Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/74

 said to exist. Large silk-cotton-trees appear at intervals, raising their semi-globular heads above the rest of the forest, and the castanha, or Brazil-nut, grows on the river-banks, where we saw many of the trees covered with fruit.

We passed the Ilha das Pacas, which is completely covered with wood, and very abrupt and rocky. The rocks in the river were now thicker than ever, and we frequently scraped against them; but as the bottoms of the montarins are hollowed out of the trunks of trees and left very thick, they do not readily receive any injury. At three P.M. we reached Aroyas, a mile below the Falls. Here the bank of the river slopes up to a height of about three hundred feet, and is thickly wooded. There was a house near the river, with numerous orange-trees, and on the top of the hill were mandiocca and coffee plantations. We dined here; and when we had finished, the mistress handed round a basin of water and a clean napkin to wash our hands,—a refinement we had hardly expected in a room without walls, and at such a distance from civilisation.

After dinner we went on to see the Falls. The river was still about a mile wide, and more wild and rocky than before. Near the Falls are vast masses of volcanic rock; one in particular, which we passed close under in the montaria is of a cubical form, thirty feet on the side and twenty feet high. There are also small islands composed entirely of scoria-like rocks, heaped up and containing caves and hollows of a most picturesque appearance, affording evident proofs of violent volcanic action at some former period. On both sides of the river, and as far as the sight extends, is an undulating country, from four to five hundred feet high, covered with forest, the commencement of the elevated plains of central Brazil.

On arriving at the Falls we found the central channel about a quarter of a mile wide, bounded by rocks, with a deep and very powerful stream rushing down in an unbroken sweep of dark green waters, and producing eddies and whirlpools below more dangerous to canoes than the Fall itself. When the river is full they are much more perilous, the force of the current being almost irresistible, and much skill is required to avoid the eddies and sunken rocks. The great cubical block I have mentioned is then just under water, and has caused the loss of many canoes. The strata were much twisted and