FROM PAEA TO MANAOS. 



167 



. August 26th. — Monte Alegre. We arrived before this 

 town, situated on the north side of the Amazons, at the 

 mouth of the river Gurupatuba, yesterday at about mid- 

 day, but the heat was so great that I did not go on 

 shore till towards evening. The town is situated on the 

 summit of a hill sloping rather steeply upward from the 

 shore, and it takes its name from a mountain some four 

 leagues to the northwest of it. But though the ground 

 is more broken and various than we have seen it hitherto, 

 the place does not seem to me to deserve its name of 

 Monte Alegre (the gay mountain). To me the aspect 

 of the country here is, on the contrary, rather sombre ; 

 the soil consists everywhere of sand, the forest is low, 

 while here and there intervene wide, swampy flats, cov- 

 ered with coarse grass. The sand rests above the same 

 reddish drift, filled with smooth rounded quartz pebbles, 

 that we have followed along our whole road. Here and 

 there the pebbles are disposed in undulating lines, as if a 

 partial stratification had taken place ; and in some localities 

 we saw indications of the drift having been worked over 

 by water, though not absolutely stratified. Both at sunset 

 and sunrise I took a walk to the village churchyard, which 

 commands the prettiest view in the neighborhood. It is 

 enclosed in a picket fence, a large wooden cross stands 

 in the centre, and there are a few other small crosses 

 marking graves ; but the place looked uncared for, grown 

 over, wherever the sand was not bare, by the same coarse, 

 rank shrubs which spring up everywhere in this ungenial 

 soil.* At a little distance from the churchyard, the hill 



* Afterwards I made a longer stay at Monte Alegre, and learned to know its 

 picturesque nooks and dells, where a luxuriant vegetation is watered by de- 

 licious springs. I feel that the above description is superficial ; but I let it 

 remaiiij, as perfectly true to my first impressions. 



