THE "POROROCA," OR BORE, OF THE AMAZON. 209 



Macapa that we put into a channel on the island of Porquinhos 

 to wait for the turning of the tide. I had already seen islands 

 said to have been half washed away, and others built up, by the 

 pororoca ; and I had seen upon the shores the evidences of its de- 

 structive power in carrying away forests and cutting away banks ; 

 but it was on this island that I was first able to see some of its 

 effects near at hand and at my leisure. After having seen so 

 much, I was only the more anxious to see the pororoca itself ; but 

 my suggestions in regard to it were answered by an ominous silence 

 on the part of the director, and my requests by additional expres- 

 sions of horror. 



As I shortly afterward met and conversed with a man who 

 had seen the pororoca, I can not do better than give his descrip- 

 tion of it. This man was a soldier in the Brazilian army, and, on 

 the occasion referred to, was going with a few other soldiers from 

 the colony to Macapa in a small open boat. Arriving at the 

 mouth of the Araguary, they went down with the tide, and an- 

 chored just inside the bar which crosses the mouth of this stream, 

 to await the turning of the tide, which would enable them to pass 

 the shallows, and then carry them up the Amazon. Shortly after 

 the tide had stopped running out, they saw something coming 

 toward them from the ocean in a long white line, which grew 

 bigger and whiter as it approached. Then there was a sound 

 like the rumbling of distant thunder, which grew louder and 

 louder as the white line came nearer, until it seemed as if the 

 whole ocean had risen up and was coming, charging and thun- 

 dering down upon them, boiling over the edge of this pile of water 

 like an endless cataract, from four to seven metres high, that 

 spread out across the whole eastern horizon. This was the poro- 

 roca! "When they saw it coming, the crew became utterly de- 

 moralized, and fell to weeping and praying in the bottom of the 

 boat, expecting -that it would certainly be dashed to pieces, and 

 they themselves drowned. The pilot, however, had the presence 

 of mind to heave anchor before the wall of waters struck them ; 

 and, when it did strike, they were first pitched violently forward, 

 and then lifted, and left rolling and tossing like a cork on the 

 foaming sea it left behind, the boat nearly filled with water. But 

 their trouble was not yet ended ; for, before they had emptied the 

 boat, two other such seas came down on them at short intervals, 

 tossing them in the same manner, and finally leaving them within 

 a stone's-throw of the river-bank, where another such wave would 

 have dashed them upon the shore. They had been anchored, be- 

 fore the waves struck them, near the middle of the stream, which 

 at this place is several miles wide. 



But no description of this disturbance of the water can im- 

 press one so vividly as the signs of devastation seen upon the 



VOL. XXXVIII. 15 



