i6 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
in clay, of which advantage had been taken to 
establish a pottery, where all the coarser kinds of 
earthenware were manufactured on a large scale. 
As the clay was apparently of very good quality, 
the proprietor had two or three times tried to 
produce glazed crockery, and with that view had 
got out skilled workmen from Europe and North 
America ; but either the materials or the workmen 
were not so good as they were supposed to be, 
for the project did not succeed. The pottery of 
Tauau is, however, famous throughout the Amazon, 
and I recollect seeing large waterpots, with ''Tauaii" 
stamped on them, even on the Casiquiari in Vene- 
zuela, whither they had been taken from Para 
probably with wine or cachaca, and would be sent 
down thither again full of turtle oil or balsam 
capivi. 
The pottery and the clay-pits occupied a low 
marshy flat which extends down the river for 
several hundred yards ; but in the port, where we 
landed, the ground rose abruptly from the water- 
side, and a flight of steps led up to the house, 
which stood on a terrace some 60 feet above the 
river. At the back was a considerable extent 
of open pasture, reclaimed from the forest, rising 
on one side into positive hills, whereof the highest 
point might be 130 feet high. By a broad road 
leading from the house across the campo there 
were rows of fine young Castanha trees [Bertkolletia 
excelsa, H. B. K.), on which grow the well-known 
Para or Brazil nuts of commerce, called in their 
native country castanhas or chestnuts. These 
trees had been planted by the Jesuits, the founders 
and former possessors of Tauau. 
