were piled on them, and a good fire soon resulted. He then singed and prepared the cutía, finishing by running a spit through the body, and fixing one end in the ground in a slanting position over the fire. We had brought with us a bag of farinha and a cup containing a lemon, a dozen or two of fiery red peppers, and a few spoonfuls of salt. We breakfasted heartily when our cutía was roasted, and washed the meal down with a calabash full of the pure water of the river.

After breakfast the dogs found another cutía, which was hidden in its burrow two or three feet beneath the roots of a large tree, and took Raimundo nearly an hour to disinter it. Soon afterward we left this place, crossed the channel, and, paddling past two islands, obtained a glimpse of the broad river between them, with a long sandy spit, on which stood several scared ibises and snowwhite egrets. One of the islands was low and sandy, and half of it was covered with gigantic arum-trees, the often-mentioned Caladium arborescens, which presented a strange sight. Most people are acquainted with the little British species, Arum maculatum, which grows in hedge-bottoms, and many, doubtless, have admired the larger kinds grown in hot-houses; they can therefore form some idea of a forest of arums. On this islet the woody stems of the plants near the bottom were eight to ten inches in diameter, and the trees were twelve to fifteen feet high, all growing together in such a manner that there was just room for a man to walk freely between them. There was a cauoe in-shore, with a man and a woman; the man, who was hooting with all his might, told us in passing that his son was lost in aningal" (arum-grove). He had strayed while walking ashore, and the father had been an hour waiting for him in vain.

the

About one o'clock we again stopped at the mouth of a little creek. It was now intensely hot. Raimundo said deer were found here; so he borrowed my gun, as being a more effective weapon than the wretched arms called Lazarinos, which he, in common with all the native hunters, used, and which sell at Pará for seven or eight shillings apiece. Raimundo and Joaquim now stripped themselves quite naked, and started off in different directions through the forest, going naked in order to move with less noise over the carpet of dead leaves, among which they stepped so stealthily that not the slightest rustle could be heard. The dogs remained in the canoe, in the neighborhood of which I employed myself two hours entomologizing. At the end of that time my two companions returned, having met with no game whatever We now embarked on our return voyage. Raimundo cut two slender poles, one for a mast and the other for a sprit: to these he rigged a sail we had brought in the boat, for we were to return by the open river, and expected a good wind to carry us to Caripí. As soon as we got out of the channel we began to feel the wind-the sea-breeze, which bere makes a clean sweep from the Atlant c. Our

boat was very small and heavily laden; and when, after rounding a point, I saw the great breadth we had to traverse (seven miles), I thought the attempt to cross in such a slight vessel foolhardy in the extreme. The waves ran very high: there was no rudder; Raimundo steered with a paddle, and all we bad to rely upon to save us from falling into the trough of the sea and being instantly swamped were his nerve and skill. There was just room in the boat for our three selves, the dogs, and the game we had killed; and when between the swelling ridges of waves in so frail a shell, our destruction seemed inevitable; as it was, we shipped a little water now and then. Joaquim assisted with his paddle to steady the boat; my time was fully occupied in baling out the water and watching the dogs, which were crowded together in the prow, yelling with fear, one or other of them occasionally falling over the side and causing great commotion in scrambling in again. Off the point was a ridge of rocks, over which the surge raged furiously, Raimundo sat in the stern, rigid and silent; his eye steadily watching the prow of the boat. It was almost worth the risk and discomfort of the passage to witness the seamanlike ability displayed by Indians on the water. The little boat rode beautifully, rising well with each wave, and in the course of an hour and a half we arrived at Caripí, thoroughly tired and wet through to the skin.

On the 16th of January the dry season came abruptly to an end. The sea-breezes, which had been increasing in force for some days, suddenly ceased, and the atmosphere became misty; at length heavy clouds collected where a uniform blue sky had for many weeks prevailed, and down came a succession of heavy showers, the first of which lasted a whole day and night. This seemed to give a new stimulus to animal life. On the first night there was a tremendous uproar-treefrogs, crickets, goat-suckers, and owls all joining to perform a deafening concert. One kind of goat-sucker kept repeating at intervals throughout the night a phrase similar to the Portuguese words, Joao corta pao, " John, cut wood;" a phrase which forms the Brazilian name of the bird. An owl in one of the Genipapa trees muttered now and then a succession of syllables resembling the word "Murucututú. Sometimes the croaking and hooting of frogs and toads were so loud that we could not hear one another's voices within doors. Swarms of dragon-flies appeared in the daytime about the pocls of water created by the rain, and ants and termites came forth in the winged state in vast numbers. I noticed that the winged termites, or white ants, which came by hundreds to the lamps at night, when alighting on the table, often jerked off their wings by a voluntary movement. On examination I found that the wings were not shed by the roots, for a small portion of the stumps remained attached to the thorax. The edge of the fracture was in all cases straight, not ruptured; there is, in fact, a natural seam rossing the member

fnto the interior, they equipped a swift-sail ing galliota, manned with ten or a dozen Indians. These could travel, on the average, in one day farther than the ordinary sailing craft could in three. Indian paddlers were now, however, almost impossible to be obtained, and Government officers were obliged to travel as passengers in trading-vessels. The voyage made in this way was tedious in the extreme. When the regular east wind blew-the "vento geral," or trade-wind of the Amazons-sailing-vessels could get along very well; but when this failed they were obliged to remain, sometimes many days together, anchored near the shore, or progress laboriously by means of the espia. The latter mode of travelling was as follows. The montaria, with twenty or thirty fathoms of cable, one end of which was attached to the foremast, was sent ahead with a couple of hands, who secured the other end of the rope to some strong bough or tree-trunk; the crew then hauled the vessel up to the point, after which the men in the boat re-embarked the cable, and paddled forward to repeat the process. In the dry season, from August to December, when the trade-wind is strong and the currents slack, a schooner could reach the mouth of the Rio Negro, a thousand miles from Pará, in about forty days; but in the wet season, from January to July, when the east wind no longer biows, and the Amazon pours forth its full volume of water, flooding the banks and producing a tearing current, it took three months to travel the same distance. It was a great blessing to the inhabitants when, in 1853, a line of steamers was established, and this same journey could be accomplished, with ease and comfort, at all seasons, in eight days!

While preparing for my voyage it happened, fortunately, that the half-brother of Dr. Angelo Custodio, a young mestizo, named Joao da Cunha Correia, was about starting for the Amazons on a trading expedition in his own vessel, a schooner of about forty tons' burden. A passage for me was soon arranged with him through the intervention of Dr. Angelo, and we started on the 5th of September, 1849. I intended to stop at one village on the northern shore of the Lower Amazons, where it would be interesting to make collections, in order to show the relations of the fauna to those of Pará and the coast region of Guiana. As I should have to hire a house or hut wherever I stayed, I took all the materials for housekeeping-cooking utensils, crockery, and so forth. To these were added a stock of such provisions as it would be difficult to obtain in the interior; also ammunition, chests, store-boxes, a small library of natural history books, and a hundred-weight of copper money. I engaged, after some trouble, a mameluco youth to ac company me as servant-a short, fat, yellowfaced boy named Luco, whom I had already employed at Pará in collecting. We weighed anchor at night, and, on the following day, found ourselves gliding along the dark-brown

waters of the Mojú.

66

We

Joao da Cunha, like most of his fellow. countrymen, took matters very easily. He was going to be absent in the interior several years, and therefore intended to diverge from his route to visit his native place, Čametá, and spend a few days with his friends. It seemed not to matter to him that he had a cargo of merchandise, vessel, and crew of twelve persons, which required an economical use of time; pleasure first and business afterward" appeared to be his maxim. stayed at Cametá twelve days. The chief motive for prolonging the stay to this extent was a festival at the Aldeia, two miles below Cametá, which was to commence on the 21st, and which my friend wished to take part in. On the day of the festival the schooner was sent down to anchor off the Aldeia, and master and men gave themselves up to revelry. In the evening a strong breeze sprang up, and orders were given to embark. We scrambled down in the dark through the thickets of cacao, orange, and coffee trees which clothed the high bank, and, after running great risk of being swamped by the heavy sea in the crowded montaria, got all aboard by nine o'clock. We made all sail amid the adeos" shouted to us by Indian and mulatto sweethearts from the top of the bank, and, tide and wind being favorable, were soon miles away.

He

Our crew consisted, as already mentioned, of twelve persons. One was a young Portuguese from the province of Traz os Montes, a pretty sample of the kind of emigrants which Portugal sends to Brazil. He was two or three and twenty years of age, and had been about two years in the country, dressing and living like the Indians, to whom he was certainly inferior in manners. could not read or write, whereas one at least of our Tapuyos had both accomplishments. He had a little wooden image of Nossa Senhora in his rough wooden clothes-chest, and to this he always had recourse when any squall arose, or when we got aground on a shoal. Another of our sailors was a tawny white of Cametá; the rest were Indians, except the cook, who was a Cafuzo, or halfbreed between the Indian and negro. It is often said that this class of mestizos is the most evilly disposed of all the numerous crosses between the races inhabiting Brazil; but Luiz was a simple, good-hearted fellow, always ready to do one a service. The pilot was an old Tapuyo of Pará, with regular oval face and well-shaped features. I was astonished at his endurance. He never quitted the helm night or day, except for two_or three hours in the morning. The other Indians used to bring him his coffee and meals and after breakfast one of them relieved him for a time, when he used to lie down on the quarter-deck and get his two hours' nap. The Indians forward had things pretty much their own way. No system of watches was followed; when any one was so disposed, he lay down on the deck and went to sleep; but a feeling of good-fellowship seemed always

to exist among them.

One of them was a fine specimen of the Indian race-a man very little short of six feet high, with remarkable breadth of shoulder and full muscular chest. His comrades called him the commandant, on account of his having been one of the rebel leaders when the Indians and others look Santarem in 1835. They related of him that, when the legal authorities arrived with an armed flotilla to recapture the town, he was one of the last to quit, remaining in the little fortress which commands the place to make a show of loading the guns, although the ammunition had given out long ago. Such were our travelling companions. We lived almost the same as on board ship. Our meals were cooked in the galley; but, where practicable, and during our numerous stoppages, the men went in the montaria to fish near the shore, so that our breakfasts and dinners of salt pirarecu were sometimes varied with fresh food.

September 24th.-We passed Entre-as-Ilhas with the morning tide yesterday, and then made across to the eastern shore-the starting-point for all canoes which have to traverse the broad mouth of the Tocantins, going west. Early this morning we commenced the passage. The navigation is attended with danger, on account of the extensive shoals in the middle of the river, which are covered only by a small depth of water at this season of the year The wind was fresh, and the schooner rolled and pitched like a зhip at sea. The distance was abcat fifteen miles. In the middle, the river-view was very imposing. Toward the north-east there was & long sweep of horizon clear of land, and on the south-west stretched a similar boundless expanse, but varied with islets clothed with fan-leaved palms, which, however, were visible only as isolated groups of columns, tufted at the top, rising here and there amid the waste of waters. In the afternoon we rounded the westernmost point; the land, which is not terra firma, but simply a group of large islands forming a portion of the Tocantins delta, was then about three miles distant.

On the following day (25th) we sailed toward the west, along the upper portion of the Pará estuary, which extends seventy miles beyond the mouth of the Tocantins. It varies in width from three to five miles, but broadens rapidly near its termination, where it is eight or nine miles wide. The northern shore is formed by the Island of Marajó, and is slightly elevated and rocky in some parts. A series of islands conceals the southern shore from view most part of the way. The whole country, mainland and islands, is covered with forest. We had a good wind all day, and about seven P.M. enteret the nar row tiver of Breves, which commences abruptly the extensive labyrinth of channels that connects the Pará with the Am¬zons. The sudden termination of the Pará, at a point where it expands to so great a breadth, is remarkable; the water, however, is very shallow over the greater portion of the ex

panse. I noticed, both on this and on the three subsequent occasions of passing this place, in ascending and descending the river, that the flow of the tide from the east along the estuary, as well as up the Breves, was very strong. This seems sufficient to prove that no considerable volume of water passes by this medium from the Amazons to the Pará, and that the opinion of those geographers is an incorrect one, who believe the Pará to be one of the mouths of the great river. There is, however, another channel connecting the two rivers, which enters the Pará six miles to the south of the Breves. The lower part of its course for eighteen miles is formed by the Uanapú, a large and independent river flowing from the south. The tidal flow is said by the natives to produce little or no current up this river-a fact which seems to afford a little support to the view just stated. We passed the village of Breves at three P.M. on the 26th. It consists of about forty houses, most of which are occupied by Portuguese shopkeepers. A few Indian families reside here, who occupy themselves with the manufacture of ornamental pottery and painted cuyas, which they sell to traders or passing travellers. The cuyas — drinking cups made from gourds—are sometimes very tastefully painted. The rich black groundcolor is produced by a dye made from the bark of a tree called Comateü, the gummy nature of which imparts a fine polish. The yellow tints are made with the Tabatinga clay; the red with the seeds of the Ürucú, or anatto plant; and the blue with indigo, which is planted round the huts. The art is indigenous with the Amazonian Indians, but it is only the settled agricultural tribes helonging to the Tupí stock who practise it.

September 27th-30th.-After passing Breves we continued our way slowly along a channel, or series of channels, of variable width. On the morning of the 27th we had a fair wind, the breadth of the stream varying from about 150 to 400 yards. About midday we passed, on the western side, the mouth of the Aturiazal, through which, on account of its swifter current, vessels pass in descending from the Amazons to Pará. Shortly afterward we entered the narrow channel of the Jaburú, which lies twenty miles above the mouth of the Breves. Here commences the peculiar scenery of this remarkable_region. We found ourselves in a narrow and nearly straight canal, not more than eighty to a hundred yards in width, and hemmed in by two walls of forest, which rose quite perpendicularly from the water to a height of seventy or eighty feet. The water was of great and uniform depth, even close to the banks seemed to be in a deep gorge, and the strange impression the place produced was augmented by the dull echoes wakened by the voices of our Indians and the splash of their paddles. The forest was excessively varied. Some of the trees, the dome-topped giants of the Leguminous and Bombaceous orders, reared their heads far above the average height of the green walls. The fan-leaved Miriti palm

We