A dense vegetation, though somewhat varied in character, rises like a lofty wall of verdure along the banks of the mighty stream, from the base of the Andes to its mouth in the Atlantic. There, where the influence of the sea-breeze is felt, the ever-present mangrove of the tropics forms a thick belt round the shores of its numberless islands. Higher up, various palms of many graceful forms appear, interspersed with numberless other trees, some bearing huge pods a yard long, others vast nuts and other curious fruits,--the banks below fringed either with giant grasses and broad-leaved bananas, or here and there with the large wide heart-shaped leaves of the aninga growing on the summit of tall stems, or in other places with the murici of a lower growth close to the water's edge. Among the most remarkable is the white-stemmed cecropia, the lofty massaranduba, or cow-tree, often rising to the height of one hundred and fifty feet; the seringa, or india-rubber tree, with its smooth grey bark, tall erect trunk, and thick glossy leaves. The assai-palm, with its slender stem, its graceful head and delicate green plumes, is at first more numerous than any other. Now appears the miriti, or mauritia--one of the most beautiful of its tribe, with pendent clusters of glossy fruit, and enormous spreading fan-like leaves cut into ribbons; the jupati, with plume-like leaves forty feet and upwards in length, graceful in the extreme, starting almost from the ground. Here is seen also the bussu, with stiff entire leaves, also of great length, growing upright from a short stem, close together, and serrated along their edges. Higher up still, while the palms become less numerous, other trees take their places. Among them appears conspicuous the majestic sumaumera, its flat dome rounded, but not conical, towering high above the forest. The branches of this tree are greatly ramified and knotty, and the bark is white. Conspicuous, too, is the taxi, with brown buds and white flowers; while the margin of the water is thickly fringed by a belt of arrow-grass, or _frexes_--so called by the Portuguese--six feet in height. Its name is given in consequence of being used by the Indians in making arrows for their blowpipes. Amid this wonderful mass of forest vegetation grows an intricate tracery of lianas and climbing sipos, some running round and round the trees, and holding them in a close embrace; others hanging from branch to branch in rich festoons, covered with starlike flowers, or dropping in long lines to the ground,--often to take root and shoot upwards again round a neighbouring stem, or drooping like the loose cordage of a ship swinging in the breeze. Often they form so dense and impenetrable a thicket from the ground upwards that a way must be cleared with an axe to proceed even a short distance from the banks towards the inner recesses of the forest. THE GAPO.