240 MR. SPRUCE'S BOTANICAL EXCURSION 
detachment of soldiers has to be sent into the interior, to beat them 
up at their sitios. This delay is so annoying, that I prefer the 
uncertain chance of the loan of three or four men from the crew of 
any vessel which may be laid up in the port—a circumstance of rare 
occurrence, 
I have quite had my edge taken off for ascending the Tapajoz; a 
merchant of Cuyabá, with whom I had some thoughts of going ups 
February, was wrecked by the unskilfulness of his pilot in ascending 
the first cataracts, and lost two of his men, besides all his cargo, valued 
at 8,000 milreis. Besides this, fever and ague have been fatal on this 
river, to an extent previously unknown; the number of deaths 1s 
variously stated at from 400 to 1,000, but the least of these numbers 
is a serious diminution of the scanty population. Even the coming of - 
the dry season has not dispelled this formidable scourge. Two French- 
men, who have just returned from a voyage of three weeks, found fever 
everywhere rife. They ventured to sleep on shore but once, in the 
house of the only English settler on the Tapajoz. He himself and 
all his household were ill, and he had already buried six of his people. 
We have aecounts that the Madera and Rio Negro have had similar 
visitations. My countryman, Mr. Bradley, who is settled at the Barra, 
assures me that the true cause of the gradual depopulation of the Rio 
Negro is the now well-ascertained unhealthiness of its banks: he 
himself caught an ague up it, which held him six months. The cause 
assigned here is some supposed insalubrious property of the waters, 
but I cannot doubt that Humboldt's opinion as to the healthiness of 
the rivers of tropical America which run east and west, and the un- 
healthiness of those whose course lies north and south, is the true one. 
In the valley of the Amazon, for instance, we have the trade-wind 
blowing upwards nearly every day, while on the rivers above-mentioned 
the winds are variable and uncertain. Even here we have sometimes, 
at new and full moon, a day or two of what is called “ vento da cima,” 
or “wind from above;" and it is justly esteemed a “vento roim,” for 
it brings with it colds in the head, toothache, and fever. 
The specimens now sent are chiefly of plants of the * Gapé” (as it 
is called in lingua géral), or lands inundated by the rivers and lakes in 
winter, constituting a breadth of from twenty yards to several miles, 
according as the land is abruptly ascending or perfectly flat. I have 
got séveral more of the minute quasi-ephemeral plants, which spring 
