198 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
reaches the side of the steamer, a line of men is formed 
some eight or ten in number, and the wood is passed 
from hand to hand, log by log, each log counted as it 
arrives. Mr. Agassiz timed them this morning, and found 
that they averaged about seven logs a minute. Under 
these circumstances, one can understand that stopping to 
wood is a long affair. Since we left Coari we have been 
coasting along close to the land, the continental shore, 
and not that of an island. The islands are so large and 
numerous in the Amazons, that often when we believe our- 
selves between the northern and southern margins of the 
river, we are in fact between island shores. We have fol- 
lowed the drift almost constantly to-day, the same red 
drift with which we have become so familiar in South 
America. Sometimes it rises in cliffs and banks above 
the mud deposit, sometimes it crops out through the mud, 
occasionally mingling with it and partially stratified, and in 
one locality it overlaid a gray rock in place, the nature of 
which Mr. Agassiz could not determine, but which was 
distinctly stratified and slightly tilted. The drift is cer- 
tainly more conspicuous as we ascend the river ; is this 
because we approach its source, or because the nature 
of the vegetation allows us to see more of the soil ? 
Since we left Manaos the forest has been less luxuriant ; 
it is lower on the Solimoens than on the Amazons, more 
ragged and more open. The palms are also less numerous 
than hitherto, but there is a tree here which rivals them in 
dignity. Its flat dome, rounded but not conical, towers 
above .the forest, and, when seen from a distance, has an 
almost architectural character, so regular is its form. This 
majestic tree, called the Sumaumeira (Eriodendron Su- 
mauma), is one of the few trees in this climate which shed 
