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Updated: May 17, 2025
After having struggled for thirty-five days with the muddy currents and insect pests of the Solimoens, it was unspeakably refreshing to find oneself again in a dark-water river, smooth as a lake, and free from Pium and Motuca.
A bunch of fruit when ripe is a load for a strong man, and each tree bears several of them. The Pupunha grows wild nowhere on the Amazons. It is only, however, the more advanced tribes who have kept up the cultivation. The superiority of the fruit on the Solimoens to that grown on the Lower Amazons and in the neighbourhood of Para is very striking.
Wallace and I first met with this species, on ascending the Amazons, at the mouth of the Solimoens; from that point it continues as a rather common bird on the terra firma, at least on the south side of the river as far as Fonte Boa, but I did not hear of its being found further to the west. It appears in large flocks in the forests near Ega in May and June, when it has completed its moult.
At night we reached the Juteca, a small river which enters the Solimoens by a channel so narrow that a man might almost jump across it, but a furlong inwards expands into a very pretty lake several miles in circumference.
It is a singular circumstance that the Indians residing on the Japura and other tributaries always fall ill on descending to the Solimoens, while the reverse takes place with the inhabitants of the banks of the main river, who never fail of taking intermittent fever when they first ascend these branch rivers, and of getting well when they return.
White egrets were plentiful at the edge of the water, and hummingbirds, in some places, were whirring about the flowers overhead. The desolate appearance of the landscape increased after sunset, when the moon rose in mist. This upper river, the Alto-Amazonas, or Solimoens, is always spoken of by the Brazilians as a distinct stream.
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