South America has the most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather poor in number of species and individuals - T Roosevelt

I didn't get to see much mammalian life while in Amazonas, but did see some freshwater dolphins and a sloth.

* * * * * 

South America has the most extensive and most varied avifauna of all the continents. On the other hand, its mammalian fauna, although very interesting, is rather poor in number of species and individuals and in the size of the beasts. It possesses more mammals that are unique and distinctive in type than does any other continent save Australia; and they are of higher and much more varied types than in Australia. But there is nothing approaching the majesty, beauty, and swarming mass of the great mammalian life of Africa and, in a less degree, of tropical Asia; indeed, it does not even approach the similar mammalian life of North America and northern Eurasia, poor though this is compared with the seething vitality of tropical life in the Old World. pp.68-69

From: Through the Brazilian wilderness  (1914) by Theodore Roosevelt

"There are several species of these greedy piranhas" HH Smith #QotD

While touring outside of Manaus, we were taking piranha fishing (catch and release)

* * * * * 

There are several species of these greedy piranhas; this kind is seldom more than ten inches long; but the piranha assu is twice as large, and it makes nothing of biting an ounce or so of flesh from a bather's leg. People are some times killed by the piranhas; hence the Brazilians avoid swimming except where they know that the water is free from them. The fishermen say that piranhas gather in bands against the larger fish; crowding to the attack, they frequently bite each other by mistake ; and the wounded ones are mercilessly set upon and devoured by their companions. Another dangerous fish of these lakes is the stingray, which Hes flat on the bottom, the dark upper surface hardly visible over the mud and roily water. If left undisturbed, the creature is harmless enough, but a careless wader may step on the flat body, and then the great, barbed sting inflicts a wound that benumbs the whole body, and makes the sufferer speechless with pain. I have known a man to be bed-ridden for three months after such a wound; I have known others who were lamed for life. pp. 284-85

From: Brazil, the Amazons and the coast  (1879) by Herbert Huntington Smith (1851-1919)

* * * * * 

We saw men frequently bathing unmolested; but there are places where this is never safe, and in any place if a school of the fish appear swimmers are in danger; and a wounded man or beast is in deadly peril if piranhas are in the neighborhood. Ordinarily it appears that an unwounded man is attacked only by accident. Such accidents are rare; but they happen with sufficient frequency to justify much caution in entering water where piranhas abound. p.86

From: Through the Brazilian wilderness  (1914) by Theodore Roosevelt

The river was expected to furnish its daily quota ... Jules Verne, Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon

The river was expected to furnish its daily quota; prawns, which ought rather to be called crawfish; "tambagus," the finest fish in the district, of a flavor superior to that of salmon, to which it is often compared; "pirarucus" with red scales, as large as sturgeons, which when salted are used in great quantities throughout Brazil; “candirus,” awkward to capture, but good to eat; “piranhas,” or devil-fish, striped with red bands, and thirty inches long; turtles large and small, which are counted by millions, and form so large a part of the food of the natives; some of every one of these things it was hoped would figure in turn on the tables of the master and his men.

From Eight Hundred Leagues On The Amazon (1881) by Jules Verne

Fish market at Porto da Ceasa, Manaus, Brazil

Nevertheless, tempting as was the prospect of a visit to Brazil, as a mere vacation it had little charm for me - EC & L Ag

Meeting of the Waters

Nevertheless, tempting as was the prospect of a visit to Brazil, as a mere vacation it had little charm for me. Single-handed, I could make slight use of the opportunities I should have; and though the excursion might be a pleasant one for myself, it would have no important result for science. p.v-vii.

* * * * *

The voyage on the Amazons proper has now become accessible to all who are willing to endure heat and mosquitoes for the sake of seeing the greatest river in the world, and the magnificent tropical vegetation along its shores. The best season for the journey is from the close of June to the middle of November, July, August, September, and October being the four driest months of the year, and the most salubrious throughout that region. p. 444

From A Journey in Brazil  (1868) by Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz and Louis Agassiz

"Some far land where endless summer reigns" - Alfred Russel Wallace #QotD

Manaus Airport

An earnest desire to visit a tropical country, to behold the luxuriance of animal and vegetable life said to exist there, and to see with my own eyes all those wonders which I had so much delighted to read of in the narratives of travellers, were the motives that induced me to break through the trammels of business and the ties of home, and start for "Some far land where endless summer reigns." p. xi

* * * * *

I informed him, however, that I was a "Naturalista," and wanted birds, insects, and other animals; and then he began to comprehend, and at last promised to send me some men the day after the next, to carry over my luggage. I accordingly turned back without going to the village, which was still nearly a mile off.  pp. 167-68

From A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro by Alfred Russel Wallace (1853) (1889 ed)

Parana do Mamori