50 SANTAEEM. Chap. I. 



My excursions to the Irura had always a picnic 

 character. A few rude huts are scattered through the 

 valley, but they are tenanted only for a few days 

 in the year, when their owners come to gather and 

 roast the mandioca of their small clearings. We used 

 generally to take with us two boys — one negro, the other 

 Indian — to carry our provisions for the day ; a few 

 pounds of beef or fried fish, farinha and bananas, with 

 plates, and a kettle for cooking. Jose carried the guns, 

 ammunition and game-bags, and I the apparatus for 

 entomologizing — the insect net, a large leathern bag 

 with compartments for corked boxes, phials, glass tubes, 

 and so forth. It was our custom to start soon after 

 sunrise, when the walk over the campos was cool and 

 pleasant, the sky without a cloud, and the grass wet 

 with dew. The paths are mere faint tracks ; in our 

 early excursions it was difficult to avoid missing our 

 way. We were once completely lost, and wandered 

 about for several hours over the scorching soil without 

 recovering the road. A fine view is obtained of the 

 country from the rising ground about half way across 

 the waste. Thence to the bottom of the valley is a 

 long, gentle, grassy slope, bare of trees. The strangely- 

 shaped hills ; the forest at their feet, richly varied with 

 palms ; the bay of Mapiri on the right, with the dark 

 waters of the Tapajos and its white glistening shores, 

 are all spread out before one as if depicted on canvas. 

 The extreme transparency of the atmosphere gives to 

 all parts of the landscape such clearness of outline 

 that the idea of distance is destroyed, and one fancies 

 the whole to be almost within reach of the hand. 





