Cuap. X. FLOATING PUMICE-STONES. 263 
as it is called, and a large portion of the fertile lower land, seemed well 
adapted for settlement; some parts were originally peopled by the 
aborigines, but these have long since become extinct or amalgamated 
with the white immigrants. I 
afterwards learnt that there were 
not more thaneighteen or twenty 
families settled throughout the 
whole country from Manacapurti 
to Quary, a distance of 240 
miles; and these, as_ before 
observed, do not live on the 
banks of the main stream, but on the shores 
of inlets and lakes. 
The fishermen twice brought. me small 
rounded pieces of very porous pumice-stone, 
which they had picked up floating on the 
surface of the main current of the river. 
They were to me objects of great curiosity, 
as being messengers from the distant volcanoes 
of the Andes : Cotopaxi, Llanganete, or Sangay, 
which rear their peaks amongst the rivulets 
that feed some of the early tributaries of the 
Amazons, such as the Macas, the Pastaza, and 
the Napo. The stones must have already 
travelled a distance of 1,200 miles. I after- 
wards found them rather common; the 
Brazilians use them for cleaning rust from 
their guns, and firmly believe them to be 
solidified river foam. A friend once brought 
me, when I lived at Santarem, a large piece 
which had been found in the middle: of the 
stream below Monte Alegre, about goo miles 
farther down the river; having reached this 
distance, pumice-stones would be pretty sure 
of being carried out to sea, and floated thence 
with the north-westerly Atlantic current, to 
shores many thousand miles distant from the 
volcanoes which ejected them. They are 
sometimes found stranded on the banks in 
different parts of the river. Reflecting on 
this circumstance since I arrived in England, 
the probability of these porous fragments 
serving as vehicles for the transportation of 
seeds of plants, eggs of insects, spawn of 
fresh-water fish, and so forth, has suggested Bulging-stemmed Palm : 
itself to me. Their rounded, water-worn ae bartizudo 
appearance showed that they must have been Sigiahir ig sa 
rolled about for a long time in the shallow streams near the sources 
of the rivers at the feet of the volcanoes, before they leapt the 
waterfalls and embarked on the currents which lead direct for the 




