They will sap the vitality of this masterpiece of Nature, until in its turn it will fall before some stormy night’s blow.  All along the shore there is a myriad life among the trees and beautifully coloured birds flash in and out of the branches.  You can hear a nervous chattering and discern little brown bodies swinging from branch to branch, or hanging suspended for fractions of a second from the network of climbers and aerial roots.  They are monkeys.  They follow the launch along the trees on the banks for a while and then disappear.

The sun is glaring down on the little craft and its human freight.  The temperature is 112 degrees (F.) in the shade and the only place for possible relief is on a box of cognac alongside the commandant’s hammock.  He has fastened this directly behind the wheel so that he can watch the steersman, an Indian with filed teeth and a machete stuck in his belt.

Would anyone think that these trees, lining the shore for miles and miles and looking so beautiful and harmless by day, have a miasmatic breath or exhalation at night that produces a severe fever in one who is subjected for any length of time to their influence.  It would be impossible for even the most fantastical scenic artist to exaggerate the picturesque combinations of colour and form ever changing like a kaleidoscope to exhibit new delights.  A tall and slender palm can be seen in its simple beauty alongside the white trunk of the embauba tree, with umbrella-shaped crown, covered and gracefully draped with vines and hanging plants, whose roots drop down until they reach the water, or join and twist themselves until they form a leaf-portiere.  And for thousands of square miles this ever changing display of floral splendour is repeated and repeated.  And it would be a treat for an ornithologist to pass up the river.  A hundred times a day flocks of small paroquets fly screaming over our heads and settle behind the trees.  Large, green, blue, and scarlet parrots, the araras, fly in pairs, uttering penetrating, harsh cries, and sometimes an egret with her precious snow-white plumage would keep just ahead of us with graceful wing-motion, until she chose a spot to alight among the low bushes close to the water-front.

The dark blue toucan, with its enormous scarlet and yellow beak, would suddenly appear and fly up with peculiar jerky swoops, at the same time uttering its yelping cry.  Several times I saw light green lizards of from three to four feet in length stretched out on branches of dead trees and staring at us as we passed.

Night came and drew its sombre curtain over the splendours.  I was now shown a place of unpretentious dimensions where I could suspend my hammock, but, unluckily, things were so crowded that there was no room for a mosquito-net around me.  Under ordinary circumstances, neglect of this would have been an inexcusable lack of prudence, but I lay down trusting that the draft created by the passage of the boat would keep the insect pests away, as they told me it would.  I found that experience had taught them rightly.