212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



middle of the island.* On the southern side of the month of the 

 Araguary was a point of land nearly or quite six miles in length, 

 and covered with vegetation, from young shoots to bushes six 

 metres high. I was told that one year before this was nothing 

 more than a sand-bar, without a sign of vegetation on it. The 

 western end of the island of Porquinhos was once known as Ilha 

 Franco ; but the channel that separated it from the Porquinhos 

 has been filled up gradually, and the two islands are now one, 

 though the upper end of it is still known as Franco. The point 

 in the mouth of the Araguary known as the Ilha dos Veados 

 (Deer Island) was, at the time of my visit, fast being joined to 

 the mainland. A couple of years before, boats navigating the 

 Araguary passed through the channel on the south side of the 

 island. In 1881 it was no longer navigable, and the Veados was 

 rapidly being made part of the right bank of the river. 



Owing to this shifting of material the pilots never know where 

 to find the entrance to the Araguary River. One week the chan- 

 nel may be two fathoms deep on the north side, and the next it 

 may be in the middle ; or it may have disappeared altogether, 

 leaving the river-bed perfectly flat, with only one fathom of water 

 across the whole mouth. The bar was in this last-mentioned con- 

 dition when I passed over it in 1881. At this time another bar 

 extended eastward from the eastern end of Bailique, while a little 

 farther out was another just south of the same line. The shifting 

 nature of the sand-bars about the mouth of the Araguary renders 

 it unsafe for vessels drawing more than one fathom to enter this 

 river, except at high tides ; but, as high tides and the pororoca come 

 at the same time, only light-draught steamers can enter by waiting 

 well outside the bar until the force of the pororoca is spent, f 



"With the few canoes or small sailing vessels that enter this 

 stream (probably less than half a dozen a year) it is the cus- 

 tom to come down past Bailique with the outgoing tide, and to 

 anchor north of the bar that projects from the southern side of 

 the Araguary, and there to await the turn of the tide to ascend 

 the latter river. Care is always taken to pass this j)oint when 

 the tides are least perceptible. 



* The plants growing upon this newly formed land are all of one kind. They are called 

 Ciriuba, or Xiriuba, by the inhabitants, and belong to the family Verbcnacece, genus Avi- 

 cennia. 



f Probably the only steamers that have entered the Araguary have been Brazilian men- 

 of-war of light draught. But in 1881 there was nothing to take a steamer, however small, 

 into this region ; for, although the forests below the falls contain an abundance of rubber 

 trees, and although cacao trees form extensive forests, there was at that time next to no 

 population on the stream, while the malaria and the mosquitoes made it almost impossible 

 to live there indeed, this region is noted for being the most unhealthful on the lower 

 Amazon. Some rubber is gathered above the falls, but it is carried overland from Porto 

 Grande to the Rio Matapf and thence by canoes to Macapa. 



