5-726 Notes on an Excursion 



drunkenness of their few inhabitants. The place I was going to was 

 no exception to the rule, so I provided myself with a large mosquito 

 tent, and hoped that for two or three months, amidst the pleasures of 

 acquiring daily new species of insects, birds and shells, I should get 

 along agreeably. 



We were four days reaching Tunantins ; the passage was a pleasant 

 one, all the passengers but one being foreigners; four or five were 

 Frenchmen on a trading expedition to Moyobamba, one was a Peru- 

 vian, of Chachapoyas on the Andes, one a German, and one a Moorish 

 Jew going to Nanta. As to the river scenery, little can be said ; the 

 whole distance, and indeed all the way to the river Huallaga, there are 

 the same monotonous low lines of forest as I have before described in 

 the notes on my first voyage from Barra to Ega. The commander of 

 the steamer and the passengers generally gave it as their impression 

 that no difference in width and grandeur was perceptible from San- 

 tarem to this part; but, after passing the mouths of the mighty Japura 

 and the Jurna — that is, from Fonte Boa upwards — I think a difference 

 is perceptible; there were no longer such magnificent reaches and 

 limitless horizons, with fading lines of forest, as occur lower down. 

 In passing along with even speed in a steamer within ten yards of the 

 shore, I observed that there were three distinct kinds of coast and 

 corresponding forest constantly recurring, and the same may be said 

 of the whole upper river. First, there are the low sandy and muddy 

 shores, the most recent alluvial deposits, covered with a dense, tall, 

 broad-leaved grass, often with the arrow-grass, whose feathery-topped 

 flower stem rises to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, sometimes with 

 a uniform forest of Cecropiae, but without any large trees ; besides 

 the banks of the river, many of the islands were of this character. 

 Secondly, there are the moderately high banks, only partially over- 

 flowed in the flood season ; they are wooded with a magnificent, 

 varied forest, in which palms of certain species are intermingled in a 

 very large proportion ; the general foliage is vivid and riant in colour ; 

 the water frontage is sometimes covered with a mass of greenery, but 

 where the current sets strong along the friable, earthy banks they are 

 cut away and offer a section of forest, where the trunks of trees appear 

 laden with parasites ; in these places the river, for some eight or ten 

 yards out is encumbered with vast fallen trees and debris of the 

 forest. The third class of coast is the " terra firme" of the Brazilians, 

 or "terra geral" (the "general country"), — a very apt expression : it 

 consists of a comparatively high, undulating land, the soil generally 

 stiff or clayey. The forest here is of a different character from that of 



