FROM PARA TO MAN ACS. 167 
August 25th. Monte Alegre. We arrived before this 
town, situated on the north side of the Amazons, at the 
mouth of the river Gurupatuba, yesterday at about mid- 
day, but the heat was so great that I did not go on 
shore till towards evening. The town is situated on the 
summit of a hill sloping rather steeply upward from the 
shore, and it takes its name from a mountain some four 
leagues to the northwest of it. But though the ground 
is more broken and various than we have seen it hitherto, 
the place does not seem to me to deserve its name of 
Monte Alegre (the gay mountain). To me the aspect 
of the country here is, on the contrary, rather sombre ; 
the soil consists everywhere of sand, the forest is low, 
while here and there intervene wide, swampy flats, cov- 
ered with coarse grass. The sand rests above the same 
reddish drift, filled with smooth rounded quartz pebbles, 
that we have followed along our whole road. Here and 
there the pebbles are disposed in undulating lines, as if a 
partial stratification had taken place ; and in some localities 
we saw indications of the drift having been worked over 
by water, though not absolutely stratified. Both at sunset 
and sunrise I took a walk to the village churchyard, which 
commands the prettiest view in the neighborhood. It is 
enclosed in a picket fence, a large wooden cross stands 
in the centre, and there are a few other small crosses 
marking graves ; but the place looked uncared for, grown 
over, wherever the sand was not bare, by the same coarse, 
rank shrubs which spring up everywhere in this un genial 
soil.* At a little distance from the churchyard, the hill 
* Afterwards I made a longer stay at Monte Alegre, and learned to know its 
picturesque nooks and dells, where a luxuriant vegetation is watered by de- 
licious springs. I feel that the above description is superficial ; but I let it 
remain, as perfectly true to my first impressions. 
