Agkound on the Amazon. 239 



" Stop her !" And immediately after there was a crash ; 

 but it was only the breaking of crockery caused by the 

 sudden stoppage. The niglit was fearfully dark, and for 

 aught we knew the steamer was running headlong into the 

 forest. Fortunately there was no collision, and in a few 

 minutes we were again on our way, arriving at Fonte Boa 

 at 4 A.M. This Httle village stands in a palm grove, on 

 a high bank of ochre-colored sandy clay, beside a slue of 

 sluggish black water, eight miles from the Amazon.* The 

 inhabitants, about three hundred, are ignorant, lazy mame- 

 lucos. They dress like the majority of the semi-civilized 

 people on the Amazon : the men content with shirt and 

 pantaloons, the women wearing cotton or gauze chemises 

 and calico petticoats. Fonte Boa is a museum for the nat- 

 uralist, but the headquarters of musquitoes, small but per- 

 sistent. Taking in a large qiiantity of turtle -oil, the 

 " Icamiaba" turned down the cano, but almost immediately 

 ran aground, and we were two hours getting oif. These 

 yearly shifting shoals in the Amazon can not be laid down 

 in charts, and the most experienced pilots often run foul 

 of them. In twelve hours we entered the Teffe, a tribu- 

 tary from the Boli\'ian mountains. Just before reaching 

 the Great River it expands into a beautiful lake, with a 

 white, sandy beach. On a grassy slope, stretching out into 

 the lake, with a harbor on each side of it, lies the city of 

 Ega. A hundred palm-thatched cottages of mud and tiled 

 frame houses, each with an inclosed orchard of orange, 

 lemon, banana, and guava trees, surround a rude church, 

 marked by a huge wooden crucifix on the green before it, 

 instead of a steeple. Cacao, assai, and pupunha palms rise 

 above the town, adding greatlj' to its beauty ; while back 

 of all, on the summit of the green slope, begins the pictur- 



* Smyth says the town gets its name from the clearness of the water ; but 

 Herndoii found it muddy, and, to our eyes, it was dark as the Negro. 



