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we were to sail in was somewhat delayed, I spent some days in the wild district of Charnwood Forest, which I had often wished to visit. At length, everything being ready, and our date of sailing being fixed for April 20, we left Leicester by coach a few days before that date, and stayed, I think, at Bakewell, in order to visit Chatsworth and see the palm and orchid houses, then the finest in England. The next day we went on to Liverpool, where we arrived late, after a cold and rather miserable journey outside a stage-coach.

The next morning we called upon Mr. J. G. Smith, the gentleman who had collected butterflies at Pernambuco and Para, at his office, and he invited us to dine with him in the evening, when he showed us his collection, and gave us much information about the country, the people, and the beauties of nature. During the day we got our luggage on board, saw our berths, and other accommodation, which was of the scantiest, and heard that the ship was to sail the next day. In the morning, after breakfast at our inn, we made a few final purchases, received a letter of introduction to the consignee of the vessels, and bade farewell to our native land.

At that time there were very few steamships, and most of the ocean trade was still carried on in sailing vessels. Ours was one of the smallest, being a barque of 192 tons, named the Mischief, and said to be a very fast sailer. We were told that she was ranked A 1 at Lloyds, and that we might therefore be quite sure that she was thoroughly seaworthy. We were the only passengers, and were to have our meals with the captain and mate, both youngish men, but of whom, owing to my deficient individuality, I have not the slightest recollection. Soon after we got out to sea the wind rose and increased to a gale in the Bay of Biscay, with waves that flooded our decks, washed away part of our bulwarks, and was very near swamping us altogether. All this time I was in my berth prostrate with sea-sickness, and it was only, I think, on the sixth day, when the weather had become fine and the sea smooth, that I was able to go on deck just as we had a distant sight of Maderia. Shortly afterwards we got into the region of the trade-wind, and had fine, bright weather

all the rest of the voyage. We passed through part of the celebrated Sargasso Sea, where the surface is covered with long stretches of floating sea-weed, not brought there by storms from the distant shore, but living and growing where it is found, and supporting great numbers of small fish, crabs, mollusca, and innumerable low forms of marine life. And when we left this behind us, the exquisite blue of the water by day and the vivid phosphorescence often seen at night were a constant delight, while our little barque, with every sail set, and going steadily along day and night about ten knots an hour, was itself a thing of beauty and a perpetual enjoyment.

At length the water began to lose its blue colour, becoming first greenish, then olive, and finally olive-yellow, and one morning we saw on the horizon the long, low line of the land, and on the next, when we came on deck before sunrise, found ourselves anchored opposite the city of Para, twenty-nine days after leaving Liverpool. From this date till I landed at Deal, in October 1852, my adventures and experiences are given in my book, "A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," a cheap edition of which is comprised in "The Minerva Library of Famous Books."

In order that no large gap may occur in these memories of my life, I will give here a general outline of my travels, with such incidental remarks or recollections as may occur to me. To begin with, I will give a short description of my impressions written to my old friend and schoolfellow, Mr. George Silk, about a fortnight after our arrival, to supplement the more detailed but less impulsive account in my published narrative.

"We have been staying for near a fortnight at the country house (called here Rosinha) of Mr. Miller, the consignee of the vessel and the captain's brother, about half a mile out of the city. We have just taken a house ourselves rather nearer the woods, and to-morrow expect to be in it. We have an old nigger who cooks for us. The city of Para is a curious, outlandish looking place, the best part of it very like

Boulogne, the streets narrow and horribly rough—no pavement. The public buildings handsome, but out of repair or even ruinous. The squares and public places covered with grass and weeds like an English common. Palm trees of many different kinds, bananas and plantains abundant in all the gardens, and orange trees innumerable, most of the roads out of the city being bordered on each side with them. Bananas and oranges are delicious. I eat them at almost every meal. Beef is the only meat to be constantly had, not very good, but cheap-2 d. a pound. Coffee grows wild all about the city, yet it is imported for use, the people are so lazy. Every shade of colour is seen here in the people from white to yellow, brown, and black-negroes, Indians, Brazilians, and Europeans, with every intermediate mixture. The Brazilians and Portuguese are very polite, and have all the appearance of civilization. Naked nigger children abound in the streets.

"Within a mile of the city all around is the forest, extending uninterruptedly many hundreds and even, in some directions, thousands of miles into the interior. The climate is beautiful. We are now at the commencement of the dry season. It rains generally for an hour or two every evening, though not always. Before sunrise the thermometer is about 75°, in the afternoon 85° to 87°, the highest I have yet noted. This is hot, but by no means oppressive. I enjoy it as much as the finest summer weather in England. We have been principally collecting insects at present. The variety is immense; we have already got about four hundred distinct kinds."

In fulfilment of a promise I made before I left Neath, I wrote a letter to the members of the Mechanics' Institution, after I had been nine months in the country, and as my mother preserved a copy of it, I will give the more important parts of it here. After a few preliminary observations, I proceed thus :-—

"Previous to leaving England I had read many books of travels in hot countries, I had dwelt so much on the enthusiastic

descriptions most naturalists give of the surpassing beauty of tropical vegetation, and of the strange forms and brilliant colours of the animal world, that I had wrought myself up to a fever-heat of expectation, and it is not to be wondered at that my early impressions were those of disappointment. On my first walk into the forest I looked about, expecting to see monkeys as plentiful as at the Zoological Gardens, with humming-birds and parrots in profusion. But for several days I did not see a single monkey, and hardly a bird of any kind, and I began to think that these and other productions of the South American forests are much scarcer than they are represented to be by travellers. But I soon found that these creatures were plentiful enough when I knew where and how to look for them, and that the number of different kinds of all the groups of animals is wonderfully great. The special interest of this country to the naturalist is, that while there appears at first to be so few of the higher forms of life, there is in reality an inexhaustible variety of almost all animals. I almost think that in a single walk you may sometimes see more quadrupeds, birds, and even some groups of insects in England than here. But when seeking after them day after day, the immense variety of strange forms and beautiful colours is really astonishing. There are, for instance, few places in England where during one summer more than thirty different kinds of butterflies can be collected; but here, in about two months, we obtained more than four hundred distinct species, many of extraordinary size, or of the most brilliant colours.

"There is, however, one natural feature of this country, the interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated in a single walk it is the "virgin forest." Here no one who has any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be disappointed; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, the strange buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or furrowed stems of others, the curious and even extraordinary

creepers and climbers which wind around them, hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, sometimes curling and twisting on the ground like great serpents, then mounting to the very tops of the trees, thence throwing down roots and fibres which hang waving in the air, or twisting round each other form ropes and cables of every variety of size, and often of the most perfect regularity. These, and many other novel features the parasitic plants growing on the trunks and branches, the wonderful variety of the foliage, the strange fruits and seeds that lie rotting on the ground-taken altogether surpass description, and produce feelings in the beholder of admiration and awe. It is here, too, that the rarest birds, the most lovely insects, and the most interesting mammals and reptiles are to be found. Here lurk the jaguar and the boa-constrictor, and here amid the densest shade the bell-bird tolls his peal. But I must leave these details and return to some more general description.

"The whole country for some hundreds of miles around Para is almost level, and seems to be elevated on the average about thirty or forty feet above the river, the only slopes being where streams occur, which flow in very shallow and often scarcely perceptible valleys. The great island of Marajó, opposite Para, is equally flat, and the smaller island of Mexiana (pronounced Mishiána), which is about forty miles long, is even more so, there not being, I believe, a rise or fall of ten feet over the whole of it. Up the river Tocantins, however, about one hundred and fifty miles south-west of Para, the land begins to rise. At about a hundred miles from its mouth, the bed of the river becomes rocky and the country undulating, with hills four or five hundred feet high, entirely covered with forest except at a few places on the banks where some patches of open grass land occur, probably the site of old cultivation and kept open by the grazing of

cattle.

"The whole of the Para district is wonderfully intersected by streams, and the country being so flat, there are frequently cross-channels connecting them together. Up all these the tide flows, and on their banks all the villages, estates, and

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