The Andes and the Amazon; or, Across the continent of South America.

200 THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON.
CHAPTER XIV.
Afloat on the Napo.-Down the Rapids.-Santa Rosa and its mulish Alcalde. —Pratt on Discipline. —Forest Music. —Coca. —Our Craft and Crew.
-Storm on the Napo.
WE embarked November 20th on our voyage down the
river. It is no easy matter to hire or cajole the Indians
for any service. Out of feast-time they are out of town,
and during the festival they are loth to leave, or are so full
of chicha they do not know what they want. We first
woke up the indolent alcalde by showing him the President's order, and then used him to entice or to compel (we
know not his motive power) eight Indians, inclliding the
governor, to take us to Santa Rosa. We paid them about
twenty-four yards of lienzo, the usual currency here. They
furnished three canoes, two for baggage and one covered
with a palm-leaf awning for ourselves. The canoes were
of red cedar, and flat-bottomedl; the paddles had oval
blades, to which short, quick strokes were given perpendicularly to the water entering and leaving.: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