Three days after my arrival at Penêdo, we heard that an empty canoe was going up as far as the river was navigable, and accordingly I engaged a passage for a small sum. Having made all the requisite preparations for my voyage, I left Penêdo at one o’clock, P.M., on the 22nd of February, carrying with me letters to some of the principal inhabitants of the different places at which we were likely to stop. The canoe in which we embarked was a very large one, being about forty feet long and four broad. It is seldom that a single tree is of sufficient dimensions to form a canoe of this size, but when such is not the case, they hollow out the largest they can find, sawing it in two through the middle from stem to stern, and then give it the requisite breadth by the addition of one or more widths of planks between the two halves: in this same manner our canoe was constructed. One end of the bow, for the length of ten feet, was thatched over with cocoa-nut leaves like the roof of a house, which thus served both as a place of shelter from the sun during the day, and as a sleeping berth by night. It had only one mast, which carried two large triangular sails of a very coarse cotton cloth, manufactured in the country, and these were stretched out on each side by a long boom. The sea-breeze generally reaches Penêdo about mid-day, blowing right up the river, and, with the sails spread out in this wing-like fashion, we went up the stream with great rapidity, notwithstanding that the current against us was very strong. As it is dangerous for small canoes to navigate the river when it is flooded, two of them are lashed side by side, and thus united, they form what is called an Ajojo. At six o’clock in the evening we reached the village of Propiá, situated on the south side of the river, and seven leagues distant from Penêdo. It contains about 250 houses, mostly small, and built of wicker work and mud; many of those in the street parallel with the river were half full of water, and consequently abandoned; such, also, we observed to be the case with many houses which we passed during our voyage.