Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/170

 long stretches of sandy soil clothed with thinner forests. The climate, in consequence, is comparatively dry, many months in succession during the fine season passing without rain. All this is changed on the Solimoens. A fortnight of clear, sunny weather is a rarity: the whole region through which the river and its affluents flow, after leaving the easternmost ridges of the Andes, which Pöppig describes as rising like a wall from the level country 240 miles from the Pacific, is a vast plain, about 1000 miles in length, and 500 or 600 in breadth, covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, and humid forest. The soil is nowhere sandy, but always either a stiff clay, alluvium, or vegetable mould, which latter, in many places, is seen in waterworn sections of the river banks to be twenty or thirty feet in depth. With such a soil and climate, the luxuriance of vegetation, and the abundance and beauty of animal forms which are already so great in the region nearer the Atlantic, increase on the upper river. The fruits, both wild and cultivated, common to the two sections of the country, reach a progressively larger size in advancing westward, and some trees which blossom only once a year at Pará and Santarem, yield flower and fruit all the year round at Ega. The climate is healthy, although one lives here as in a permanent vapour bath. I must not, however, give here a lengthy description of the region whilst we are yet on its threshold. I resided and travelled on the Solimoens altogether for four years and a half. The country on its borders is a magnificent wilderness where civilized man, as yet, has scarcely obtained a footing; the culti-