148 



JOURNEY FROM VILLA DE ST. SALVADOR 



coffee, are cultivated. Extensive woods, filled with all kipds of wild 

 beasts, nearly adjoni the plantations on the land side. In the pre- 

 ceding night, a large ounce fijagiiarete^ felis onca. Linn.) had killed 

 a mare belonging to the proprietor, whose hunters, with their dogs, 

 had in \'ain searched the neighbouring forests. Not far from the 

 fazencia, a lofty rounded insulated mountain, called Morro de Aga, 

 rises from among the contiguous woods. It consists of rocks and steep 

 naked precipices, and is surrounded by high hills ; its summit is said to 

 command a magnificent prospect. Near the dwellings I found a little 

 marsh, where I was astonished, at night-fall, by the remarkable voice 

 of a frog hitherto unknown to me : it sounded exactly like a tinman 

 or brazier working m ith his hammer ; only the sound was on the whole 

 deeper or fuller. It was not till long afterwards that I became better 

 acquainted with this animal, which, on account of its voice, is called 

 by the Portuguese the smith. Another curiosity, was a thick bush, 

 of a kind of heliconia, which we had not yet seen ; and which con- 

 stantly bends down the stalks of its flowers archwise, at a certain 

 height, and then turns up the end again ; many flowers, with scarlet 

 calices, cover the crooked part of the stalk, which is of an equally 

 fine colour. This magnificent shrub formed a perfect bower. The 

 sea-beach at this place afforded a few bivalve shells and snails. 



Near Aga we came to the Povoacao Pmma or Ipiuma, where a 

 rivulet of the same name, which is navigable for canoes only, dis- 

 charges itself into the sea. At this place there is a wooden bridge 

 three hundred paces in length, suited to the most enlarged state of 

 the rivulet, a real curiosity in these parts. The banks of this stream 

 are covered with thick bushes, and its water is of a dark coffee 

 colour, like that of most of the forest streams and little rivers of this 

 country. Humboldt remarked the same of the Atabapo, Temi, 

 Tuamini, Guainia (Rio Negro), and other rivers. In his opinion 

 they receive this singular colour from a solution of carbonic hydrogen, 



