Chap. VI. TUNANTINS. 371 



than three or four feet above the present level of the 

 river, which was now, the season having been an un- 

 usually wet one, about half full. I had not seen rocks 

 of any kind on the river banks since leaving Manaca- 

 purti, 450 miles distant, and this bed seems to have 

 escaped the notice of Spix and Poeppig. The bank, at 

 the foot of which alone the rock was visible, was con- 

 nected with a tract of land lying higher than the purely 

 alluvial district that extends eastward to a distance 

 of several hundred miles, and was clothed with the 

 rounded, dark -green forest which is distinctive of the 

 terra firmas of the Amazons valley. The slightly 

 elevated land continues, with scarcely a break, to the 

 mouth of the Tunantins, which we entered, after making 

 a long circuit to avoid a shoal, on the 11th of November. 



November 11th to SOth. — The Tunantins is a sluggish 

 black-water stream, about sixty miles in length, and 

 towards its mouth from 100 to 200 yards in breadth. 

 The vegetation on its banks has a similar aspect to 

 that of the Rio Negro, the trees having small foliage of 

 a sombre hue, and the dark piles of greenery resting on 

 the surface of the inky water. The village is situated 

 on the left bank, about a mile from the mouth of the 

 river, and contains twenty habitations, nearly all of 

 which are merely hovels, built of lath-work and mud. 

 The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable, on 

 account of the many puddles, and are choked up with 

 weeds, — leguminous shrubs, and scarlet-flowered ascle- 

 pias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it is 

 by the lofty forest, and surrounded by swamps, is always 



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