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A few hours after we first sighted land the raft was off Cape Magoari, on the Island of Marajo, and was observed by some fishermen who, with kind-hearted alacrity picked us up, and tended us most carefully. They conveyed us to Para, where we became the objects of unbounded sympathy. The raft was brought to land in lat. 0deg. 12min.
Cut up by marshes and rivers, all savannah to the east, all forest to the west, it offers most excellent advantages for the raising of cattle, which can here be seen in their thousands. This immense barricade of Marajo is the natural obstacle which has compelled the Amazon to divide before precipitating its torrents of water into the sea.
The pressure of the waters from the Amazons here makes itself felt; as this is not the case lower down, I suppose the currents are diverted through some of the numerous channels which we passed on our right, and which traverse, in their course towards the sea, the northwestern part of Marajo.
The main channel of the Para lies ten miles away from the city, directly across the river; at that point, after getting clear of the islands, a great expanse of water is beheld, ten to twelve miles in width; on the opposite shore the island of Marajo, being visible only in clear weather as a line of tree-tops dotting the horizon.
A little further upwards, that is to the southwest, the mainland on the right or eastern shore appears this is called Carnapijo; it is rocky, covered with the neverending forest, and the coast, which is fringed with broad sandy beaches, describes a gentle curve inwards. The broad reach of the Para in front of this coast is called the Bahia, or Bay of Marajo.
The Amazon is divided into two branches at its mouth by the island of Marajo, the larger branch being ninety-six miles in width. About two thousand miles from its mouth it is upwards of a mile wide. So great is the force of this flood of water, that it flows into the sea unmixed for nearly two hundred miles.
The northern shore is formed by the island of Marajo, and is slightly elevated and rocky in some parts. A series of islands conceals the southern shore from view most of the way. The whole country, mainland and islands, is covered with forest.
In fact the sea is eating away the land much faster than the river can build it up. The great island of Marajo was originally a continuation of the Valley of the Amazons, and is identical with it in every detail of its geological structure.
"And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!" "And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or 'pororoca, to which the ebbs, the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny ripples fanned up by the breeze."
In a paper "On Evolution in Ornament," published in several periodicals, among them the Popular Science Monthly of January, 1875, this gifted naturalist illustrated his studies by actual examples found on decorated burial urns from Marajó Island.
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