THE BOAT SINKS 
of Indian corn, sugar-cane, and mandioca had been made, 
the soil being extremely fertile at that spot. We enjoyed 
a magnificent view to the west and north-northwest, the 
river there forming an elbow. 
Close by, on leaving that place, we found on our right 
Lage’s Point, where the rocky formation suddenly ended, 
and with it the dangers of the Mangabel rapids. Here 
there was a basin 1,500 metres wide, with extensive sand 
beaches of great beauty. After passing the last row of 
rocks, extending from west to east, the entire river bot¬ 
tom was of clean yellow sand, so that the water appeared 
as limpid as crystal, while a few moments before it looked 
of a dirty yellow — not because it was really dirty, but 
because of the reflection from the rocky river bottom. 
From Praia Formosa, which we then saw on our left 
side, the river was once more strewn with rocks, but not 
in such quantities as at Mangabel. High hills could be 
seen all along, which seemed as if they had been formed 
by alluvial deposits left there when the drainage from the 
high Matto Grosso plateau proceeded down toward the 
north in a disorderly fashion, until it found its way into 
the great fissures in the earth’s crust, which now form the 
beds of those great arteries, the Xingu, the Tapajoz, and 
the Madeira rivers. 
I noticed that all the hills and undulations ran from 
south to north or from northwest to southeast, the southern 
slope being generally more elongated. After passing on 
our left the trading sheds of Sobradinho and S. Vicente, 
with their corrugated iron roofs -— looking to us the most 
civilized things we had ever seen—we approached the 
Montanha, where another rapid had to be negotiated. 
During the night I was sleeping inside the cabin of 
the boat, which Colonel Brazil had placed at my disposal, 
and where I had all the baggage which I had saved from 
the forest. In the middle of the night all of a sudden the 
boat sank in five or six feet of water. It was all I could 
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