STEAITS OF OBIDOS. 313 



cacao and guarana, are the pi-incipal exports of most Ama- 

 zonian towns. Larger qnantities of the last are shipped 

 from Villa Bella than from any other town npon the river. 

 This article, tlie fifth in importance of the exports of the 

 Amazons, is manufactured from the cofiee-likc fruit of a 

 spreading shrub {Paullinia sorhiUs), eight to ten feet in 

 height. These seeds are roasted, ground, then formed 

 into a thickened paste, and pressed into moulds of various 

 and often fantastic shapes. When grated into water and 

 sweetened, it makes an agreeable and refreshing beverage. 

 Its medicinal properties also render it an excellent stimu- 

 lant, and a good astringent, successfully used in cases of 

 dysenteric diseases. 



Before reaching Obidos we were greeted, for the first 

 time since bidding farewell to the Andes, by mountain 

 scenery ; for like mountains appeared to us, long accus- 

 tomed to the dead uniformity of the Amazonian wilder- 

 ness, what were in fact low hills that occasionally rose 

 above the forest. About three hundred and thirty miles 

 below Manaos are the Straits of Obidos. Here the Ama- 

 zons, which above this point spreads out three or four 

 miles in width, narrows to less than a mile, with a depth, 

 according to Lieutenant Herndon, of thirty or forty fatli- 

 oms. The velocity of the current, as it pours through the 

 contracted passage, is about four miles per hour during 

 low water, increasing to upward of five in the rainy season. 

 Although six hundred miles from the sea, the iniluence of 

 the tides is here perceptibly felt, raising the river several 

 inches. The river never flows backward at this point, but 

 the rise is occasioned by the damming up of the water be- 

 low, wliich causes a slackening of the current, and a lift- 

 ing of the level of the river. At Gurupix, nearly three 

 hundred miles below Obidos, the tide is five feet ; at Para, 

 a distance of seventy miles from the sea, fifteen feet. The 

 higher the tides at any place, the less is the river there af- 



