264 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



and other discomforts ; occasionally he makes not less than 

 twenty colored sketches of fishes in one day. Of course, 

 made with such rapidity, they are mere records of color 

 and outline ; but they will be of immense service in work- 

 ing up the finished drawings.* Leaving Mr. Agassiz, there- 

 fore, busy with the preparation of his collections, and Mr. 

 Burkhardt painting, we went up the lake through a strange, 

 half-aquatic, half-terrestrial region, where land seemed at 

 odds with water. Groups of trees rose directly from the 

 lake, their roots hidden below its surface, while numerous 

 blackened and decayed trunks stood up from the water 

 in all sorts of picturesque and fantastic forms. Sometimes 

 the trees had thrown down from their branches those singu- 

 lar aerial roots so common here, and seemed standing on 

 stilts. Here and there, where we coasted along by the 

 bank, we had a glimpse into the deeper forest, with its 

 drapery of lianas and various creeping vines, and its para- 

 sitic sipos twining close around the trunks or swinging 

 themselves from branch to branch like loose cordage. 

 But usually the margin of the lake was a gently sloping 

 bank, covered with a green so vivid and yet so soft, that 

 it seemed as if the earth had been born afresh in its six 

 months' baptism, and had come out like a new creation. 

 Here and there a palm lifted its head above the line of 

 forest, especially the light, graceful Assai, its crown of 

 feathery leaves vibrating above the tall, slender, smooth 

 stem with every breeze. Half an hour's row brought 

 us to the landing of the sitio for which we were bound. 

 Usually the sitios stand on the bank of the lake or river, 

 a stone's throw from the shore, for convenience of fishing, 



* In the course of our journey on the Amazons, Mr. Burkhardt made more 

 than eight hundred paintings of fishes, more or less finished. — L. A. 



