348 



THE UPPER AMAZONS 



covered with a diversified mass of greenery ; but where 

 the current sets strongly against the friable, earthy banks, 

 which at low water are twenty-five to thirty feet high, 

 these are cut away, and expose a section of forest where 

 the trunks of trees loaded with epiphytes appear in massy 

 colonnades. One might safely say that three-fourths of 

 the land bordering the Upper Amazons, for a thousand 

 miles, belong to this second class. The third description 

 of coast is the higher, undulating, clayey land, which 

 appears only at long intervals, but extends sometimes for 

 many miles along the borders of the river. The coast at 

 these places is sloping, and composed of red or variegated 

 clay. The forest is of a different character from that of 

 the lower tracts : it is rounder in outline, more uniform 

 in its general aspect ; palms are much less numerous and 

 of peculiar species — the strange bulging-stemmed species, 

 Iriartea ventricosa, and the slender, glossy-leaved Bacaba-i 

 (OEnocarpus minor), being especially characteristic ; and, 

 in short, animal life, which imparts some cheerfulness to 

 the other parts of the river, is seldom apparent. This 

 * terra firma as it is called, and a large portion of the 

 fertile lower land, seemed well adapted for settlement ; 

 some parts were originally peopled by the aborigines, but 

 these have long since become extinct or amalgamated with 

 the white immigrants. I afterwards learnt that there 

 were not more than eighteen or twenty families settled 

 throughout the whole country from Manacapuru to Quary, 

 a distance of 240 miles ; and these, as before observed, 

 do not live on the banks of the main stream, but on the 

 shores of inlets and lakes. 



The fisherman twice brought me small rounded pieces 

 of very porous pumice-stone, which they had picked up 

 floating on the surface of the main current of the river. 

 They were to me objects of great curiosity as being 

 messengers from the distant volcanoes of* the Andes : 

 Cotopaxi, Llanganete, or Sangay, which rear their peaks 

 amongst the rivulets that feed some of the early tributaries 

 of the Amazons, such as the Macas, the Pastaza, and the 

 Napo. The stones must have already travelled a distance 

 of 1200 miles. I afterwards found them rather common : 

 the Brazilians use them for cleaning rust from their guns 

 and firmly believe them to be solidified river foam. A 

 friend once brought me, when I lived at Santarem, a large 

 piece which had been found in the middle of the stream 



