CHAP. IX 
AROUND SAO GABRIEL 
297 
patched. Within these few days I have been 
fortunate enough to engage another fisherman. 
It is worth my while to keep these two men solely 
for the sake of accompanying me in my excursions, 
for it is not safe to venture among the falls with 
fewer than two oars. 
The serras around Sao Gabriel were a great attraction to my 
establishing myself here. I began with the lowest, which rises at 
the back of Sao Gabriel. In streams about its base I got several 
Ferns, but on the serra itself nothing. I then undertook to 
ascend a serra which appears in front, on the right bank, when 
one goes half a day's journey up the river. On Schomburgk's 
map it is marked Mount Wanarimapan, but no one knows it by 
I 
Fig. 16. — Sao Gabriel do Rio Negro, looking up the River. 
The Equator passes through the high peak on the left. (R. S.) 
this name. The Indian name is Urucii-initera (or the hill of 
Anatto), but it is more generally known by its Portuguese name, 
Serra do Gama. ... I succeeded in reaching the very highest 
point of the serra, but it cost me above a week, and here also the 
serra itself proved barren of novelty, being clad with lofty forest 
to its summit and destitute of water save near its base. It is 
1600 feet high above the river at Sao Gabriel. AW these serras 
are huge masses of granite rising abruptly out of the plain. You 
have no idea what work it is climbing them : towards the base 
they are strewed with blocks as big as churches, all enveloped in 
forest and netted over with twiners. In a caatinga at the base of 
the Serra do Gama I made an interesting collection. There are 
also other caatingas or " white forests " in the neighbourhood : the 
soil a thin covering of white sand over granite, the trees low, 
twiners scarcely any, trunks hung with Ferns and Orchises, 
branches with Hepaticae. The Ferns are very interesting, the 
Orchises numerous but insignificant, the Hepaticae few in species. 
Scarcely any of the trees are now in flower, but they seem all 
peculiar. 
I am now entering another great Guarana country. I have 
