196 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



more striking. A few hundred yards above the falls the 

 river turns at an angle and widens. The broad, rapid 

 shallows are crested with whitecaps. Beyond this wide 

 expanse of flecked and hurrying water rise the mist col- 

 umns of the cataract; and as these columns are swayed 

 and broken by the wind the forest appears through and 

 between them. From below the view is one of singular 

 grandeur. The fall is over a shelving ledge of rock which 

 goes in a nearly straight line across the river's course. 

 But at the left there is a salient in the cliff-line, and here 

 accordingly a great cataract of foaming water comes down 

 almost as a separate body, in advance of the line of the 

 main fall. I doubt whether, excepting, of course, Niagara, 

 there is a waterfall in North America which outranks this 

 if both volume and beauty are considered. Above the 

 fall the river flows through a wide valley with gently slop- 

 ing sides. Below, it slips along, a torrent of whity-green 

 water, at the bottom of a deep gorge; and the sides of the 

 gorge are clothed with a towering growth of tropical forest. 

 Next morning the cacique of these Indians, in his 

 major's uniform, came to breakfast, and bore himself with 

 entire propriety. It was raining heavily — it rained most 

 of the time — and a few minutes previously I had noticed 

 the cacique's two wives, with three or four other young 

 women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was a pic- 

 turesque group. The women were all mothers, and each 

 carried a nursing child. They wore loin-cloths or short 

 skirts. Each carried on her back a wickerwork basket 

 supported by a head-strap which went around her fore- 

 head. Each carried a belt slung diagonally across her 

 body, over her right shoulder; in this the child was car- 



