第62章

The coast throughout has a most desolate aspect; the forest is not so varied as on the higher land; and the water-frontage, which is destitute of the green mantle of climbing plants that form so rich a decoration in other parts, is encumbered at every step with piles of fallen trees; and peopled by white egrets, ghostly storks, and solitary herons.

In the evening we passed Almeyrim.The hills, according to Von Martius, who landed here, are about 800 feet above the level of the river, and are thickly wooded to the summit.They commence on the east by a few low isolated and rounded elevations; but towards the west of the village, they assume the appearance of elongated ridges which seem as if they had been planed down to a uniform height by some external force.The next day we passed in succession a series of similar flat-topped hills, some isolated and of a truncated-pyramidal shape, others prolonged to a length of several miles.There is an interval of low country between these and the Almeyrim range, which has a total length of about twenty-five miles; then commences abruptly the Serra de Marauaqua, which is succeeded in a similar way by the Velha Pobre range, the Serras de Tapaiuna-quara, and Paraua-quara.All these form a striking contrast to the Serra de Almeyrim in being quite destitute of trees.They have steep rugged sides, apparently clothed with short herbage, but here and there exposing bare white patches.Their total length is about forty miles.In the Tear, towards the interior, they are succeeded by other ranges of hills communicating with the central mountain-chain of Guiana, which divides Brazil from Cayenne.

As we sailed along the southern shore, during the 6th and two following days, the table-topped hills on the opposite side occupied most of our attention.The river is from four to five miles broad, and in some places long, low wooded islands intervene in mid-stream, whose light-green, vivid verdure formed a strangely beautiful foreground to the glorious landscape of broad stream and grey mountain.Ninety miles beyond Almeyrim stands the village of Monte Alegre, which is built near the summit of the last hill visible of this chain.At this point the river bends a little towards the south, and the hilly country recedes from its shores to reappear at Obydos, greatly decreased in height, about a hundred miles further west.

We crossed the river three times between Monte Alegre and the next town, Santarem.In the middle the waves ran very high, and the vessel lurched fearfully, hurling everything that was not well secured from one side of the deck to the other.On the morning of the 9th of October, a gentle wind carried us along a "remanso," or still water, under the southern shore.These tracts of quiet water are frequent on the irregular sides of the stream, and are the effect of counter movements caused by the rapid current of its central parts.At 9 a.m.we passed the mouth of a Parana-mirim, called Mahica, and then found a sudden change in the colour of the water and aspect of the banks.Instead of the low and swampy water-frontage which had prevailed from the mouth of the Xingu, we saw before us a broad sloping beach of white sand.The forest, instead of being an entangled mass of irregular and rank vegetation as hitherto, presented a rounded outline, and created an impresssion of repose that was very pleasing.We now approached, in fact, the mouth of the Tapajos, whose clear olive-green waters here replaced the muddy current against which we had so long been sailing.Although this is a river of great extent--1000 miles in length, and, for the last eighty miles of its course, four to ten in breadth--its contribution to the Amazons is not perceptible in the middle of the stream.The white turbid current of the main river flows disdainfully by, occupying nearly the whole breadth of the channel, while the darker water of its tributary seems to creep along the shore, and is no longer distinguishable four or five miles from its mouth.