The
place was nominally a store-house, but having gone undisturbed for
long periods it was an ideal sanctuary for hordes of vermin--and
these the vermin of the Amazon, dangerous, poisonous, not merely the
annoying species we know. Rats were there in abundance, also deadly
scolopendra and centipedes; and large bird-eating spiders were daily
seen promenading up and down the sheet-iron walls.
On the main floor the building had two large rooms across the centre,
one on the front and one on the rear. At each side were four small
rooms. The large front-room was used as a dining-room and had two
broad tables of planed palm trunks. The side-rooms were bedrooms,
generally speaking, though most of the time I was there some were
used for stabling the pigs and goats, which had to be taken in owing
to the rainy season.
It is a simple matter to keep a hotel on the upper Amazon. Each room
in the _Hotel de Augusto_ was neatly and chastely furnished with
a pair of iron hooks from which to hang the hammock, an article
one had to provide himself. There was nothing in the room besides
the hooks. No complete privacy was possible because the corrugated
sheet-iron partitions forming the walls did not extend to the roof.
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