242 The Andes akd the A ma ton. 



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 E.io 

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

 ters and the yellow Amazon. The line separating the two 

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

 Circular patches of the dark waters of the Negro 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. 



