of clothing for either sex.

"There are in the inte

rior," the narration goes on to say, "some tribes which devour the prisoners taken in war; but there are none such on the banks of the river."

After leaving this station, they sailed day and night, equal to seven or eight days' journey, without seeing any habitation. On the 5th of August, they arrived at the first of the Portuguese missionary stations, where they procured larger and more commodious boats than those in which they had advanced hitherto. Here they began to see the first signs of the benefits of access to European sources of supply, by means of the vessel which went every year from Pará to Lisbon. They tarried six days at the last of the missionary stations, and again made a change of boats and of Indian crews. On the 28th August, being yet six hundred miles from the sea, they perceived the ebb and flow of the tide.

On the 19th September, they arrived at Pará, which La Condamine describes as a great and beautiful city, built of stone, and enjoying a commerce with Lisbon, which made it flourishing and increasing. He observes, "It is, perhaps, the only European settlement where silver does not pass for money; the whole currency being cocoa." He adds in a

note, Specie currency has been since introduced."

The Portuguese authorities received the philosophers with all the civilities and hospitalities due to persons honored with the special protection and countenance of two great nations,-France and Spain. The cannon were fired; and the soldiers of the garrison, with the governor of the province at their head, turned out to receive them. The governor had received orders from the home government to pay all their expenses, and to furnish them every thing requisite for their comfort and assistance in their researches. La Condamine remained three months at Pará; and then, declining the urgent request of the governor to embark in a Portuguese vessel for home by way of Lisbon, he embarked in a boat rowed by twenty-two Indians, under the command of a Portuguese officer, to coast along the shores of the continent to the French colony of Cayenne.

The city of Pará from whence he embarked is not situated upon the Amazon River, but upon what is called the River of Pará, which branches off from the Amazon near its mouth, and discharges itself into the sea at a distance of more than a hundred miles east of the Amazon. The intervening land is an

island called Marajo, along the coast of which La Condamine and his party steered till they came to the place where the Amazon River discharges into the sea that vast bulk of waters which has been swelled by the contributions of numerous tributaries throughout a course of more than three thousand miles in length. It here meets the current which runs along the north-eastern coast of Brazil, and gives rise to that phenomenon which is called by the Indians Pororoca. The river and the current, having both great rapidity, and meeting nearly at right angles, come into contact with great violence, and raise a mountain of water to the height of one hundred and eighty feet. The shock is so dreadful, that it makes all the neighboring islands tremble; and fishermen and navigators fly from it in the utmost terror. The river and the ocean appear to contend for the empire of the waves: but they seem to come to a compromise; for the sea-current continues its way along the coast of Guiana to the Island of Trinidad, while the current of the river is still observable in the ocean at a distance of five hundred miles from the shore.

La Condamine passed this place of meeting in safety by waiting for a favorable course of tides, crossing the Amazon at its mouth, steering north;

and after many delays, caused by the timidity and bad seamanship of his Indian crew, arrived at last safe at Cayenne on the 26th February, 1744, having been eight months on his voyage, two of which were spent in his passage from Pará, a passage which he avers a French officer and crew, two years after him, accomplished in six days. La Condamine was received with all possible distinction at Cayenne, and in due time found passage home to France, where he arrived 25th February, 1745.

CHAPTER IX.

MADAME GODIN'S VOYAGE DOWN THE AMAZON.

NE of the French commissioners, M. Godin, had

ONE

taken with him on his scientific errand to Peru his wife; a lady for whom we bespeak the kind interest of our readers, for her name deserves honorable mention among the early navigators of the Amazon. The labors of the commission occupied several years; and when, in the year 1742, those labors were happily brought to a conclusion, M. Godin was prevented, by circumstances relating to himself individually, from accompanying his colleagues in their return to France. His detention was protracted from year to year, till at last, in 1749, he repaired alone to the Island of Cayenne to prepare every thing necessary for the homeward voyage of himself and his wife.

From Cayenne he wrote to Paris to the minister of marine, and requested that his government would procure for him the favorable interposition of the