250 The Andes and the Amazon. 



cHfPs of Cararaucii, arriving in ten hours atYilla Nova,* 

 one hundred and fifty miles below Serpa. Villa Nova is 

 a straggling village of mud huts standing on a conglomer- 

 ate bank. The trade is chiefly in rubber, copaiba, and fish. 

 The location is healthy, and in many respects is one of the 

 most desirable places on the river. Here the Amazon be- 

 gins to narrow, being scarcely three miles wide ; but the 

 channel, which has a rocky bed, is very deep. One hun- 

 dred miles from Villa Nova is Obidos, airily situated on a 

 bluff of pink and yellow clay one hundred feet above the 

 river. The clay rests on a white calcareous earth, and this 

 on red sandstone. It is a picturesque, substantially-built 

 town, with a population, mostly white, engaged in raising 

 cacao and cattle. Cacao is the most valuable product on 

 the Amazon below Villa Nova. The soil is fertile, and the 

 surrounding forest is alive with monkeys, birds, and in- 

 sects, and aboimds with precious woods and fruits. Obidos 

 is blessed with a church, a school, and a weekly newspa- 

 per, and is defended by thirty-two guns. This is the Ther- 

 mopylae of the Amazon, the great river contracting to a 

 strait not a mile in width, through which it rushes with 

 tremendous velocity. The depth is forty fathoms, and the 

 current 2.4 feet per second. As Bates remarks, however, 

 the river valley is not contracted to this breadth, the south- 

 ern shore not being continental land, but a low alluvial 

 tract subject to inxmdation. Back of Obidos is an emi- 

 nence which has been named Mount Agassis in honor of 

 the Naturalist. There is no mountain between it and Co- 

 topaxi save the spurs from the Eastern Cordillera. Five 

 miles above the town is the mouth of the Trombetas, where 

 Orellana had his celebrated fight with the fabulous Ama- 

 zons. 



Adding to her cargo wood, hides, horses, and Paraguayan 



* Otherwise called, on Brazilian maps, Villa Bella da Imperatriz. 



