One day as I was entomologising alone and unarmed, in a dry Ygapo, where the trees were rather wide apart and the ground coated to the depth of eight or ten inches with dead leaves, Iwas near coming into collision with a boa constrictor.I had just entered a little thicket to capture an insect, and while pinning it was rather startled by a rushing noise in the vicinity.Ilooked up to the sky, thinking a squall was coming on, but not a breath of wind stirred in the tree-tops.On stepping out of the bushes I met face to face a huge serpent coming down a slope, making the dry twigs crack and fly with his weight as he moved over them.I had very frequently met with a smaller boa, the Cutim-boia, in a similar way, and knew from the habits of the family that there was no danger, so I stood my ground.On seeing me the reptile suddenly turned and glided at an accelerated pace down the path.Wishing to take a note of his probable size and the colours and markings of his skin, I set off after him; but he increased his speed, and I was unable to get near enough for the purpose.There was very little of the serpentine movement in his course.The rapidly moving and shining body looked like a stream of brown liquid flowing over the thick bed of fallen leaves, rather than a serpent with skin of varied colours.He descended towards the lower and moister parts of the Ygapo.The huge trunk of an uprooted tree here lay across the road; this he glided over in his undeviating course and soon after penetrated a dense swampy thicket, where of course I did not choose to follow him.
I suffered terribly from heat and mosquitoes as the river sank with the increasing dryness of the season, although I made an awning of the sails to work under, and slept at night in the open air with my hammock slung between the masts.But there was no rest in any part; the canoe descended deeper and deeper into the gulley through which the river flows between high clayey banks;as the water subsided, and with the glowing sun overhead we felt at midday as if in a furnace.I could bear scarcely any clothes in the daytime between eleven in the morning and five in the afternoon, wearing nothing but loose and thin cotton trousers and a light straw hat, and could not be accommodated in John Aracu's house, as it was a small one and full of noisy children.One night we had a terrific storm.The heat in the afternoon had been greater than ever, and at sunset the sky had a brassy glare, the black patches of cloud which floated in it being lighted up now and then by flashes of sheet lightning.The mosquitoes at night were more than usually troublesome, and I had just sunk exhausted into a doze towards the early hours of morning when the storm began-- a complete deluge of rain, with incessant lightning and rattling explosions of thunder.It lasted for eight hours, the grey dawn opening amidst the crash of the tempest.The rain trickled through the seams of the cabin roof on to my collections, the late hot weather having warped the boards, and it gave me immense trouble to secure them in the midst of the confusion.Altogether I had a bad night of it; but what with storms, heat, mosquitoes, hunger, and, towards the last, ill health, I seldom had a good night's rest on the Cupari.
A small creek traversed the forest behind John Aracu's house, and entered the river a few yards from our anchoring place; I used to cross it twice a day, on going and returning from my hunting ground.One day early in September, I noticed that the water was two or three inches higher in the afternoon than it had been in the morning.This phenomenon was repeated the next day, and in fact daily, until the creek became dry with the continued subsidence of the Cupari, the time of rising shifting a little from day to day.I pointed out the circumstance to John Aracu, who had not noticed it before (it was only his second year of residence in the locality), but agreed with me that it must be the "mare"; yes, the tide!-- the throb of the great oceanic pulse felt in this remote corner, 530 miles distant from the place where it first strikes the body of fresh water at the mouth of the Amazons.I hesitated at first at this conclusion, but in reflecting that the tide was known to be perceptible at Obydos, more than 400 miles from the sea, that at high water in the dry season a large flood from the Amazons enters the mouth of the Tapajos, and that there is but a very small difference of level between that point and the Cupari, a fact shown by the absence of current in the dry season.I could have no doubt that this conclusion was a correct one.
The fact of the tide being felt 530 miles up the Amazons, passing from the main stream to one of its affluents 380 miles from its mouth, and thence to a branch in the third degree, is a proof of the extreme flatness of the land which forms the lower part of the Amazonian valley.This uniformity of level is shown also in the broad lake-like expanses of water formed near their mouths by the principal affluents which cross the valley to join the main river.
August 21st.--John Aracu consented to accompany me to the falls with one of his men to hunt and fish for me.One of my objects was to obtain specimens of the hyacinthine macaw, whose range commences on all the branch rivers of the Amazons which flow from the south through the interior of Brazil, with the first cataracts.We started on the 19th; our direction on that day being generally southwest.On the 20th, our course was southerly and southeasterly.This morning (August 21st) we arrived at the Indian settlement, the first house of which lies about thirty-one miles above the sitio of John Aracu.The river at this place is from sixty to seventy yards wide, and runs in a zigzag course between steep clayey banks, twenty to fifty feet in height.The houses of the Mundurucus, to the number of about thirty, are scattered along the banks for a distance of six or seven miles.
