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-23d. 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

native huts are situated. There is probably no country in the world that affords such facilities for internal communication by water.

"The climate of Para cannot be spoken of too highly. The temperature is wonderfully uniform, the average daily variation of the thermometer being only 12° F. The lowest temperature at night is about 74°, the highest in the day about 86°, but with occasional extremes of 70° and 90° Though I have been constantly out at all times of the day, and often exposed to the vertical sun, I have never suffered any ill effects from the heat, or even experienced so much inconvenience from it as I have often done during a hot summer at home. There are two principal divisions of the year into the wet and dry seasons, called here winter and summer. The wet season is from January to June, during which time it rains more or less every day, but seldom the whole day, the mornings usually being fine. The dry season is by no means what it is in some parts of the world; it still rains every two or three days, and it is a rare thing for more than a week to pass without a shower, so that vegetation is never dried up, and a constant succession of fruits and flowers and luxuriant foliage prevails throughout the year. Notwithstanding the amount of water everywhere, Para is very healthy. The English and Americans who have lived here the longest look the healthiest. As for myself, I have enjoyed the most perfect health and spirits without the necessity for nearly so many precautions as are required at home.

"The vegetable productions of the country around Para are very numerous and interesting. There are upwards of thirty different kinds of palms, and in almost every case the leaves, stems, or fruits are useful to man. One elegant species, the stem of which, though not thicker than a man's arm, rises to a height of sixty or eighty feet, produces a small blackish fruit, from which a creamy preparation is made, of which everybody becomes very fond, and which forms a large part of the subsistence of the natives. From the fibres of one kind ropes are made, which are in general use for the cables of native vessels as they are almost indestructible in water.

The houses of the Indians are often entirely built of various parts of palm-trees, the stems forming posts and rafters, while the leaf-stalks, often twenty feet long, placed side by side and pegged together, make walls and partitions. Not a particle of iron is needed, the various parts of the roofs being fastened together with the lianas or forest-ropes already described, while, as both stem and leaf-stalks split perfectly straight no tools whatever are needed besides the heavy bush-knife which every countryman carries.

"The calabash tree supplies excellent basins, while gourds of various sizes and shapes are formed into spoons, cups, and bottles; and cooking-pots of rough earthenware are made everywhere. Almost every kind of food, and almost all the necessaries of life, can be here grown with ease, such as coffee and cocoa, sugar, cotton, farinha from the mandioca plant (the universal bread of the country), with vegetables and fruits in inexhaustible variety. The chief articles of export from Para are india-rubber, brazil-nuts, and piassaba (the coarse stiff fibre of a palm, used for making brooms for streetsweeping), as well as sarsaparilla, balsam-capivi, and a few other drugs. Oranges, bananas, pine-apples, and watermelons are very plentiful, while custard-apples, mangoes, cashews, and several other fruits abound in their season. All are very cheap, as may be judged by the fact that a bushel basket of delicious oranges may be purchased for sixpence or a shilling.

"Coming to the animal world, a forest country is often disappointing because so few of the larger animals can be seen, though some of them may be often heard, especially at night. The monkeys are in every way the most interesting, and are the most frequently to be met with. A large proportion of American monkeys have prehensile tails, which are so powerful in some of the species that they can hang their whole weight upon it and swing about in the air with only a few inches of the tip twisted round a branch. If disturbed in such a position they swing themselves off, catching hold of boughs hand over hand, and rapidly disappear. They live entirely in the tree-tops, hardly ever descending to the ground,

VOL. I.

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