ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
with beautiful green grass upon it, wonderful grazing 
land, and no trees whatever. On both sides of the channel 
we followed, in fact, we had fine open country all around, 
which seemed excellent for grazing purposes. 
More interesting to me than the river itself were the 
wonderful effects of the ever-changing light in the sky. 
I saw no more the wonderful radiations which had given 
me so much pleasure in Matto Grosso, but we beheld here 
a great haze of delicate tones up to a great height and a 
light blue sky above it. The clouds seemed to possess no 
well-defined form, but were more like masses of mist, the 
edges blending gradually with the blue of the sky. Only 
to the west was there an attempt at globular formation in 
the clouds. The clouds of heavy smoke which rose and 
rolled about over the landscape helped to render the other¬ 
wise monotonous scene a little more picturesque. 
Farther up stream we reached on the right a long 
island almost absolutely free from trees, except at its 
western end, where a miserable growth of sickly trees 
covered its point. Beyond was a beautiful spit of red sand 
some 2,000 metres long. 
On November fifteenth we reached Itaquatiara, where 
the banks of the river were much higher than usual on 
the right side. I was much struck by the sight of a lot 
of fallen timber lying about on the slopes of the high bank, 
and by innumerable logs of wood floating on the water, 
quite an unusual sight in Brazilian waters. Itaquatiara 
was placed geographically on a most convenient # site, 
opposite the mouth of the great Madeira River. Now 
that the Madeira-Mamori Railway is completed, bringing 
down the trade of Bolivia and of the Acre Territory, 
there is no doubt that it will become a most important 
trading centre. To my mind it is bound to supplant 
Manaos, which is very inconveniently situated, not on the 
Amazon River itself but on the tributary Rio Negro. 
All the rubber which goes down the Madeira River 
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