Sometimes they were quite unsuccessful, for fish is extremely difficult to procure in the season of high water, on account of the lower lands lying between the inlets and infinite chain of pools and lakes being flooded from the main river, thus increasing tenfold the area over which the finny population has to range.On most days, however, they brought two or three fine fish, and once they harpooned a manatee, or Vacca marina.On this last-mentioned occasion we made quite a holiday; the canoe was stopped for six or seven hours, and all turned out into the forest to help skin and cook the animal.The meat was cut into cubical slabs, and each person skewered a dozen or so of these on a long stick.Fires were made, and the spits stuck in the ground and slanted over the flames to roast.A drizzling rain fell all the time, and the ground around the fires swarmed with stinging ants, attracted by the entrails and slime which were scattered about.The meat has somewhat the taste of very coarse pork; but the fat, which lies in thick layers between the lean parts, is of a greenish colour, and of a disagreeable, fishy flavour.The animal was a large one, measuring nearly ten feet in length, and nine in girth at the broadest part.The manatee is one of the few objects which excite the dull wonder and curiosity of the Indians, notwithstanding its commonness.The fact of its suckling its young at the breast, although an aquatic animal resembling a fish, seems to strike them as something very strange.The animal, as it lay on its back, with its broad rounded head and muzzle, tapering body, and smooth, thick, lead-coloured skin reminded me of those Egyptian tombs which are made of dark, smooth stone, and shaped to the human figure.
Notwithstanding the hard fare, the confinement of the canoe, the trying weather--frequent and drenching rains, with gleams of fiery sunshine--and the woeful desolation of the river scenery, Ienjoyed the voyage on the whole.We were not much troubled by mosquitoes, and therefore passed the nights very pleasantly, sleeping on deck wrapped in blankets or old sails.When the rains drove us below we were less comfortable, as there was only just room in the small cabin for three of us to lie close together, and the confined air was stifling.I became inured to the Piums in the course of the first week; all the exposed parts of my body, by that time, being so closely covered with black punctures that the little bloodsuckers could not very easily find an unoccupied place to operate upon.Poor Miguel, the Portuguese, suffered horribly from these pests, his ankles and wrists being so much inflamed that he was confined to his hammock, slung in the hold, for weeks.At every landing place I had a ramble in the forest, while the redskins made the fire and cooked the meal.The result was a large daily addition to my collection of insects, reptiles, and shells.
Sometimes the neighbourhood of our gipsy-like encampment was a tract of dry and spacious forest, pleasant to ramble in; but more frequently it was a rank wilderness, into which it was impossible to penetrate many yards, on account of uprooted trees, entangled webs of monstrous woody climbers, thickets of spiny bamboos, swamps, or obstacles of one kind or other.The drier lands were sometimes beautified to the highest degree by groves of the Urucuri palm (Attalea excelsa), which grew by the thousands under the crowns of the lofty, ordinary forest trees; their smooth columnar stems being all of nearly equal height (forty or fifty feet), and their broad, finely-pinnated leaves interlocking above to form arches and woven canopies of elegant and diversified shapes.The fruit of this palm ripens on the upper river in April, and during our voyage I saw immense quantities of it strewn about under the trees in places where we encamped.It is similar in size and shape to the date, and has a pleasantly-flavoured juicy pulp.The Indians would not eat it; I was surprised at this, as they greedily devoured many other kinds of palm fruit whose sour and fibrous pulp was much less palatable.
Vicente shook his head when he saw me one day eating a quantity of the Urucuri plums.I am not sure they were not the cause of a severe indigestion under which I suffered for many days afterwards.
In passing slowly along the interminable wooded banks week after week, I observed that there were three tolerably distinct kinds of coast and corresponding forest constantly recurring on this upper river.First, there were the low and most recent alluvial deposits--a mixture of sand and mud, covered with tall, broad-leaved grasses, or with the arrow-grass before described, whose feathery-topped flower-stem rises to a height of fourteen or fifteen feet.The only large trees which grow in these places are the Cecropiae.Many of the smaller and newer islands were of this description.Secondly, there were the moderately high banks, which are only partially overflowed when the flood season is at its height; these are wooded with a magnificent, varied forest, in which a great variety of palms and broad-leaved Marantaceae form a very large proportion of the vegetation.The general foliage is of a vivid light-green hue; the water frontage is sometimes covered with a diversified mass of greenery; but where the current sets strongly against the friable, earthy banks, which at low water are twenty-five to thirty feet high, these are cut away, and expose a section of forest where the trunks of trees loaded with epiphytes appear in massy colonnades.One might safely say that three-fourths of the land bordering the Upper Amazons, for a thousand miles, belong to this second class.The third description of coast is the higher, undulating, clayey land, which appears only at long intervals, but extends sometimes for many miles along the borders of the river.The coast at these places is sloping, and composed of red or variegated clay.The forest is of a different character from that of the lower tracts:
