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centuating the shift to the north, continuously abandoning the backwaters that slowed its progress to
the east and over which it used to flow in the past. It leaves still, in the areas recently revealed of
the Marajoara swamps, the tangible proof of the lateral dislocation of the riverbed, which has given
inexpert geologists the illusion of a landmass that is forging or uplifting itself.
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In reality, it reconstructs itself far from our shores. The river that invites all our patriotic lyricism
is the least Brazilian of rivers. It is a strange adversary, one given to the inexorable routine of under-
which the traveler sees in the ocean long before viewing Brazil, imagined thus its momentous task:
the construction of a continent. He explained that as it deposited its sediments in the tranquil depths
oftheAtlantic,newlandswouldemergefromthewaves,andattheendofmillennialefforts,theopen
gulf would be filled and would span Cape Orange to the Gurupi arch, in this way considerably ex-
panding the lands of the State of Pará.
“The King is building his monument!” exclaimed the enraptured naturalist, adapting his clipped
British syllables to a euphoric fantasy capable of startling even the most capricious Latin soul. He
overlooked,however,thatthissingularhydrographicsystemdoesn'tstopafterpassingtheCaboNorte
but continues, a river without banks, into the sea itself, in search of the equatorial current into which
it pours its land-generating slurry. Its substance disperses in that immense underwater river stretching
outtotheGulfStream,concentratingandascendingwiththeflow,extendingtothefarthestzones.On
leaving the Guyana coast whose lagoons, starting with those of Amapá, descend in level plains to the
vast sea, it moves until it reaches the North American littoral of Georgia, of North Carolina.
In those places the Brazilian is a stranger, a foreigner. Yet he is treading upon Brazilian soil. He
sinksintoastonishmentatthefictionofassertingsuchownership.Theironyofacountrywithoutland
counterposes itself to another irony, more rudely physical, a “land” without land. It is the marvelous
consequence ofakindoftelluric disintegration. Thelandabandonsman.Itgoesoffinsearchofother
latitudes.TheAmazonriver,translocatingitselfinanalmostinvisiblevoyage,constructsitstruedelta
indistantlongitudesandrelentlesslydiminishes,inanuninterruptedprocessoferosion,thevastareas
through which it meanders.
One cannot point to enduring or fixed landforms. Sometimes, in the curvature of its channels, the
backwaters flow slow enough that the sediments accumulate with the seeds they carry. Then the cre-
ative faculties of the river come astonishingly into view. The recently formed shoals whose surfaces
emerge describe indecisive curves but soon delimit themselves, enlarging and lifting, rejecting the
waters. The island that this generates grows under one's very eyes, studded with spits that lengthen
and twist like the tentacles of an prodigious beast, unbound for the unfolding evolutionary battle,
so vibrant and dramatic; containing all the convulsive movement of a momentous noiseless cam-
paign in the shuffling of stalks, the twisting stems and branches, which weave, enlace, and confound
themselves. The Aroids consolidate the inconsistent ooze with the webby fibers of their extensive
rhizomes, which are in turn supplanted and expelled to the water's edge by the mangroves in violent
and tumultuous graspings. The tall Javari palms, lording over the uplands, in turn overrun the man-
groves, exiling them to the swampy margins.
But islands are formed to be destroyed, or at least incessantly dislocated. The same currents that
generate them collapse them into the rising tides, restoring them in the ebb. The isles dissolve bit by
bit,carriedawaybytheriverbelowlikeenormous,mastlesspontoons,longofprowandhighofdeck,
navigating night and day at imperceptible speed. Finally, depleted, they end.
The island of Urucurituba lasted ten years, thanks to a very large surface. It vanished in one flood.
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