i88 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
strong. There was now no doubt that the waters 
of the Amazon had entered the Ramu-urumu^ana, 
as the Indians call the inlet of the Ramos; and 
towards night of the same day we had fuller proof 
of it, in occasional sudden influxes of water, convert- 
ing the whole river into whirlpools. On the even- 
ing of the 19th, our one sailor was hauling by a 
rope, along a narrow strip of sand left bare in the 
middle of the river, and we on board were aiding 
with poles, when a sudden irruption of water 
flooded the sandbank, dragged the man into 
deep water and nearly drowned him before he 
could extricate himself from the rope, and whirled 
the canoe round I suppose a hundred times. We 
were drifting rapidly downwards, spite of all our 
exertions, and in continual danger of thumping 
against the side or on some sandbank, when fortu- 
nately a breath of wind sprang up, and although it 
did not last more than ten minutes, it sufficed to 
put us nearly across the river, and into compara- 
tively still water. 
The meeting of the cooler waters of the Amazon 
and the heated waters of the Ramos had an extra- 
ordinary effect on the fish, which floated on the 
surface quite benumbed and stupefied, so that we 
caught as many of them as we liked with our hands. 
On the 19th we had fresh fish in superabundance, and 
we salted down as many pescadas — a delicate fish, 
the size of a large trout — as served us for ten days 
afterwards. This phenomenon takes place every 
year, not only in the Ramos, but in many other 
periodically-closed channels of the Amazon ; but I 
had not been previously informed of it, and there- 
fore had not ascertained the temperature of the 
