LIFE AT MANAOS. 199 
their leaves periodically, and now it lifts its broad rounded 
summit above the green mass of vegetation around it, quite 
bare of foliage. Symmetrical as it is, the branches are 
greatly ramified and very knotty. The bark is white. It 
would seem that the season approaches when the Sumaumci- 
ras should take on their green garb again, for a few are 
already beginning to put out young leaves. Beside this 
giant of the forest, the Imbauba (Cecropia), much lower 
here, however, than in Southern Brazil, and the Taxi, 
with its white flowers and brown buds, are very conspicu- 
ous along the banks. Close upon the shore the arrow- 
grass, some five or six feet in height, grows in quantity ; 
it is called u frexas ' here, being used by the Indians to 
make their arrows. 
September 14fA. For the last day or two the shore has 
been higher than we have seen it since leaving Manaos. 
We constantly pass cliffs of red drift with a shallow beach 
of mud deposit resting against them ; not infrequently a 
gray rock, somewhat like clay slate, crops out below the 
drift ; this rock is very distinctly stratified, tilting some- 
times to the west, sometimes to the east, always uncon- 
formable with the overlying drift.* The color of the drift 
changes occasionally, being sometimes nearly white in this 
neighborhood instead of red. We are coming now to that 
part of the Amazons where the wide sand-beaches occur, 
the breeding-places of the turtles and alligators. It is not 
yet quite the season for gathering the turtle-eggs, making 
the turtle-butter, <fec., but we frequently see the Indian 
* In the course of the investigation, I have ascertained that this slaty rock, 
as well as the hard sandstone seen along the river-banks at Manaos, forms part 
of the great drift formation of the Amazons, and that there is neither old red 
sandstone, nor trias, here, as older observers supposed. L. A. 
