Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/316

 increased in amount, until at the beginning of February a thick moist veil enveloped the whole landscape both night and day. The wind then increased to a gale; every sailing craft on the river was obliged to seek shelter; and when the monthly river steamer, a vessel of 400 tons burthen, anchored in the port, it pitched up and down as I have seen ships do in breezy weather in the Southampton water. This lasted three days, at the end of which the wind suddenly lulled, black clouds gathered in the east, the fog lifted up like a curtain, and down came the deluging rain which inaugurates the wet season.

I made, in this second visit to Villa Nova, an extensive collection of the natural productions of the neighbourhood. A few remarks on some of the more interesting of these must suffice. The forests are very different in their general character from those of Pará, and in fact those of humid districts generally throughout the Amazons. The same scarcity of large-leaved Musaceous and Marantaceous plants was noticeable here as at Obydos. The low-lying areas of forest or Ygapós, which alternate everywhere with the more elevated districts, did not furnish the same luxuriant vegetation as they do in the Delta region of the Amazons. They are flooded during three or four months in the year, and when the waters retire, the soil—to which the very thin coating of alluvial deposit imparts little fertility—remains bare, or covered with a matted bed of dead leaves, until the next flood season. These tracts have then a barren appearance; the trunks and lower