of September M. de la Condamine saw some mountains towards the north, at the distance of twelve or fifteen leagues from the river. This was a novel sight to him, for, during the preceding two months, he had floated through a perfectly flat and wooded country. The mountains he now beheld were the extremity of a long ridge, the summits of which are the points whence the waters of the Guiana take their rise.

On the 6th they reached a Portuguese fort called Paru. This was on the north side of the river, and had lately been rebuilt on the ruins of an old fort, constructed by the Dutch. At the mouth of the river Xingu, a little below this fort, the breadth of the Amazon is so great that it would have been scarcely possible to see across it, even if the numerous islands which occur there, had not intercepted the sight. The force of the water, at the junction of the Xingu and Amazon, is such that many canoes are lost in passing it. The latter river rises in Brazil, and, with the exception of a cataract at the distance of seven or eight days sail.

from its mouth, is navigable for several hundred miles. Hitherto the voyagers had suffered much inconvenience from the stings of musquitoes; but in their progress from Paru they were free from the attacks of these insects, in consequence of the canoe being kept at a considerable distance from the bank of the river.

At Curupa, a little Portuguese town, M. de la Condamine and his friend were received by the lieutenant of the fort with extraordinary honours, and were entertained for three days with a magnificence which bordered upon profusion. At this place the ebbing and flowing of the tide is very perceptible; and boats can only go up the river with the rising water. Some leagues below Curupa is the large island of Joannes, or Marayo, formed by the main chaunel of the Amazon on the north, a branch of that river on the west, a large river of Brazil called Rio Tiocantin on the south, and the ocean on the east.

The voyagers were conducted from Curupa, between several islands, and by narrow winding channels, to the Portuguese town of Para, situated about one degree south of the equator. They reached this town on the 19th of September, about ten weeks after the first embarkation of M. de la Condamine on the Amazon. After they had landed, they were conducted to a house dependent on the college of Jesuits. Here they were kindly received by the provincial of the college, who provided a lodging for them in the town. This lodging was richly furnished, and had a garden, from which they had a full view of the sea. On entering Para, immediately after leaving the woods of the Amazon, they could almost have fancied themselves transported into Europe. They found themselves in a large city, with streets finely laid out, handsome houses, and magnificent churches. Some of the houses were of stone, and had lately been rebuilt.

A direct intercourse subsisted between Para and Lisbon, whence every year a fleet of merchant ships arrived, which supplied the colonists with all such Eu