broad stream and grey mountain. Ninety miles beyond Almeyrim
stands the village of Monte Alegre, which is built near the
summit of the last hill visible of this chain. At this point the
river bends a little towards the south, and the hilly country
recedes from its shores to reappear at Obydos, greatly decreased
in height, about a hundred miles further west.

We crossed the river three times between Monte Alegre and the
next town, Santarem. In the middle the waves ran very high, and
the vessel lurched fearfully, hurling everything that was not
well secured from one side of the deck to the other. On the
morning of the 9th of October, a gentle wind carried us along a
"remanso," or still water, under the southern shore. These tracts
of quiet water are frequent on the irregular sides of the stream,
and are the effect of counter movements caused by the rapid
current of its central parts. At 9 a.m. we passed the mouth of a
Parana-mirim, called Mahica, and then found a sudden change in
the colour of the water and aspect of the banks. Instead of the
low and swampy water-frontage which had prevailed from the mouth
of the Xingu, we saw before us a broad sloping beach of white
sand. The forest, instead of being an entangled mass of irregular
and rank vegetation as hitherto, presented a rounded outline, and
created an impresssion of repose that was very pleasing. We now
approached, in fact, the mouth of the Tapajos, whose clear olive-
green waters here replaced the muddy current against which we had
so long been sailing. Although this is a river of great extent--
1000 miles in length, and, for the last eighty miles of its
course, four to ten in breadth--its contribution to the Amazons
is not perceptible in the middle of the stream. The white turbid
current of the main river flows disdainfully by, occupying nearly