AN INLAND VOYAGE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 269, 15 November 1909, Page 3

AN INLAND VOYAGE.

; . L « .• The astonishing voyage of H.M.S. Felorus up the Amazon in Iquitos, • in Peru, near the Ande3, has been rivalled by the England, an English ocean-going cargo steamer, which recently sailed up the Madeira, a tributary of the Amazon, a distance of ibOO miles from the sea. The England's voyage, indeed, was the more remarkable, lor .while the route to Iquitos has a good deal of traffic, apd Iquitos is a town of considerable size and importance, the Madeira had never before known a large vessel, and Porto Velho, the ship's destination, is an embryo town buried in dense tropical forest. The England carried railway material to this faraway spot which lies near the Bolivian frontier, only a 'few hundred miles from the Andes. ,Tlie Madeira, where it joins the Amazon, presents s the appearance of a sea, and the cap-tain-of the England found as much as sixty fathoms in the main stream. As the' vessel penetrated further into the heart of the continent, navigation became more and more difficult. At times the jungle brushed the tramp's sides, and there was very little to spare between keel and river bottom. The England crept along at four knots, and anchored every night. "The pilots were perfection," said the captain afterwards. , "I. think they would have undertaken to navigate the ship over a field if the dew was heavy enough." Some of the experiences of the crew' at Porto Velho were weird. "I've been practically everywhere," said the chief engineer, "but it was a novelty to me to be kept awake in a steamer's cabin by the roaring of jaguars in the forest outside." The place swarmed with animal life, and without leaving the vessel the crew caught all kinds of things from butternes to hiige snakes. "One night I thought a bird was in the cabin," said the engineer. "Ib banged about, and kept up a continual whistling. Then I found it was a beetle half as Big as< a shoebrush. The forest our skipper forbade us to go into as a matter of safety. So we tried fishing from the deck. We fired a dynamite cartridge, and a fine collection of prehistoric monsters came up. One big bruto was new even to the Indians. It was cased in armour, and from each armour plate projected a big spike." Such a voyage brings home to one, perhaps, morg than anything else can do, the immensity of Brazil.