112 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
some acres in extent found its way into the Tapajoz, 
and coming full upon those vessels, tore them all 
from their anchorage and carried them bodily down 
the river. A strong body of soldiers, blacks and 
Indians, amounting to some hundreds, were dis- 
patched to liberate them, and it cost many 
hours' labour with axes and tercados to effect 
it, for the island was several yards in thickness. 
Numbers of snakes (Anacondas), and even some 
cow-fishes (called Peixe-boys), were found in it and 
killed. 
When I ascended the Amazon to the roots of 
the Andes, and saw floating islands of grass quite 
as abundant there, in proportion to the breadth of 
the river, as I had seen them 1500 miles lower 
down, I could not help asking myself what became 
of that immense quantity of grass which was every 
year carried out to sea. I cannot learn that much 
of it is cast ashore on the islands in the mouth of 
the river ; but when the floating islands meet the 
tide they must get broken up, and the grass is 
probably soon decomposed by the salt water. The 
fate of the floating trunks and branches of trees, 
met with in great numbers throughout the Amazon, 
must often be far more protracted.-^ Many a log, 
grown on the eastern slope of the Andes, is con- 
veyed by the waters of the Amazon to the ocean, 
then, by the continuation of the current of the same 
river, into the Gulf Stream, by which it may finally 
be deposited on the coast of Ireland or Norway, or 
even of Spitzbergen ! 
^ A little below the mouth of the Huallaga I came on a palisada (as Spaniards 
call an accumulation of driftwood) stretching across nearly the whole breadth 
of the Amazon, and had some difficulty in passing it in my canoe. 
