176 
TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. 
\_May, 
on the Solimoes, a person may go by canoe in the wet 
season without once entering into the main river. He 
will pass through small streams, lakes, and swamps, and 
everywhere around him will stretch out an illimitable waste 
of waters, but all covered with a lofty virgin forest. For 
days he will travel through this forest, scraping against 
tree-trunks, and stooping to pass beneath the leaves of 
prickly palms, now level with the water, though raised 
on stems forty feet high. In this trackless maze the 
Indian finds his way with unerring certainty, and by 
slight indications of broken twigs or scraped bark, goes 
on day by day as if travelling on a beaten road. In the 
Gapo peculiar animals are found, attracted by the fruits 
of trees which grow only there. In fact, the Indians 
assert that every tree that grows in the Gapo is dis- 
tinct from all those found in other districts ; and when 
we consider the extraordinary conditions under which 
these plants exist, being submerged for six months of 
the year till they are sufficiently lofty to rise above the 
highest water-level, it does not seem improbable that 
such may be the case. Many species of trogons are 
peculiar to the Gapo, others to the dry yirgin forest. 
The umbrella chatterer is entirely confined to it, as is 
also the little bristle-tailed manakin. Some monkeys 
are found there only in the wet season, and whole tribes 
of Indians, such as the Purupurus and Muras, entirely 
inhabit it, building small, easily-removable huts on the 
sandy shores in the dry season, and on rafts in the wet \ 
spending a great part of their lives in canoes, sleeping^ 
suspended in rude hammocks from trees over the deep j 
water, cultivating no vegetables, but subsisting entirely^ 
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