The fine season begins with a few days of brilliant weather—furious hot sun, with passing clouds. Idle men and women, tired of the dulness and confinement of the flood season, begin to report, on returning from their morning bath, the cessation of the flow: as agoas estao paradas, “the waters have stopped.” The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages, making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tuctim twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small: in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much-longed-for verad ” or summer, and the “ migration,” as it is called, of fish and-turtle; that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main river. Towards the middle of July the sandbanks begin to reappear above the surface of the waters, and with this change come flocks of sandpipers and gulls, which latter make known the advent of the fine season, as the cuckoo does of the European spring; uttering almost incessantly their plaintive cries as they fly about over the shallow waters of sandy shores. Most of the gaily-plumaged birds have now finished moulting, and begin to be more active in the forest.

The fall continues to the middle of October, with the interruption of a partial rise called ‘‘repiquet,” of a few inches in the midst of very dry weather in September, caused by the swollen contribution of some large affluent higher up the river. The amount of subsidence also varies considerably, but it is never so great as to interrupt navigation by large vessels. The greater itis the more abundant is the season. Every one is prosperous when the waters are low; the shallow bays and pools. being then crowded with the concentrated population of fish and turtle. All the people, men, women, and children, leave the villages, and spend the few weeks of glorious weather rambling over the vast undulating expanses of sand in the middle of the Solimoens, fishing, hunting, collecting eggs of turtle and plovers, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. The inhabitants pray always for a “ vasante grande,” or great ebb.

From the middle of October to the beginning of January, the second wet season prevails. The rise is sometimes not more than about fifteen

feet, but it is, in some years, much more considerable, laying the large sand islands under water before the turtle eggs are hatched. In one year, whilst I resided at Ega, this second annual inundation reached to within ten feet of the highest water point, as marked by the stains on the trunks of trees by the river side. The second dry season comes on in January, and lasts throughout February. ‘The river sinks sometimes to the extent of a few feet only, but one year (1856) I saw it ebb to within about five feet of its lowest point in September. This is called the summer of the Umari, “ Verad do Umari,” after the fruit of the name already described, which ripens at this season. When the fall is great, this is the best time to catch turtles. In the year above mentioned, nearly all the residents who had a canoe, and could work a paddle, went out after them in the month of February, and about 2,000 were caught in the course of a few days. It appears that they had been arrested, in their migration towards the interior pools of the forest, by the sudden drying up of the water-courses, and so had become easy prey.

Thus the Ega year is divided into four seasons; two of dry weather and falling waters, and two of the reverse. Besides this variety there is, in the month of May, a short season of very cold weather, a most surprising circumstance in this otherwise uniformly sweltering climate. This is caused by the continuance of a cold wind, which blows from the south over the humid forests that extend, without interruption, from north of the equator to the eighteenth parallel of latitude in Bolivia. I had, unfortunately, no thermometer with me at Ega; the only one I brought with me from England having been lost at Parad. The temperature is so much lowered that fishes die in the river Teffé, and are cast in considerable quantities on its shores. One year I saw and examined numbers of these benumbed and dead fishes. They were all small fry of different species of Characini. The wind is not strong; but it brings cloudy weather, and lasts from three to five or six days in each year. The inhabitants all suffer much from the cold, many of them wrapping themselves up with the warmest clothing they can get (blankets are here unknown), and shutting themselves indoors with a charcoal fire lighted. I found, myself, the change of temperature most delightful, and did not require extra clothing. It was a bad time, however, for my pursuit, as birds and insects all betook themselves to places of concealment, and remained inactive. The period during which this wind prevails is called the “‘tempo da friagem,” or the season of coldness. The phenomenon, I presume, is to be accounted for by the fact that in May it is winter in the southern temperate zone, and that the cool currents of air travelling thence northwards towards the equator, become only moderately heated in their course, owing to the intermediate country being a vast partially-flooded plain covered with humid forests.

CHAPTER: XI.

EXCURSIONS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA.

The River Teffé—Rambles through groves on the beach—Excursion to the house of a Passé chieftain—Character and customs of the Passé tribe—First excursion to the sand islands of the Solimoens—Habits of great river-turtle—Second excursion —Turtle-fishing in the inland pools —Third excursion—Hunting rambles with natives in the forest—Return to Ega.

I wILL now proceed to give some account of the more interesting of my shorter excursions in the neighbourhood of Ega. The incidents of the longer voyages, which occupied each several months, will be narrated in a separate chapter.

The settlement, as before described, is built on a small tract of cleared land at the lower or eastern end of the lake, six or seven miles from the main Amazons, with which the lake communicates by a narrow channel. On the opposite shore of the broad expanse stands a small village, called Nogueira, the houses of which are not visible from Ega, except on very clear days; the coast on the Nogueira side is high, and stretches away into the grey distance towards the south-west. The upper part of the river Teffé is not visited by the Ega people, on account of its extreme unhealthiness, and its barrenness in salsaparilla and other wares. To Europeans it would seem a most surprising thing that the people of a civilised settlement, 170 years old, should still be ignorant of the course of the river on whose banks their native place, for which they proudly claim the title of city, is situated. It would be very difficult for a a private individual to explore it, as the necessary number of Indian paddlers could not be obtained. I knew only one person who had ascended the Teffé to any considerable distance, and he was not able to give me a distinct account of the river. The only tribe known to live on its banks are the Catauishis, a people who perforate their lips all round, and wear rows of slender sticks in the holes: their territory lies between the Purtis and the Jurud, embracing both shores of the Teffé. A very considerable stream, the Bararua, enters the lake from the west, about thirty miles above Ega; the breadth of the lake is much contracted a little below the mouth of this tributary, but it again expands further south, and terminates abruptly where the Teffé proper, a narrow river with a strong current, forms its head water.

The whole of the country for hundreds of miles is covered with picturesque but pathless forests, and there are only two roads along which excursions can be made by land from Ega. One is a narrow

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hunter’s track, about two miles in length, which traverses the forest in the rear of the settlement. The other is an extremely pleasant path along the beach to the west of the town. This is practicable only in the dry season, when a flat strip of white sandy beach is exposed at the foot of the high wooded banks of the lake, covered with trees, which, as there is no underwood, form a spacious shady grove. I rambled daily, during many weeks of each successive dry season, along this delightful road. The trees, many of which are myrtles (Eugenia Egaensis of Martius) and wild guavas (Psidium) with smooth yellow stems, were in flower at this time; and the rippling waters of the lake, under the cool shade, everywhere bordered the path. The place was the resort of kingfishers, green and blue tree-creepers, purple-headed tanagers, and humming-birds. Birds generally, however, were not numerous. Every tree was tenanted by Cicadas, the reedy notes of which produced that loud, jarring, insect music which is the general accompaniment of a woodland ramble in a hot climate. One species was very handsome, having wings adorned with patches of bright green and scarlet. It was very common; sometimes three or four tenanting a single tree, clinging as usual to the branches. On approaching a tree thus peopled, a number of little jets of a clear liquid would be seen squirted from aloft. I have often received the well-directed discharge full on my face; but the liquid is harmless, having a sweetish taste, and is ejected by the insect from the anus, probably in self-defence, or from fear. The number and variety of gaily-tinted butterflies, sporting about in this grove on sunny days, were so great that the bright moving flakes of colour gave quite a character to the physiognomy of the place. It was impossible to walk far without disturbing flocks of them from the damp sand at the edge of the water, where they congregated to imbibe the moisture. They were of almost all colours, sizes, and shapes: I noticed here altogether eighty species, belonging to twenty-two different genera. It is a singular fact that, with very few exceptions, all the individuals of these various species thus sporting in sunny places were of the male sex, their partners, which are much more soberly dressed and immensely less numerous than the males, being confined to the shades of the woods. Every afternoon, as the sun was getting low, I used to notice these gaudy sunshine-loving swains trooping off to the forest, where I suppose they would find their sweethearts and wives. The most abundant, next to the very common sulphur-yellow and orange-coloured kinds (Callidryas, seven species), were about a dozen species of Cybdelis, which are of large size, and are conspicuous from their liveries of glossy dark-blue and purple. A superbly-adorned creature, the Callithea Markii, having wings of a thick texture, coloured sapphire-blue and orange, was only an occasional visitor. On certain days, when the weather was very calm, two small gilded green species (Symmachia Trochilus and Colubris) literally swarmed on the sands, their glittering wings lying wide open on the flat surface. The beach terminates, eight miles beyond Ega, at the mouth of a rivulet; the character of the coast then changes, the river banks being masked by a line of low islets amid a labyrinth of channels.

In all other directions my very numerous excursions were by water; the most interesting of those made in the immediate neighbourhood were to

the houses of Indians on the banks of retired creeks; an account of one of these trips will suffice.

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