Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/172

 establishments at Manacápurú are large and of old date, shown by the number and size of the mangos and other introduced fruit-trees. The houses, though spacious, were now in a neglected and ruinous condition. Estulano and I landed at one of them, and dined off roasted wild hog with the owner, an uncommonly lively little old man, named Feyres. The place looked dirty and desolate; the stucco and whitewash had peeled off in great pieces from the walls; the doors and window-shutters were broken and off their hinges; the dingy mud-floors were covered with litter, and the cultivated grounds around the house choked with weeds. The high bank, and with it the settlement, terminates at the mouth of a narrow channel which leads to a large interior lake abounding in fish, manatee, and turtle.

Beyond Manacápurú all traces of high land cease; both shores of the river, henceforward for many hundred miles, are flat, except in places where the Tabatinga formation appears in clayey elevations of from twenty to forty feet above the line of highest water. The country is so completely destitute of rocky or gravelly beds that not a pebble is seen during many weeks' journey. Our voyage was now very monotonous. After leaving the last house at Manacápurú we travelled nineteen days without seeing a human habitation, the few settlers being located on the banks of inlets or lakes some distance from the shores of the main river. We met only one vessel during the whole of the time, and this did not come within hail, as it was drifting down in the middle of the current in a broad part of the river two