gaily-dressed companies which were there assembled to a variety of dances. The principal citizens, in the large rooms of whose houses these entertainments were given, seemed quite to enjoy them; great preparations were made at each place; and, after the dance, guests and masqueraders were regaled with pale ale and sweetmeats. Once a year the Indians, with whom masked dances and acting are indigenous, had their turn, and on one occasion they gave us a great treat. They assembled from different parts of the neighbourhood at night, on the outskirts of the town, and then marched through the streets by torchlight towards the quarter inhabited by the whites, to perform their hunting and devil dances before the doors of the principal inhabitants. There were about a hundred men, women, and children in the procession. Many of the men were dressed in the magnificent feather crowns, tunics, and belts, manufactured by the Munduructis, and worn by them on festive occasions, but the women were naked to the waist, and the children quite naked, and all were painted and smeared red with anatto. The ringleader enacted the part of the Tushaua, or chief, and carried a sceptre, richly decorated with the orange, red, and green feathers of toucans and parrots. The pajé or medicine-man came along, puffing at a long tauari cigar, the instrument by which he professes to make his wonderful cures. Others blew harsh jarring blasts with the turé, a horn made of long and thick bamboo, with a split reed in the mouthpiece. ‘This is the war trumpet of many tribes of Indians, with which the sentinels of predatory hordes, mounted on a lofty tree, give the signal for attack to their comrades. Those Brazilians who are old enough to remember the times of warfare between Indians and settlers, retain a great horror of the turé, its loud harsh note heard in the dead of the night having been often the prelude to an onslaught of bloodthirsty Muras on the outlying settlements. The rest of the men in the procession carried bows and arrows, bunches of javelins, clubs, and paddles. The older children brought with them the household pets;some had monkeys or coatis on their shoulders, and others bore tortoises on their heads. The squaws carried their babies in aturds, or large baskets, slung on their backs, and secured with a broad belt of bast over their foreheads. The whole thing was accurate in its representation of Indian life, and showed more ingenuity than some people give the Brazilian red man credit for. It was got up spontaneously by the Indians, and simply to amuse the people of the place

The entire produce in cacao, salt fish, and other articles of a very large district, passes through the hands of the Santarem merchants, and a large trade, for this country, is done with the Indians on the Tapajos in salsaparilla, balsam of copaiba, indiarubber, farinha, and other productions. I was told the average annual yield of the Tapajos in salsaparilla, was about 2000 arrobas (of 32 lbs. each). The quality of the drug found in the forests of the Tapajos is much superior to that of the Upper Amazons, and always fetches double the price at Para. The merchants send out young Brazilians and Portuguese in small canoes to trade on the rivers and collect the produce, and the cargoes are shipped to the capital in large cubertas and schooners, of from twenty to eighty tons burthen. The risk and profits must be great, or capital

scarce, for the rate of interest on lent money or overdue accounts is 24 to 3 per cent. per month; this is the same, however, as that which rules at Para4. The shops are numerous, and well stocked with English, French, German, and North American wares; the retail prices of which are very little above those of the capital. There is much competition amongst the traders and shopkeepers, yet they all seem to thrive, if one may judge from external appearances; but it is said, that most of them are over head and ears in debt to rich Portuguese merchants of Para, who act as their correspondents.

The people seem to be thoroughly alive to the advantages of education for their children. Besides the usual primary schools, one for girls and another for boys, there is a third of a higher class, where Latin and French, amongst other accomplishments, are taught by pro-fessors, who, like the common schoolmasters, are paid by the provincial government. ‘This is used as a preparatory school to the Lyceum and Bishop’s seminary, well-endowed institutions at Para, whither it is the ambition of traders and planters to send their sons to finish their studies. The rudiments of education only are taught in the primary schools, and it is surprising how quickly and well the little lads, both coloured and white, learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. But the simplicity of the Portuguese language, which is written as it is pronounced, or according to unvarying rules, and the use of the decimal system of accounts, make these acquirements much easier than they are with us. Students in the superior school have to pass an examination before they can be admitted at the colleges in Para, and the managers once did me the honour to make me one of the examiners for the year. The performances of the youths, most of whom were under fourteen years of age, were very creditable, especially in grammar; there was a quickness of apprehension displayed which would have gladdened the heart of a northern schoolmaster. The course of study followed at the colleges of Para must be very deficient; for it is rare to meet with an educated Paraense who has the slightest knowledge of the physical sciences, or even of geography, if he has not travelled out of the province. The young men all become smart rhetoricians and lawyers; any of them is ready to plead in a law case at an hour’s notice; they are also great at statistics, for the gratification of which taste there is ample field in Brazil, where every public officer has to furnish volumes of dry reports annually to the government; but they are wofully ignorant on most other subjects. I do not recollect seeing a map of any kind at Santarem. The quick-witted people have a suspicion of their deficiencies in this respect, and it is difficult to draw them out on geography; but one day a man holding an important office betrayed himself by asking me “on what side of the river was Paris situated?” The question did not arise, as might be supposed, from a desire for accurate topographical knowledge of the Seine, but from the idea that all the world was a great river, and that the different places he had heard of must lie on one shore or the other. The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks.

Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests—mosquito, pitm, sand-fly, or motuca. The climate is glorious: during six months of the year, from August to February, very little rain falls, and the sky is cloudless for weeks together, the fresh breezes from the sea, nearly 400 miles distant, moderating the great heat of the sun. The wind is sometimes so strong for days together, that it is difficult to make way against it in walking along the streets, and it enters the open windows and doors of houses, scattering loose clothing and papers in all directions. The place is considered healthy; but at the changes of season, severe colds and ophthalmia are prevalent. I found three Englishmen living here, who had resided many years in the town or its neighbourhood, and who still retained their florid complexions; the plump and fresh appearance of many of the middle-aged Santarem ladies also bore testimony to the healthfulness of the climate. The streets are always clean and dry, even in the height of the wet season; good order is always kept, and the place pretty well supplied with provisions. None but those who have suffered from the difficulty of obtaining the necessaries of life at any price in mostof the interior settlements of South America, can appreciate the advantages of Santarem in this respect. Everything, however, except meat, was dear, and becoming every year more so. Sugar, coffee, and rice, which ought to be produced in surplus in the neighbourhood, are imported from other provinces, and are high in price; sugar, indeed, is a little dearer here than in England. There were two or three butchers’ shops, where excellent beef could be had daily at twopence or twopence-halfpenny per pound. The cattle have not to be brought from a long distance, as at Para, being bred on the campos, which border the Lago Grande, only one or two days’ journey from the town. Fresh fish could be bought in the port on most evenings, but, as the supply did not equal the demand, there was always a race amongst purchasers to the water-side when the canoe of a fisherman hove in sight. Very good bread was hawked around the town every morning, with milk, and a great variety of fruits and vegetables. Amongst the fruits, there was a kind called atta, which I did not see in any other part of the country. It belongs to the Anonaceous order, and the tree which produces it grows apparently wild in the neighbourhood of Santarem. It is a little larger than a good-sized orange, and the rind, which encloses a mass of rich custardy pulp, is scaled like the pine-apple, but green when ripe, and encrusted on the inside with sugar. To finish this account of the advantages of Santarem, the delicious bathing in the clear waters of the Tapajos may be mentioned. There is here no fear of alligators; when the east wind blows, a long swell rolls in on the clean sandy beach, and the bath is most exhilarating.

There is one great drawback to the merits of Santarem. This is the prevalence here of the terrible leprosy. It seems, however, confined to certain families, and I did not hear of a well-authenticated case of a European being attacked by it. I once visited many of the lepers, in company of an American physician, ‘They do not live apart; family » ties are so strong that all attempts to induce people to separate from

their leprous relatives have failed; but many believe that the malady is not contagious. The disease commences with glandular swellings in different parts of the body, which are succeeded by livid patches on the skin, and at the tips of the fingers and toes. These spread, and the parts embraced by them lose their sensibility, and decay. In course of time, as the frightful atrophy extends to the internal organs, some vital part is affected, and the sufferer dies. Some of the best families in the place are tainted with leprosy; but it falls on all races alike; white, Indian, and negro. I saw some patients who had been ill of it for ten and a dozen years: they were hideously disfigured, but bore up cheerfully; in fact, a hopeful spirit, and free, generous living had been the means of retarding in them the progress of the disorder; none were ever known to be cured of it. One man tried:a voyage to Europe, and was healed whilst there, but the malady broke out again on his return. I do not know whether the dry and hot soil of Santarem has anything to do with the prevalence of this disease; it is not confined to this place, many cases having occurred at Para, and in other provinces, but it is nowhere so rife as here; the evil fame of the settlement, indeed, has spread to Portugal, where Santarem is known as the ‘‘Cidade dos Lazaros,” or City of Lepers.

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