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shown satisfactorily to what use it applies the leaves. I discovered this only after much time spent in investigation. The leaves are used to thatch the domes which cover the entrances to their subterranean dwellings, thereby protecting from the deluging rains the young broods in the nests beneath. The larger mounds, already described, are so extensive that few persons would attempt to remove them for the purpose of examining their interior; but smaller hillocks, covering other entrances to the same system of tunnels and chambers, may be found in sheltered places, and these are always thatched with leaves, mingled with granules of earth. The heavily-laden workers, each carrying its segment of leaf vertically, the lower edge secured in its mandibles, troop up and cast their burdens on the hillock; another relay of laborers place the leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy granules, which are brought one by one from the soil beneath.

The underground abodes of this wonderful ant are known to be very extensive. The Rev. Hamlet Clark has related that the Saüba of Rio de Janeiro, a species closely allied to ours, has excavated a tunnel under the bed of the river Parahyba, at a place where it is as broad as the Thames at London Bridge. At the Magoary rice-mills, near Pará, these ants once pierced the embankment of a large reservoir: the great body of water which it contained escaped before the damage could be repaired. In the Botanic Gardens, at Pará, an enterprising French gardener tried all be could think of to extirpate the Sauba. With this object he male fires over some of the main entrances to their colonies, and blew the fumes of sulphur down the galleries by means of bellows. I saw the smoke issue from a great number of outlets, one of which was seventy yards distant from the place where the bellows were used. This shows how extensively the underground galleries are ramified.

and my precious baskets. Most of those passing outward were laden each with a grain of farinha, which was, in some cases, larger and many times heavier than the bodies of the carriers. Farinha consists of grains of similar size and appearance to the tapioca of our shops; both are products of the same root, tapioca being the pure starch, and farinha the starch mixed with woody fibre, the latter ingredient giving it a yellowish color. It was amusing to see some of the dwarfs, the smallest members of their family, staggering along, completely hidden under their load. The baskets, which were on a high table, were entirely covered with ants, many hundreds of whom were employed in saipping the dry leaves which served as lining. This produce the rustling sound which had at first disturbed us. My servant told me that they would carry off the whole contents of the two baskets (about two bushels) in the course of the night, if they were not driven off; so we tried to exterminate them by killing them with our wooden clogs. It was impossible, however, to prevent fresh hosts coming in as fast as we killed their companions. They returned the next night; and I was then obliged to lay trains of gunpowder along their line, and blow them up. This, repeated many times, at last seemed to intimidate them, for we were free from their visits during the remainder of my residence at the place. What they did with the hard dry grains of mandioca I was never able to ascertain, and cannot even conjecture. The meal contains no gluten, and therefore would be useless as cement. It contains only a small relative portion of starch, and, when mixed with water, it separates and falls away like so much earthy matter. It may serve as food for the subterranean workers. But the young or larvæ of ants are usually fed by juices secreted by the worker nurses.

Ants, it is scarcely necessary to observe, consist, in each species, of three sets of individuals, or, as some express it, of three sexes Besides injuring and destroying young —namely, males, females, and workers; the trees by despoiling them of their foliage, the last-mentioned being undeveloped females.. Sauba ant is troublesome to the inhabitants The perfect sexes are winged on their first from its habit of plundering the stores of pro- attaining the adult state; they alone propavisions in houses at night, for it is even more gate their kind, flying away, previous to the active by night than in the day-time. At first act of reproduction, from the nest in which I was inclined to discredit the stories of their they have been reared. This winged state entering habitations and carrying off grain of the perfect males and females, and the by grain the farinha or mandioca meal, the habit of flying abroad before pairing, are very bread of the poorer classes of Brazil. At important points in the economy of ants; length, while residing at an Indian village on for they are thus enabled to intercross with the Tapajos, I had ample proof of the fact. members of distant colonies which swarm at One night my servant woke me three or four the same time, and thereby increase the vigor hours before sunrise by calling out that the of the race, a proceeding essential to the pros rats were robbing the farinha baskets; the perity of any species. In many ants, espearticle at that time being scarce and dear. I cially those of tropical climates, the workers, got up, listened, and found the noise was again, are of two classes, whose structure very unlike that made by rats. So I took the and functions are widely different. In some light and went into the storeroom, which species they are wonderfully unlike each was close to my sleeping-place. I there other, and constitute two well-defined forms found a broad column of Saüba ants, consist of workers. In others, there is a gradation ing of thousands of individuals, as busy as of individuals between the two extremes. possible, passing to and fro between the door The curious differences in structure and

habits between these two classes form an in-securing a few with my fingers. I never saw teresting but, very difficult study. It is one them under any other circumstances than of the great peculiarities of the Satiba ant to those here related, and what their special possess three classes of workers. My inves- functions may be I cannot divine. tigations regarding them were far from complete; I will relate, however, what I have observed on the subject.

The whole arrangement of a Formicarium, or ant-colony, and all the varied activity of ant-life, are directed to one main purposeWhen engaged in leaf-cutting, plundering the perpetuation and dissemination of the farinha, and other operations, two classes of species. Most of the labor which we see perworkers are always seen (Figs. 1 and 2, formed by the workers has for its end the page 3). They are not, it is true, very sustenance and welfare of the young brood, sharply defined in structure, for individuals which are helpless grubs. The true females of intermediate grades occur. All the work, are incapable of attending to the wants of however, is done by the individuals which their offspring; and it is on the poor sterile have small heads (Fig. 1), while those which workers, who are denied all the other pleashave enormously large heads, the worker- ures of maternity, that the entire care demajors (Fig. 2), are observed to be simply volves. The workers are also the chief agents walking about. I could never satisfy myself in carrying out the different migrations of as to the function of these worker-majors. the colonies, which are of vast importance to They are not the soldiers or defenders of the the dispersal and consequent prosperity of working portion of the community, like the the species. The successful début of the armed class in the Termites, or white ants; winged males and females depends likewise for they never fight. The species has no on the workers. It is amusing to see the acsting, and does not display active resistance tivity and excitement which reign in an ant's when interfered with. I once imagined they nest when the exodus of the winged individexercised a sort of superintendence over the uals is taking place. The workers clear the others; but this function is entirely unneces- roads of exit, and show the most lively intersary in a community where all work with a est in their departure, although it is highly precision and regularity resembling the sub- improbable that any of them will return to ordinate parts of a piece of machinery. I the same colony. The swarming or exodus came to the conclusion, at last, that they of the winged males and females of the Sauba have no very precisely defined function. ant takes place in January aud February, that They cannot, however, be entirely useless to is, at the commencement of the rainy seathe community, for the sustenance of an idle son. They come out in the evening in vast class of such bulky individuals would be too numbers, causing quite a commotion in the heavy a charge for the species to sustain. I streets and lanes. They are of very large think they serve, in some sort, as passive in- size, the female measuring no less than two struments of protection to the real workers. inches and a quarter in expanse of wing Their enormously large, hard, and indestruc- the male is not much more than half this size. tible heads may be of use in protecting them They are so eagerly preyed upon by insectivagainst the attacks of insectivorous animals. orous animals that on the morning after their They would be, on this view, a kind of flight not an individual is to be seen, a few pièces de resistance," serving as a foil impregnated females alone escaping the against onslaughts made on the main body of slaughter to found new colonies. workers.

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The third order of workers is the most curious of all. If the top of a small fresh hillock, one in which the thatching process is going on, be taken off, a broad cylindrical shaft is disclosed, at a depth of about two feet from the surface. If this be probed with a stick, which may be done to the extent of three or four feet without touching bottom, a small number of colossal fellows (Fig. 3) will slowly begin to make their way up the sinooth sides of the mine. Their heads are of the same size as those of the class Fig. 2; but the front is clothed with hairs, instead of being polished, and they have in the middle of the forehead a twin ocellus, or simple eye, of quite different structure from the ordinary compound eyes on the sides of the head. This frontal eye is totally wanting in the other workers, and is not known in any other kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from the cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when I first observed them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in

At the time of our arrival, Pará had not quite recovered from the effects of a series of revolutions, brought about by the hatred which existed between the native Brazilians and the Portuguese; the former, in the end, calling to their aid the Indian and mixed colored population. The number of inhabitants of the city had decreased, in consequence of these disorders, from 24,500 in 1819, to 15,000 in 1848. Although the public peace had. not been broken for twelve years before the date of our visit, confidence was not yet. completely restored, and the Portuguese: merchants and tradesmen would not trust. themselves to live at their beautiful country-houses or rocinhas, which lie embosomed im the luxuriant shady gardens around the city.. No progress had been made in clearing the second-growth forest, which had grown over the once cultivated grounds and now reached the end of all the suburban streets. The place had the aspect of one which had seen better days; the public buildings, including: the palaces of the President and Bishop, the cathedral, the principal churches and convents, all seemed constructed on a scale of

grandeur far beyond the present require ments of the city. Streets full of extensive private residences, built in the Italian style of architecture, were in a neglected condition, weeds and flourishing young trees growing from large cracks in the masonry. The large public squares were overgrown with weeds, and impassable on account of the swampy places which occupied portions of their areas. Commerce, however, was now beginning to revive, and before I left the country I saw great improvements, as I shall have to relate toward the conclusion of this narrative.

The province of which Pará is the capital was, at the time I allude to, the most extensive in the Brazilian Empire, being about 1560 miles in length from east to west, and about 600 in breadth. Since that datenamely, in 1853-it has been divided into two by the separation of the Upper Amazons as a distinct province. It formerly constituted a section, capitania, or governorship of the Portuguese colony. Originally it was well peopled by Indians, varying much in social condition according to their tribe, but all exhibiting the same general physical characters, which are those of the American red man, somewhat modified by long residence in an equatorial forest country. Most of the tribes are now extinct or forgotten, at least those which originally peopled the banks of the main river, their descendants having amalgamated with the white and negro immigrants; many still exist, however, in their original state on the Upper Amazons and most of the branch rivers. On this account Indians in this province are far more numerous than elsewhere in Brazil, and the Indian element may be said to prevail in the mongrel population, the negro proportion being much smaller than in South Brazil.

ive as it is in summer in New York and Philadelphia. The humidity is, of course, excessive, but the rains are not so heavy and continuous in the wet season as in many other tropical climates. The country had for a long time a reputation for extreme salubrity. Since the small-pox in 1819, which attacked chiefly the Indians, no serious epidemic had visited the province. We were agreeably surprised to find no danger from exposure to the night air or residence in the low swampy lands. A few English residents, who had been established here for twenty or thirty years, looked almost as fresh in color as if they had never left their native country. The native women, too, seemed to preserve their good looks and plump condition until late in life. I nowhere observed that early decay of appearance in Brazilian ladies, which is said to be so general in the women of North America. Up to 1848 the salubrity of Pará was quite remarkable for a city lying in the delta of a great river in the middle of the tropics and half surrounded by swamps. It did not much longer enjoy its immunity from epidemics. In 1850 the yellow fever visited the province for the first time, and carried off in a few weeks more than four per cent of the population.

The province of Pará, or as we may now say, the two provinces of Pará and the Amazous, contain an area of 800.000 square miles, the population of which is only about 230,000, or in the ratio of one person to four square miles! The country is covered with forests, and the soil fertile in the extreme, even for a tropical country. It is intersected throughout by broad and deep navigable rivers. It is the pride of the Paraenses to call the Amazons the Mediterranean of South America. The colossal stream perhaps deserves the name, for not only have the main river and its principal tributaries an immense expanse of water, bathing the shores of extensive and varied regions, but there is also throughout a system of back channels, connected with the main rivers by narrow out+ lets, and linking together a series of lakes, some of which are fifteen, twenty, and thirty miles in length. The whole Amazons valley is thus covered by a network of navigable waters, forming a vast inland fresh-water sea with endless ramifications, rather than a river.

The city is built on the best available site for a port of entry to the Amazons region, and must in time become a vast emporium; for the northern shore of the main river, where alone a rival capital could be founded, is much more difficult of access to vessels, and is besides extremely unhealthy. Although lying so near the equator (1° 28′ 8. lat.) the climate is not excessively hot. The temperature during three years only once reached 95° of Fahrenheit. The greatest heat of the day, about 2 P.M., ranges generally between 89° and 94°; but on the other hand, I resided at Pará nearly a year and a half althe air is never cooler than 73°, so that a uni- together, returning thither and making a stay formly high temperature exists, and the of a few months after each of my shorter exmean of the year is 81°. North American cursions into the interior; until the 6th of residents say that the heat is not so oppress- November, 1851, when I started on my long *The mixed breeds which now form, probably, the Voyage to the Tapajos and the Upper Amagreater part of the population have each & distinguish- Zons, which occupied me seven years and a ing name. Mameluco denotes the offspring of White half, with Indian; Mulatto, that of White with Negro; Cafuzo, the mixture of the Indian and Negro; Curiboco, the cross between the Cafnzo and the Indian; Xibaro, that between the Cafuzo and Negro. These are seldom, however, well-demarcated, and all shades of color exist; the names are generally applied only approximatively. The term Creole is confined to negroes born in the country. The civilized Indian is called Tapuyo or Caboclo.

CHAPTER II.

PARÁ.

The swampy forests of Pará-A Portuguese landed proprietor-Country house at Nazareth-Life of a Naturalist under the equator-The drier virgin forests-Magoary-Retired creeks-Aborigines.

AFTER having resided about a fortnight at

Mr. Miller's rocinha, we heard of another by the flowers of numerous leguminous and similar country-house to be let, much better other shrubs. Besides butte: dies, there were situated for our purpose, in the village of few other insects except dragon-fiies, which Nazareth, a mile and a half from the city, were in great numbers, similar in shape to and close to the forest. The owner was an English species, but some of them looking old Portuguese gentleman uamed Danin, who conspicuously different on account of their lived at his tile manufactory at the mouth of fiery red colors. the Una, a small river lying two miles below Pará. We resolved to walk to his place through the forest, a distance of three miles, although the road was said to be scarcely passable at this season of the year, and the Una much more easily accessible by boat. We were glad, however, of this early opportunity of traversing the rich swampy forest, which we had admired so much from the deck of the ship; so, about eleven o'clock one sunny morning, after procuring the necessary information about the road, we set off in that direction. This part of the forest afterward became one of my best hunting grounds. I will narrate the incidents of the walk, giving my first impressions and some remarks on the wonderful vegetation. The forest is very similar on most of the low lands, and therefore one description will do for all.

After stopping a long time to examine and admire, we at length walked onward. The road then ascended slightly, and the soil and vegetation became suddenly altered in character. The shrubs here were grasses, low sedges and other plants, smaller in foliage than those growing in moist grounds. The forest was second growth, low, consisting of trees which had the general aspect of laurels and other evergreens in our gardens at home: the leaves glossy and dark green. Some of them were elegantly veined and hairy (Melastoma), while many, scattered among the rest, had smaller foliage (Myrtles). but these were not sufficient to subtract much from the general character of the whole.

The sun now, for we had loitered long on the road, was exceedingly powerful. The day was most brilliant; the sky without a cloud. In fact, it was one of those glorious On leaving the town, we walked along a days which announce the commencement of straight suburban road, constructed above the dry season. The radiation of heat from the level of the surrounding land. It had the sandy ground was visible by the quiverlow swampy ground on each side, built upon, ing motion of the air above it. We saw or however, and containing several spacious heard no mammals or birds; a few cattle rocinhas, which were embowered in magnifi- belonging to an estate down a shady lane cent foliage. Leaving the last of these, we were congregated, panting, under a cluster arrived at a part where the lofty forest tow- of wide-spreading trees. The very soil was ered up like a wall, five or six yards from the hot to our feet, and we hastened onward to edge of the path, to the height of, probably, the shade of the forest, which we could see 100 feet. The tree trunks were only seen not far ahead. At length, on entering it, what partially here and there, nearly the whole a relief! We found ourselves in a moderfrontage from ground to suminit being cov. ately broad pathway or alley, where the ered with a diversified drapery of creeping branches of the trees crossed overhead and plants, all of the most vivid shades of green; produced a delightful shade. The woods scarcely a flower to be seen, except in some were at first of recent growth, dense, and places a solitary scarlet passion-flower, set in utterly impenetrable; the ground, instead of the green mantle like a star. The low being clothed with grass and shrubs as in the ground on the borders, between the forest woods of Europe, was everywhere carpeted wall and the road, was incumbered with a with Lycopodiums (fern-shaped mosses). tangled mass of bushy and shrubby vegeta- Gradually the scene became changed. We tion, among which prickly mimosas were descended slightly from an elevated, dry, and very numerous, covering the other bushes in sandy area to a low and swampy one; a cool the same way as brambles do in England. air breathed on our faces, and a mouldy Other dwarf mimosas trailed along the smell of rotting vegetation greeted us. The ground close to the edge of the road, shrink- trees were now taller, the underwood less ing at the slightest touch of the feet as we dense, and we could obtain glimpses into the passed by. Cassia-trees, with their elegant wilderness on all sides. The leafy crowns of pinnate foliage and conspicuous yellow flow- the trees, scarcely two of which could be seen ers, formed a great proportion of the lower together of the same kind, were now far trees, and arborescent aruns grew in groups away above us, in another world as it were. around the swampy hollows. Over the We could only see at times, where there was whole fluttered a larger number of brilliantly. a break above, the tracery of the foliage colored butterflies than we had yet seen; against the clear blue sky. Sometimes the some wholly orange or yellow (Callidryas), leaves were palmate, or of the shape of large others with excessively elongated wings, sail- outstretched hands; at others, finely cut or ing horizontally through the air, colored feathery, like the leaves of Mimosa. Below, black, and varied with blue, red, and yellow the tree-trunks were everywhere linked to(Heliconii). One magnificent grassy-green gether by sipós; the woody flexible stems species (Colænis Dido) especially attracted of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage our attention. Near the ground hovered is far away above, mingled with that of the many other smaller species very similar in taller independent trees. Some were twisted earance to those found at home, attracted in strands like cables, others had thick stems

contorted in every variety of shape, entwining snake-like round the tree trunks, or forming gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others, again, were of zigzag shape, or indented like the steps of a staircase, sweeping from the ground to a giddy height.

It interested me much afterward to find that these climbing trees do not form any particular family. There is no distinct group of plants whose especial habit is to climb, but species of many and the most diverse families, the bulk of whose members are not climbers, seem to have been driven by circumstances to adopt this habit. There is even a climbing genus of palms (Desmoncus), the species of which are called, in the Tupí language, Jacitára. These have slender, thickly-spined, and flexuous stems, which twine about the taller trees from one to the other, and grow to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate shape characteristic of the family, are emitted from the stems at long intervals, instead of being collected into a dense crown, and have at their tips a number of long recurved spines. These structures are excel lent contrivances to enable the trees to secure themselves by in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to the travelier, for they some times hang over the pathway, and catch the hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he passes. The number and variety of climbing trees in the Amazons forests are interesting taken in connection with the fact of the very general tendency of the animals also to become climbers.

be seen.

All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American, monkeys are climbers. There is no group answering to the baboons of the Old World, which live on the ground. The Gallinaceous birds of the country, the representatives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and Africa, are all adapted by the position of the toes to perch on trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are to A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to the bears (Cercoleptes), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely arboreal, and has a tong flexible tail like that of certain monkeys. Many other similar instances could be enumerated, but I will mention only the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, a great proportion of whose genera and species in these forest regions are, by the structure of their feet, fitted to live exclusively on the branches and leaves of trees.

Many of the woody lianas suspended from trees are not climbers, but the air-roots of epiphytous plants (Aroidea), which sit on the stronger boughs of the trees above, and hang down straight as plumb-lines. Some are suspended singly, others in clusters; some reach half way to the ground and others touch it, striking their rootlets into the earth. The underwood in this part of the forest was composed partly of younger trees of the same species as their taller neighbors, and partly of palms of many species, some of them twenty to thirty feet in height, others small and del

icate, with stems no thicker than a finger. These latter (different kinds of Bactris) bore small bunches of fruit, red or black, often containing a sweet grape-like juice.

Further on the ground became more swampy, and we had some difficulty in picking our way. The wild banana (Urania Amaxonica) here began to appear, and, as it grew in masses, imparted a new aspect to the scene. The leaves of this beautiful plant are like broad sword-blades, eight feet in length and a foot broad; they rise straight upward, alternately, from the top of a stem five or six feet high. Numerous kinds of plants with leaves similar in shape to these, but småller, clothed the ground. Among them were species of Marantaceæ, some of which had broad glossy leaves, with long leaf-stalks radiating from joints in a reed-like stem. The trunks of the trees were clothed with climbing ferns, and Pothos plants with large, fleshy, heartshaped leaves. Bamboos and other tall grass and reed-like plants arched over the pathway. The appearance of this part of the forest was strange in the extreme; description can convey no adequate idea of it. The reader who has visited Kew may form some notion by conceiving a vegetation like that in the great palm-house spread over a large tract of swampy ground, but he must fancy it mingled with large exogenous trees similar to our oaks and elms covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the ground incumbered with fallen and rotten trunks, branches, and leaves; the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking with moisture.

We at length emerged from the forest, on the banks of the Una, near its mouth. It was here about one hundred yards wide. The residence of Senhor Danin stood on the opposite shore; a large building, whitewashed and red-tiled as usual, raised on wooden piles above the humid ground. The second story was the part occupied by the family, and along it was an open veranda, where people, male and female, were at work. Below were several negroes employed carrying clay on their heads. We called out for a boat, and one of them crossed over to fetch us. Senhor Danin received us with the usual formal politeness of the Portuguese; he spoke English very well, and after we had arranged our business we remained conversing with him on various subjects connected with the country. Like all employers in this province, he was full of one topic-the scarcity of hands. It appeared that he had made great exertions to introduce white labor, but had failed, after having brought numbers of men from Portugal and other countries under engagement to work for him. They all left him one by one soon after their arrival. The abundance of unoccupied land, the liberty that exists, a state of things produced by the half-wild canoe-life of the people, and the ease with which a mere subsistence can be obtained with moderate work, tempt even the best-disposed to quit regular labor as soon as they can.

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