seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country. The butterflies, they universally concluded to be wanted as patterns for bright-coloured calico-prints. As to the better sort of people, I had no difficulty in making them understand that each European capital had a public museum, in which were sought to be stored specimens of all natural productions in the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. They could not comprehend how a man could study science for its own sake; but I told them I was collecting for the “ Museo de Londres,” and was paid for it; hat was very intelligible. One day, soon after my arrival, when I was explaining these things to a listening circle seated on benches in the grassy street, one of the audience, a considerable tradesman, a Mameluco native of Ega, got suddenly quite enthusiastic, and exclaimed, “How rich are these great nations of Europe! We half-civilised creatures know nothing. Let us treat this stranger well, that he may stay amongst us and teach our children.” We very frequently had social parties, with dancing and so forth; of these relaxations I shall have more to say presently. The manners of the Indian population also gave me some amusement for a long time. During the latter part of my residence, three wandering Frenchmen, and two Italians, some of them men of good education, on their road one after the other from the Andes down the Amazons, became enamoured of this delightfully-situated and tranquil spot, and made up their minds to settle here for the remainder of their lives. ‘Three of them ended by marrying native women. I found the society of these friends a very agreeable change.

There were, of course, many drawbacks to the amenities of the place as a residence for a European; but these were not of a nature that my readers would perhaps imagine. ‘There was scarcely any danger from wild animals: it seems almost ridiculous to refute the idea of danger from the natives in a country where even incivility to an unoffending stranger is a rarity. A Jaguar, however, paid us a visit one night. It was considered an extraordinary event, and so much uproar was made by the men who turned out with guns and bows and arrows, that the animal scampered off and was heard of no more. Alligators were rather troublesome in the dry season. During these months there was almost always one or two lying in wait near the bathing-place for anything that might turn up at the edge of the water; dog, sheep, pig, child, or drunken Indian. When this visitor was about, every one took extra care whilst bathing. I used to imitate the natives in not advancing far from the bank and in keeping my eye fixed on that of the monster, which stares with a disgusting leer along the surface of the water; the body being submerged to the level of the eyes, and the top of the head, with part of the dorsal crest, the only portions visible. When a little motion was perceived in the water behind the reptile’s tail, bathers were obliged to beat a quick retreat. I was never threatened myself, but I often saw the crowds of women and children scared whilst bathing, by the beast making a movement towards them; a general scamper to the shore and peals of laughter were always the result in these cases. The men can always destroy these alligators when they like to take the trouble to set out with montarias. and harpoons for the purpose; but

they never do it unless one of the monsters, bolder than usual, puts some one’s life in danger. ‘This arouses them, and they then track the enemy with the greatest pertinacity; when half killed, they drag it ashore and despatch it amid loud execrations. Another, however, is sure to appear some days or weeks afterwards, and take the vacant place on the station. Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. ‘These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no accident happened during the whole time of my residence.

I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health, arising from bad and insufficient food. The want of intellectual society, and of the varied excitement of European life, was also felt most acutely, and this, instead of becoming deadened by time, increased until it became almost insupportable. I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of Nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind. I got on pretty well when I received a parcel from England by the steamer once in two or four months. I used to be very economical with my stock of reading, lest it should be finished before the next arrival, and leave me utterly destitute. I went over the periodicals—the Atheneum, for instance—with great deliberation, going through every number three times; the first time devouring the more interesting articles; the second, the whole of the remainder; and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. If four months (two steamers) passed without a fresh parcel, I felt discouraged in the extreme. I was worst off in the first year, 1850, when twelve months elapsed without letters or remittances. Towards the end of this time my clothes had worn to rags: I was barefoot, a great inconvenience in tropical forests, notwithstanding statements to the contrary that have been published by travellers; my servant ran away, and I was robbed of nearly all my copper money. I was obliged then to descend to Para, but returned, after finishing the examination of the middle part of the Lower Amazons and the Tapajos, in 1855, with my Santarem assistant, and better provided for making collections on the upper river. This second visit was in pursuit of the plan before mentioned, of exploring in detail the whole valley of the Amazons, which I formed in Para in the year 1851. During so long a residence I witnessed, of course, many changes in the place. Some of the good friends who made me welcome on my first arrival died, and I followed their remains to their last resting-place in the little rustic cemetery on the borders of the surrounding forest. I lived there long enough, from first to last, to see the young people grow up, attended their weddings and the christenings of their children, and, before I left, saw them old married folks with numerous families. In 1850, Ega was only a village, dependent on Para, 1400 miles distant, as the capital of the then undivided province. In 1852, with the creation of the new province of the Amazons, it became a city; returned its members to the provincial parliament at Barra; had its assizes, its resident judges, and rose to be the chief town of a comarca or county.

A year after this, namely, in 1853, steamers were introduced on the Solimoens; and from 1855 one ran regularly every two months between the Rio Negro and Nauta in Peru, touching at all the villages, and ac-complishing the distance in ascending, about 1,200 miles, in eighteen days. The trade and population, however, did not increase with these changes. The people became more “civilised,” that is, they began to dress according to the latest Parisian fashions, instead of going about in stockingless feet, wooden clogs, and shirt sleeves; acquired a taste for money-getting and office-holding; became divided into parties, and lost part of their former simplicity of manners. But the place remained, when I left it in 1859, pretty nearly what it was when I first arrived in 1850—a semi-Indian village, with much in the ways and notions of its people more like those of a small country town in Northern Europe than a South American settlement. The place is healthy, and almost free from insect pests; perpetual verdure surrounds it; the soil is of marvellous fertility, even for Brazil; the endless rivers and labyrinths of channels teem with fish and turtle; a fleet of steamers might anchor at any season of the year in the lake, which has uninterrupted water communication straight to the Atlantic. What a future is in store for the sleepy little tropical village!

After speaking of Ega as a city, it will have a ludicrous effect to mention that the total number of its inhabitants is only about 1,200. It contains just 107 houses, about half of which are miserably-built mud-walled cottages, thatched with palm-leaves. A fourth of the population are almost always absent, trading or collecting produce on the rivers. The neighbourhood within a radius of thirty miles, and including two other small villages, contains probably 2,000 more people. The settlement is one of the oldest in the country, having been founded in 1688 by Father Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian Jesuit, who induced several of the docile tribes of Indians, then scattered over the neighbouring region, to settle on the site. From 100 to 200 acres of sloping ground around the place were afterwards cleared of timber; but such is the encroaching vigour of vegetation 1n this country, that the site would quickly relapse into jungle if the inhabitants neglected to pull up the young shoots as they arose. There is a stringent municipal law which compels each resident to weed a given space around his dwelling. Every month, whilst I resided here, an inspector came round with his wand of authority, and fined every one who had not complied with the regulation. The Indians of the surrounding country have never been hostile to the European settlers. The rebels of Para and the Lower Amazons, in 1835-6, did not succeed in rousing the natives of the Solimoens against the whites. A party of forty of them ascended the river for that purpose; but on arriving at Ega, instead of meeting with sympathisers, as in other places, they were surrounded by a small body of armed residents, and shot down without mercy. The military commandant at the time, who was the prime mover in this orderly resistance to anarchy, was 2 courageous and loyal negro, name José Patricio, an officer known throughout the Upper Amazons for his unflinching honesty and love of order, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making at St. Paulo in 1858. Ega was the headquarters of the great scientific commission,

which met in the years from 1781 to 1791, to settle the boundaries between the Spanish and Portuguese territories in South America. The chief commissioner for Spain, Don Francisco Requena, lived some time in the village with his family. I found only one person at Ega, my old friend Romaod de Oliveira, who recollected or had any knowledge of this important time, when a numerous staff of astronomers, surveyors, and draughtsmen explored much of the surrounding country, with large bodies of soldiers and natives.

More than half the inhabitants of Ega are mamelucos; there are not more than forty or fifty pure whites; the number of negroes and mulattos is probably a little less, and the rest of the population consists of pure-blood Indians. Every householder, including Indians and free negroes, is entitled to a vote in the elections, municipal, provincial, and imperial, and is liable to be called on juries, and to serve in the national guard. These privileges and duties of citizenship do not seem at present to be appreciated by the more ignorant coloured people. There is, however, a gradual improvement taking place in this respect. Before I left there was a rather sharp contest for the Presidency of the Municipal Chamber, and most of the voters took a lively interest in it. There was also an election of members to represent the province in the Imperial Parliament at Rio Janeiro, in which each party strove hard to return its candidate. On this occasion, an unscrupulous lawyer was sent by the Government party from the capital to overawe the opposition to its nominee; many of the half-castes, headed by my old friend John da Cunha, who was then settled at Ega, fought hard, but with perfect legality and good humour, against this powerful interest. They did not succeed; and although the Government agent committed many tyrannical and illegal acts, the losing party submitted quietly to their defeat. In a larger town, I believe, the Government would not have dared to attempt thus to control the elections. I think I saw enough to warrant the conclusion that the machinery of constitutional government would, with a little longer trial, work well amongst the mixed Indian, white, and negro population, even of this remote part of the Brazilian empire. I attended, also, before I left, several assize meetings at Ega, and witnessed the novel sight of negro, white, half-caste, and Indian, sitting gravely side by side on the jury bench.

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