388 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
entrance of an igarapd, which here opens into the river, and 
which looked most tempting with the morning shadows 
darkening its cool recesses. As the boatmen had not been 
very successful in fishing, I proposed we should put their 
services to better use and row up this inviting stream. To 
this day, though I have become accustomed to these forest 
water-paths and have had so many excursions in them, 
they have lost none of their charm. I never see one without 
longing to follow its picturesque windings into the depths 
of the wood ; and to me the igarapd remains the most 
beautiful and the most characteristic feature of the Ama- 
zonian scenery. This one of Vigia was especially pretty. 
Clumps of the light, exquisitely graceful Assai palm shot 
up everywhere from the denser forest ; here and there 
the drooping bamboo, never seen in the higher Amazons, 
dipped its feathery branches into the water, covered some- 
times to their very tips with purple bloom of convolvulus ; 
yellow Bignonias carried their golden clusters to the very 
summits of some of the more lofty trees ; while white- 
flowering myrtles and orange-colored mallows bordered the 
stream. Life abounded in this quiet retreat. Birds and 
butterflies were numerous ; and we saw an immense num- 
ber of crabs of every variety of color and size upon the 
margin of the water. However, it was not so easy to catch 
them as it seemed. They would sit quietly on the trunks 
of all the old trees or decaying logs projecting from the 
bank, apparently waiting to be taken ; but the moment 
we approached them, however cautiously, they vanished 
like lightning either under the water or into some crevice 
near by. Notwithstanding their nimbleness, however, Mr. 
Agassiz succeeded in making a considerable collection. 
We saw also an immense army of caterpillars, evidently fol- 
