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240 VOYAGE UP THE TAPAJOS. Cuap. IX. 
A small creek traversed the forest beyond Joad Aracti’s house, and 
entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place ; I used to cross 
it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting-ground. One 
day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches 
higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. This pheno- 
menon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the creek 
became dry with the continued subsidence of the Cupari, the time of 
rising shifting a little from day to day. I pointed cut the circumstance 
to Joad Aracu, who had not noticed it before (it was only his second 
year of residence in the locality), but agreed with me that it must be 
the “maré.” Yes, the tide! the throb of the great oceanic pulse felt 
in this remote corner, 530 miles distant from the place where it first 
strikes the body of fresh water at the mouth of the Amazons. I 
hesitated at first at this conclusion, but on reflecting that the tide was 
known to be perceptible at Obydos, more than 400 miles from 
the sea; that at high water in the dry season a large flood from the 
Amazons enters the mouth of the Tapajos, and that there is but a very 
small difference of level between that point and the Cuparl, a fact 
shown by the absence of current in the dry season; I could have no 
doubt that this conclusion was a correct one. 
The fact of the tide being felt 530 miles up the Amazons, passing 
from the main stream to one of its affluents 380 miles from its mouth, 
and thence to a branch in the third degree, is a proof of the extreme 
flatness of the land which forms the lower part of the Amazonian valley. 
This uniformity of level is shown also in the broad lake-like expanses 
of water formed, near their mouths, by the principal affluents which 
cross the valley to join the main river. 
August 21st.—Joad Aracti consented to accompany me to the falls, 
with one of his men, to hunt and fish for me. One of my objects was 
to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences 
on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south 
through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts. We started on 
the roth, our direction on that day being generally south-west. On the 
2oth our course was southerly and south-easterly. This morning 
(August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of 
which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of Joao Aracu. The 
river at this place is from sixty to seventy yards wide, and runs in a 
zigzag course between steep clayey banks, twenty to fifty feet in height. 
The houses of the Munduructs, to the number of about thirty, are 
scattered along the banks for a distance of six or seven miles. The 
owners appear to have chosen all the most picturesque sites—tracts of 
level ground at the foot of wooded heights, or little havens with bits of 
white ‘sandy beach—as if they had an appreciation of natural beauty. Most 
of the dwellings are conical huts, with walls of framework filled in with 
mud and thatched with palm leaves, the broad eaves reaching half-way 
to the ground. Some are quadrangular, and do not differ in structure 
from those of the semi-civilised settlers in other parts ; others are open 
sheds or ranchos. They seem generally to contain not more than one 
or two families each. 
At the first house we learnt that all the fighting men had this morning 
