The Rio Negro at Barra is about four miles in width at highwater, but much less during the dry season, when the flood has fallen thirty feet. The channel deepens at once from the shore, forming a safe and convenient anchorage. The shore in some parts is bold, rising in almost perpendicular bluffs; in others, gently sloping to the water's edge. Upon land thus irregular the town is built, numbering rather more than three thousand inhabitants, a large proportion of which are Indians. The houses are generally of one story, but occasionally of two and three, and resemble in form and structure those of the better towns below.

There was something very attractive in the appearance of the Barra. The broad, lake-like river in front, smooth as a mirror; the little bay, protected by two out-jutting points; the narrow inlet that circled around the upper part of the town, and beyond which sloped a lofty hill, green with the freshness of perpetual spring; the finely rolling land upon which the town itself stood; and back of all, and overtopping all, the flat table, where at one glance we could take in a combination of beauties far superior to anything we had yet seen upon the Amazon. Here the secluded inhabitants live, scarcely knowing of the rest of the world, and as oblivious of outward vanities as our Dutch ancestors, who, in bygone centuries, vegetated upon the banks of the Hudson. Here is no rumbling of carts or trampling of horses.