106 TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. {September, 



which I was convinced must be the Victoria regia. Senhor 

 Nunez told me there were plenty near his house, and early 

 the next morning he sent an Indian to try and get me one. 

 After some search the man found one, with a half-opened 

 flower, and brought it to me. The leaf was about four feet 

 in diameter, and I was much pleased at length to see this 

 celebrated plant ; but as it has now become comparatively 

 common in England, it is not necessary for me to describe it. 

 It is found all over the Amazon district, but rarely or never 

 in the river itself. It seems to delight in still waters, growing 

 in inlets, lakes, or very quiet branches of the river, fully exposed 

 to the sun. Here it grew in the pools left in the bog ; but in 

 June the water would be twenty or thirty feet deeper, so its 

 leaf and flower-stalks must increase in length rapidly while the 

 water rises, as they did not seem to be very long now. I took 

 the leaf home, in order to dry some portions of it. It is called 

 by the Indians " Uaupe Japdna " (the Jacana's oven), from the 

 resemblance of the leaf, with its deep rim, to the clay ovens 

 used for making farinha. 



As w r e wished to get home that day, we took leave of our 

 kind host, and again had to pole our way over the grass and 

 weeds in the small stream. It did not, however, now seem so 

 tedious as on our ascent, and we soon got into the open river. 



Passing along a sandy shore, our Indian saw signs of turtles' 

 eggs, and immediately jumped out and commenced scraping 

 away the sand, in a very short time turning up a hatful of eggs 

 of the small turtle called "Tracaxa." A little lower down 

 there was an old tree giving a tempting shade, so we made a 

 fire under it, boiled our eggs, made some coffee, and with some 

 farinha and beef we had brought with us made an excellent 

 breakfast. Proceeding on, we fell in with a great number of 

 alligators, of a large size, swimming about in all directions. 

 We fired at some of them, but only succeeded in making them 

 dive rapidly to the bottom. They are much feared by the 

 natives, who never venture far into the water when bathing. 

 In a place where we had bathed a few days previously, we saw 

 one close in shore, and resolved to be more careful for the 

 future, as every year some lives are lost by incautiousness. 



After a few days more at the village, we paid a visit to a 

 mandiocca plantation some miles in the interior, where there 

 is a considerable extent of forest-land, and where we therefore 



