VEGETATION AT SANTAREM 147 
(Chloris foliosa) with rigid tufted leaves barely 
half an inch long, which, after I had watched it 
nearly four months, at length put forth culms 
bearing at the apex six or seven silky, feathery 
spikes. These and a few other herbaceous plants 
made the upland campos look fresher than at any 
other time of year ; but I never again saw them 
so gay and flowery as when I first visited them in 
the month of November/ 
The great burst of foliage and flowers was, 
however, at the time when the rains and floods 
began to abate, and it was most obvious on the 
river margins. It was marvellous to see the 
myriads of minute annuals — or I might almost 
call them ephemerals — which sprang up on the 
shores of still bays and at the mouths of creeks 
of the Tapajoz. Following in the wake of the 
receding waters, they sprang out of the sand, 
flowered, and ripened their seeds ; and by the time 
the sand had got quite dry — ix. in a few days at 
most — they had quite withered away. And not- 
withstanding their humble size and transitory 
existence they were all pretty things, many of them 
with showy white, yellow, or pink flowers ; and 
nearly all proved to be quite undescribed. They 
comprised two fairy water-plantains, resembling the 
Alisma ranunculoides of our English brooks in 
miniature ; several Eriocaulons, Utricularias, a 
Hyris, a Herpestes, some slender annual sedges 
(Eleocharis and Isolepis), and a few other plants. 
^ I did not again see a Chloris until I reached the coast of the Pacific, 
south of the Equator, where in ground somewhat similar to that at Santarem, 
but usually for many months or even years together unmoistened by any 
shower, the rains of 1862 clothed the desert with a verdant carpet, wherein 
several species of Chloris were conspicuous. 
