ON THE AMAZON 323 



ship for them. I had become very fond of them ; and 1 

 was glad to feel that I had been their companion in the 

 performance of a feat which possessed a certain lasting 

 importance. 



On May 1 we left Manaos for Bel^n — Para, as until 

 recently it was called. The trip was interesting. We 

 steamed down through tempest and sunshine ; and the 

 towering forest was dwarfed by the giant river it fringed. 

 Sunrise and sunset turned the sky to an unearthly flame 

 of many colours above the vast water. It all seemed 

 the embodiment of loneliness and wild majesty. Yet 

 everywhere man was conquering the loneliness and 

 wresting the majesty to his own uses. We passed many 

 thriving, growing towns ; at one we stopped to take on 

 cargo. Everywhere there was growth and development. 

 The change since the days when Bates and Wallace 

 came to this then poor and utterly primitive region is 

 marvellous. One of its accompaniments has been a 

 large European, chiefly south European, immigration. 

 The blood is everywhere mixed ; there is no colour line, 

 as in most English-speaking countries, and the negro 

 and Indian strains are very strong ; but the dominant 

 blood, the blood already dominant in quantity, and that 

 is steadily increasing its dominance, is the olive-white. 



Only rarely did the river show its full width. Gener- 

 ally we were in channels or among islands. The surface 

 of the water was dotted with little islands of floating 

 vegetation. Miller said that much of this came from 

 the lagoons such as those where he had been hunting, 

 beside the Sohmoens — lagoons filled with the huge and 

 splendid Victoria lily, and with masses of water hyacinths. 

 Miller, who was very fond of animals and always took 

 much care of them, had a small collection which he was 

 bringing back for the Bronx Zoo. An agouti was so 



