current was so strong downwards, that we got but two leagues, all that
time. We moored our pinnaces to a tree that night: for that presently,
with the closing of the evening, there fell a monstrous shower of
rain, with such strange and terrible claps of thunder, and flashes of
lightning, as made us not a little to marvel at, although our Captain
had been acquainted with such like in that country, and told us that
they continue seldom longer than three-quarters of an hour.

This storm was no sooner ceast, but it became very calm, and therewith
there came such an innumerable multitude of a kind of flies of that
country, called mosquitoes, like our gnats, which bit so spitefully,
that we could not rest all that night, nor find means to defend
ourselves from them, by reason of the heat of the country. The best
remedy we then found against them, was the juice of lemons.

At the break of day (9th September), we departed, rowing in the eddy,
and hauling up by the trees where the eddy failed, with great labour,
by spells, without ceasing, each company their half-hour glass: without
meeting any, till about three o'clock in the afternoon, by which time we
could get but five leagues ahead.

Then we espied a canoe, with two Indians fishing in the river; but we
spake not to them, lest so we might be descried: nor they to us, as
taking us to be Spaniards. But within an hour after, we espied certain
houses, on the other side of the river, whose channel is twenty-five
fathom deep, and its breadth so great, that a man can scantly be
discerned from side to side. Yet a Spaniard which kept those houses,
had espied our pinnaces; and thinking we had been his countrymen, made
a smoke, for a signal to turn that way, as being desirous to speak with
us. After that, we espying this smoke, had made with it, and were half