242 The Aot)es and the A^iazon. • 



left Ega two hours after midnight, reaching Coary at 

 noon. The Amazon began to look more like a lake than 

 a river, having a width of four or five miles. Floating 

 gulls and rolling porpoises remind one of the sea. Coary 

 is a huddle of fifteen houses, six of them plastered with- 

 out, whitewashed, and tiled. It is situated on a lake of 

 the same name — the expanded outlet of a small river 

 whose waters are dark brown, and whose banks are low^ 

 and covered with bushes. Here we took in turtles and 

 turtle-oil, Brazil nuts and cocoa-nuts, rubber, salt fish, and 

 wood ; and, six hours after leaving, more fish and rubber 

 were received at Cudaja. Cudaja is a lonely spot on the 

 edge of an extensive system of back-waters and lakes, run- 

 ning through a dense unexplored forest inhabited by Miira 

 savages. 



At three in the afternoon of Christmas, seventy-four 

 hours' running time from Tabatinga, we entered the Kio 

 Negro. Strong is the contrast between its black-dyed wa- 

 ters and the yellow Amazon. Tlie line separating the two 

 rivers is sharply drawn, the waters meeting, not mingling. 

 Circular patches of the dark w^aters of the ISTegro are seen 

 floating like oil amid the turbid waters of the Amazon. 

 The sluggish tributary seems to be dammed up by the im- 

 petuous monarch. The banks of the latter are low^ rag- 

 ged, perpendicular beds of clay, covered with a bright 

 green foliage ; the Negro is fringed with sandy beaches, 

 with hills in the background clothed with a sombre, mo- 

 notonous forest containing few palms or leguminous trees. 

 Musquitoes, piums, and montucas never trouble the travel- 

 er on the inky stream. When seen in a tumbler, the wa- 

 ter of the Negro is clear, but of a light-red color ; due, un- 

 doubtedly, to vegetable matter. The visible mouth of the 

 river at this season of the year (December) is three miles 

 wide, but from main-land to main-land it can not be less 

 than twenty. 



