Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/390

 table was very well served, professed cooks being employed in these Amazonian steamers, and fresh meat insured by keeping on deck a supply of live bullocks and fowls, which are purchased whenever there is an opportunity on the road. The river scenery was similar to that already described as presented between the Rio Negro and Ega: long reaches of similar aspect, with two long, low lines of forest, varied sometimes with cliffs of red clay, appearing one after the other; an horizon of water and sky on some days limiting the view both up stream and down. We travelled, however, always near the bank, and, for my part, I was never weary of admiring the picturesque grouping and variety of trees, and the varied mantles of creeping plants which clothed the green wall of forest every step of the way. With the exception of a small village called Fonte Boa, retired from the main river, where we stopped to take in firewood, and which I shall have to speak of presently, we saw no human habitation the whole of the distance. The mornings were delightfully cool; coffee was served at sunrise, and a bountiful breakfast at ten o'clock; after that hour the heat rapidly increased until it became almost unbearable; how the engine-drivers and firemen stood it without exhaustion I cannot tell; it diminished after four o'clock in the afternoon, about which time dinner-bell rung, and the evenings were always pleasant.

A few miles below Tunantins, and to the west of the most westerly mouth of the Japurá, on the same side of the Solimoens, I saw, to my surprise, a bed of stratified rock, apparently a fine-grained sandstone, exposed on the banks of the river. It was elevated not more