MANAOS AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 277 



no easy matter to overcome it. However, of late the de- 

 sire to see themselves in a picture is gradually gaining the 

 ascendant, the example of a few courageous ones having 

 emboldened the more timid, and models are much more 

 easily obtained now than they were at first. 



Yesterday our quiet life was interrupted by an excursion 

 to the great cascade, where we went with a party of friends 



i 



to breakfast and dine. We were called with the dawn, 

 and were on the road at six o'clock, the servants following 

 laden with baskets of provisions. The dewy walk through 

 the woods in the early morning was very pleasant, and we 

 arrived at the little house above the cascade before the 

 heat of the day began. This house stands on a hill in a 

 cleared ground entirely surrounded by forest ; just below 

 it the river comes rushing through the wood, and falls 

 some ten feet over a thin platform of rock. By its forma- 

 tion, this cascade is a Niagara in miniature ; that is, the 

 lower layer of rock being softer than the upper, the water 

 has worn it away until there now remains only a thin 

 slab of harder rock across the river. Deprived of its sup- 

 port, this slab must break down eventually, as Table-rock 

 has done, when the cascade will, of course, retreat by so 

 much and begin the same process a little higher up. It 

 has, no doubt, thus worn its way upward already from a 

 distant point. The lower deposit is clay, the upper consists 

 of the constantly recurring reddish sandstone, in other 

 words, drift worked over by water. Below the fall, the 

 water goes tearing along through a narrow passage, over 

 boulders, fallen trees, and decaying logs, which break 

 it into rapids. At a little distance from the cascade 

 there is a deep, broad basin in the wood, with a sand 

 bottom, so overshadowed by great trees that it looks dark 



