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#40 Island shores in the archipelago of Para.
Latin translation by
Ben Hennelly
In this etching, which Augustus Brandmueller, an expert lithographer,
created from a sketch I made at the place itself, you see, kind reader,
a region that is surpassed by perhaps no other in this world with regard
to the fullness and luxuriance of its vegetation. But for this very
reason, the image appears unequal to nature: it is not able to represent
the remarkable variety in shape and color of the individual plants,
nor does it as a whole attain the brightness of the air, the gleam of
the foliage, or the pellucidity of the sky offered by a nature that
only he who has seen with his eyes can picture in his mind.
Those traveling in the Iguarapemirim canal from the city
of Para, toward the west, as far as the mouth of the Amazon river, sail past the area presented in the etching. It is a path
which, shunning the large open seas into which the Tocantins and Amazon send their measureless waters, leads toward the
west, south of the great island of Marajo (1), through fairly shallow
canals that are often narrow and wind variously through the continent
or among numerous islands. The ground is low-lying, flat and level,
except that canals and many ditches are drawn through all the regions
into a great channel of fresh water, in which lies the island of Marajo.
You could say in truth that Neptune reigns here.
Iguarapemirim canal, Province of Para
Yet what is most remarkable, these low-lying, meandering canals which
conjoin, as if in nets, the realm of lesser rivers on the shore (Rio
Capim and Rio Moju),
with the realm of the Tocatins river, and this realm with that of the Amazon, are governed amidst
the changes of the swell now
by this master and now by that, so that the waves are driven or slacken
now from the east and now from the west. For this reason it happens
that quite often the canal narrows, and especially in the angles between
the islands, the swell's approach and its drawing back come up against
one another in one place. Just so in one spot you see waves flowing
very speedily along banks covered with thick forest, but then, suddenly,
waves from another canal resisting them very forcefully; elsewhere you
navigate with a following current that is rapid and driven by the swell,
as it were, but as soon as you have passed the corner of an island and
approach another part of the channel, the waters either fall altogether
still or move in an opposite direction. It is certainly a remarkable
sight; nor is the life along the shore free from this sport, inasmuch
as the shrub branches that hang into the water follow the motion in
this direction and that. More or less the same thing happened to me
and Spix, my traveling companion, because to the west of the small district
named Frequezia de S. Anna, in canals called Uanapu,
we were moved forward first by its swell (Euchente), then by
its retreat (Vazante).
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