Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

xv FROM MANAOS TO TARAPOTO 25
Negro and Casiquiari, while I only
saw in one or
two places scraps of a
Selaginella a genus which
is represented by several beautiful species growing
in great quantity about the falls of the Uaupes.
Night came on immediately after we had passed
the first fall. We slept on a sandbank shaded by
overhanging trees, which did not prevent our
feeling the strong and cool south wind which blew
all night. Our men worked well in the morning,
and by 10 o'clock we had got the cargo carried
safely up above the last fall, and we then set on
to cook our breakfasts with light hearts. Into all
the falls there enters a stream of clear cool water
tumbling down among mossy rocks, in the first and
last fall from the left, and in the second from the
right. In all these falls stones which have 12
feet or more of water over them in tlood are often
coated by a black varnish, as in the cataracts of the
Orinoco, but those higher up the slope, and therefore
under water for a shorter period, rarely show
this peculiarity.
Above Estero-yacu (the highest fall), the
Huallaga is again broader and stiller, though
running rapidly at points; the mountains recede
from the river-margin, and the vegetation puts on
the same aspect as below the pongo. About an
hour more brought us opposite Chapaja, an Indian
village of a few scattered huts, whence then- i
track leading to Tarapoto, occupying about thn '
hours with mules. Another hour and we
entered the mouth of the Mayo,
a .omc\
smaller stream than the Huallaga, \vln\h it quite
resembled. Here were banks of mud and
sometimes covered with pebbles, as on the I I nail,: