60 THE TOCANTINS AND CAMETA. Cuap. IV. 
likened, by Prince Adalbert of Prussia, who crossed its mouth in 1846, 
to the Ganges. It is upwards of ten miles in breadth at its mouth ; 
opposite Cameta it is five miles broad. Mr. Burchell, the well-known 
English traveller, descended the river from the mining provinces of 
interior Brazil some years before our visit. Unfortunately, the utility of 
this fine stream is impaired by the numerous obstructions to its navigation 
in the shape of cataracts and rapids, which commence, in ascending, at 
about 120 miles above Cameta, as will be seen in the sequel. 
August 30th.—Arrived, in company with Senhor Laroque, an 
intelligent Portuguese merchant, at Vista Alegre, fifteen miles above 
Cameta. This was the residence of Senhor Antonio Ferreira Gomez, 
and was a fair sample of a Brazilian planter’s establishment in this part 
of the country. The buildings covered a wide space, the dwelling-house 
being separated from the place of business ; and as both were built on 
low, flooded ground, the communication between the two was by means 
of a long wooden bridge. From the office and visitor’s apartments a 
wooden pier extended into the river. The whole was raised on piles 
above high-water mark. There was a rude mill for grinding sugar-cane, 
worked by bullocks; but cashaca, or rum, was the only article manu- 
factured from the juice. Behind the buildings was a small piece of 
ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit trees, orange, 
lemon, genipapa, goyava, and others, and beyond this, a broad path 
through a neglected plantation of coffee and cacao, led to several 
large sheds, where the farinha, or mandioca meal, was manufactured. 
The plantations of mandioca are always scattered about in the forest, 
some of them being on islands in the middle of the river. Land being 
plentiful, and the plough, as well as, indeed, nearly all other agricultural 
implements, unknown, the same ground is not planted three years 
together ; but a new piece of forest is cleared every alternate year, and 
the old clearing suffered to relapse into jungle. 
We stayed here two days, sleeping ashore in the apartment devoted to 
strangers. As usual in Brazilian houses of the middle class, we were 
not introduced to the female members of the family, and, indeed, saw 
nothing of them except at a distance. In the forests and thickets 
about the place we were tolerably successful in collecting, finding a 
number of birds and insects which do not occur at Para. 1 saw here, 
for the first time, the sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on 
the topmost bough of a very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach 
of an ordinary fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its 
plumage was plainly discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet 
bird. A much commoner species was the Cigana or Gipsy (Opistho- 
comus cristatus), a bird belonging to the same order (Gallinacea) as our 
domestic fowl. It is about the size of a pheasant ; the plumage is dark 
brown, varied with reddish, and the head is adorned with a crest of long 
feathers. It is a remarkable bird in many respects. The hind toe is 
not placed high above the level of the other toes, as it is in the fowl 
order generally, but lies on the same plane with them ; the shape of 
the foot becomes thus suited to the purely arboreal habits of the bird, 
enabling it to grasp firmly the branches of trees. This isa distinguishing 
character of all the birds in equinoctial America which represent the 
