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A VACATION TRIP TO BRAZIL. 649 
ing for the morning. Day broke with the land in sight, 
no grand blue serras lying cloudlike on the horizon, but a 
long, low stretch of trees level as the line of the sea. 
Here we are in the mouth of the Para, but only one side 
can be seen, and from the middle neither side is visible, 
for it is here thirty-three miles in width. 
There are a number of extensive sand-banks in the 
mouth of the river which make it difficult to enter. The 
main channel lies between two of these banks, over which 
the waves break sometimes fearfully. This channel is not 
more than two miles in width.‘ An experienced pilot of 
the Para is attached to the steamer. We passed up the 
channel early in the morning against the tide, with a fine 
view of the breakers on each side. Hitherto there has 
been nothing to mark this channel, but lately two buoys 
have been placed at the entrance. What is much needed 
is a lightship, for at present the entrance is impracticable 
by night. Steaming up the river we soon left the brack- 
ish water, and came into the turbid waters of the Ama- 
zonas, finding ourselves on what seemed to be a fresh- 
water sea. The water is very muddy, and of a light 
milky brown. This is the color of the main river of the 
Amazonas. When one looks at the mighty flood pouring 
steadily out of the mouth of the Para, and strives to cal- 
culate the amount of solid material it is bearing down 
from the land to the sea, he cannot but. be amazed at the 
work the giant river is doing towards cutting away the 
continent, and in spreading it out anew over the bottom 
of the Atlantic. About one hundred miles from the 
mouth of the Amazonas, a small stream flows off south- 
ward, when it meets with the Anapa, Pacajos, and the 
great Tocantins, which last is sixty miles wide at its 
mouth, and swells into the Para, which Agassiz calls one 
N NAT., VOL. I. 
