Chap. VI. 
371 
than three or four feet above the present level of the 
river, which was now, the season having been an un- 
usually wet one, about half full. I had not seen rocks 
of any kind on the river banks since leaving Manaca- 
puru, 450 miles distant, and this bed seems to have 
escaped the noticQ of Spix and Poeppig. The bank, at 
the foot of which alone the rock was visible, was con- 
nected with a tract of land lying higher than the purely 
alluvial district that extends eastward to a distance 
of several hundred miles, and was clothed with the 
rounded, dark -green forest which is distinctive of the 
terra firmas of the Amazons valley. The slightly 
elevated land continues, with scarcely a break, to the 
mouth of the Tunantins, which we entered, after making 
a long circuit to avoid a shoal, on the 11th of November. 
Novemher 11th to SOth. — The Tunantins is a sluggish 
black-water stream, about sixty miles in length, and 
towards its mouth from 100 to 200 yards in breadth. 
The vegetation on its banks has a similar aspect to 
that of the Rio Negro, the trees having small foliage of 
a sombre hue, and the dark piles of greenery resting on 
the surface of the inky water. The village is situated 
on the left bank, about a mile from the mouth of the 
river, and contains twenty habitations, nearly all of 
which are merely hovels, built of lath-work and mud. 
The short streets, after rain, are almost impassable, on 
account of the many puddles, and are choked up with 
weeds, — leguminous shrubs, and scarlet-flowered ascle- 
pias. The atmosphere in such a place, hedged in as it is 
by the lofty forest^ and surrounded by swamps, is always 
B B 2 
