FORESTS OF THE RIO NEGRO 229 



I found at Barra my companion, Mr. Wallace, who, 

 since our joint Tocantins expedition, had been exploring, 

 partly with his brother, lately arrived from England, the 

 north-eastern coast of Marajo, the river Capim (a branch 

 of the Guama, near Para), Monte Alegre, and Santarem. 

 He had passed us by night below Serpa, on his way to 

 Barra, and so had arrived about three weeks before me. 

 Besides ourselves, there were half-a-dozen other foreigners 

 here congregated, — Englishmen, Germans, and Ameri- 

 cans ; one of them a Natural History collector, the rest 

 traders on the rivers. In the pleasant society of these, 

 and of the family of Senhor Henriques, we passed a de- 

 lightful time ; the miseries of our long river voyages 

 were soon forgotten, and in two or three weeks we began 

 to talk of further explorations. Meantime we had almost 

 daily rambles in the neighbouring forest. The country 

 around Barra is undulating and furrowed by ravines, 

 through which flow rivulets of clear cold water, along 

 whose banks many picturesque nookb occur. The whole 

 surface of the land down to the water's edge is covered 

 by the uniform dark-green rolling forest, the cad-apoam 

 (convex woods) of the Indians, characteristic of the Rio 

 Negro. This clothes also the extensive areas of low land, 

 which are flooded by the river in the rainy season. The 

 olive-brown tinge of the water seems to be derived from 

 the saturation in it of the dark green foliage during these 

 annual inundations. The great contrast in form and 

 colour between the forests of the Rio Negro and those 

 of the Amazons arises from the predominance in each of 

 different families of plants. On the main river, palms of 

 twenty or thirty different species form a great proportion 

 of the mass of trees ; whilst on the Rio Negro they play 

 a very subordinate part. The characteristic kind in the 

 latter region is the Jara (Leopoldinia pulchra), a species 

 not found on the margins of the Amazons which has a 

 scanty head of fronds with narrow leaflets of the same 

 dark green hue as the rest of the forest. The stem is 

 smooth, and about two inches in diameter ; its height 

 is not more than twelve to fifteen feet ; it does not, 

 therefore, rise amongst the masses of foliage of the exo- 

 genous trees, so as to form a feature in the landscape, 

 like the broad-leaved Murumuru and Urucuri, the slender 

 Assai, the tall Jauari, and the fan-leaved Muriti of the 

 banks of the Amazons. Ou the shores of the main river 



