After having resided about a fortnight at Mr. Miller's rocinha, we heard of another similar country-house to be let, much better situated for our purpose, in the village of Nazareth, a mile and a half from the city, and close to the forest. The owner was an old Portuguese gentleman named Danin, who lived at his tile manufactory at the mouth of 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 afterwards 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.

On leaving the town, we walked along a straight suburban road, constructed above the level of the surrounding land. It had low swampy ground on each side, built upon, however, and containing several spacious rocinhas, which were embowered in magnificent foliage.

At the time of my first voyage up the Amazons—namely, in 1849—nearly all communication with the interior was by means of small sailing-vessels, owned by traders residing in the remote towns and villages, who seldom came to Pará themselves, but entrusted vessels and cargoes to the care of halfbreeds or Portuguese cabos. Sometimes, indeed, they risked all in the hands of the Indian crew, making the pilot, who was also steersman, do duty as supercargo. Now and then, Portuguese and Brazilian merchants at Pará furnished young Portuguese with merchandise, and despatched them to the interior, to exchange the goods for produce among the scattered population. The means of communication, in fact, with the upper parts of the Amazons had been on the decrease for some time, on account of the augmented difficulty of obtaining hands to navigate vessels. Formerly, when the Government wished to send any important functionary, such as a judge or a military commandant, into the interior, they equipped a swift-sailing 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.

I will now proceed to give some account of the more interesting of my shorter excursions in the neighbourhood of Ega. The incidents of the longer voyages, which occupied each several months, will be narrated in a separate chapter.

The settlement, as before described, is built on a small tract of cleared land at the lower or eastern end of the lake, six or seven miles from the main Amazons, with which the lake communicates by a narrow channel. On the opposite shore of the broad expanse stands a small village, called Nogueira, the houses of which are not visible from Ega, except on very clear days; the coast on the Nogueira side is high, and stretches away into the grey distance towards the south-west. The upper part of the river Teffé is not visited by the Ega people, on account of its extreme unhealthiness, and its barrenness in salsaparilla and other wares. To Europeans it would seem a most surprising thing that the people of a civilised settlement, 170 years old, should still be ignorant of the course of the river on whose banks their native place, for which they proudly claim the title of city, is situated. It would be very difficult for a private individual to explore it, as the necessary number of Indian paddlers could not be obtained. I knew only one person who had ascended the Teffe to any considerable distance, and he was not able to give me a distinct account of the river.

June, 1852.—I will now proceed to relate the incidents of my principal excursion up the Tapajos, which I began to prepare for, after residing about six months at Santarem.

I was obliged, this time, to travel in a vessel of my own; partly because trading canoes large enough to accommodate a naturalist very seldom pass between Santarem and the thinly-peopled settlements on the river, and partly because I wished to explore districts at my ease, far out of the ordinary track of traders. I soon found a suitable canoe ; a two-masted cuberta, of about six tons' burthen, strongly built of Itaüba or stonewood, a timber of which all the best vessels in the Amazons country are constructed, and said to be more durable than teak. This I hired of a merchant at the cheap rate of 500 reis, or about one shilling and twopence per day. I fitted up the cabin, which, as usual in canoes of this class, was a square structure with its floor above the water-line, as my sleeping and working apartments. My chests, filled with store-boxes and trays for specimens, were arranged on each side, and above them were shelves and pegs to hold my little stock of useful books, guns, and game bags, boards and materials for skinning and preserving animals, botanical press and papers, drying cages for insects and birds, and so forth.

I embarked at Liverpool, with Mr. Wallace, in a small trading vessel, on the 26th of April, 1848 ; and, after a swift passage from the Irish Channel to the equator, arrived, on the 26th of May, off Salinas. This is the pilot-station for vessels bound to Pará, the only port of entry to the vast region watered by the Amazons. It is a small village, formerly a missionary settlement of the Jesuits, situated a few miles to the eastward of the Pará river. Here the ship anchored in the open sea,.at a distance of six miles from the shore, the shallowness of the water far out around the mouth of the great river not permitting in safety a nearer approach ; and the signal was hoisted for a pilot. It was with deep interest that my companion and myself, both now about to see and examine the beauties of a tropical country for the first time, gazed on the land where I, at least, eventually spent eleven of the best years of my life. To the eastward the country was not remarkable in appearance, being slightly undulating, with bare sandhills and scattered trees; but to the westward, stretching towards the mouth of the river, we could see through the captain's glass a long line of forest, rising apparently out of the water; a densely-packed mass of tall trees, broken into groups, and finally into single trees, as it dwindled away in the distance.

November 7th, 1856.—Embarked on the Upper Amazons steamer, the “ Tabatinga,” for an excursion to Tunantins, a small semi-Indian settlement, lying 240 miles beyond Ega. The “ Tabatinga ” is an iron boat of about 170 tons burthen, built at Rio de Janeiro, and fitted with engines of fifty-horse power. The saloon, with berths on each side for twenty passengers, is above deck, and open at both ends to admit a free current of air. The captain or “ commandante ” was a lieutenant in the Brazilian navy, a man of polished, sailor-like address, and a rigid disciplinarian; his name, Senhor Nunes Mello Cardozo. I was obliged, as usual, to take with me a stock of all articles of food, except meat and fish, for the time I intended to be absent (three months); and the luggage, including hammocks, cooking utensils, crockery, and so forth, formed fifteen large packages. One bundle consisted of a mosquito tent, an article I had not yet had occasion to use on the river, but which was indispensable in all excursions beyond Ega; every person, man, woman, and child,. requiring oneras without it existence would be scarcely possible. My tent was about eight feet long and five feet broad, and was made of coarse calico in an oblong shape, with sleeves at each end through which to pass the cords of a hammock.

A trader of Obydos, named Penna, was about proceeding in a cuberta laden with merchandise to the Rio Negro, intending to stop frequently on the road; so I bargained with him for a passage. He gave up a part of the toldo, or fore-cabin as it may be called, and here I slung my hammock and arranged my boxes, so as to be able to work as we went along. The stoppages I thought would be an advantage, as I could collect in the woods whilst he traded, and thus acquire a knowledge of the productions of many places on the river which, in a direct voyage, it would be impossible to do. I provided a stock of groceries for two months' consumption; and, after the usual amount of unnecessary fuss and delay on the part of the owner, we started on the 19th of November. Penna took his family with him : this comprised a smart, lively mameluco woman, named Catarina, whom we called Senhora Katita, and two children. The crew consisted of three men, one a sturdy Indian, another a Cafuzo, godson of Penna, and the third, our best hand, a steady, good-natured mulatto, named Joaquim. My boy Luco was to assist in rowing and so forth. Penna was a timid middle-aged man, a white with a slight cross of Indian; when he was surly and obstinate, he used to ask me to excuse him on account of the Tapuyo blood in his veins.

I have already given a short account of the size, situation, and general appearance of Santarem. Although containing not more than 2,500 inhabitants, it is the most civilised and important settlement on the banks of the main river from Peru to the Atlantic. The pretty little town, or city as it is called, with its rows of tolerably uniform white-washed and red-tiled houses, surrounded by green gardens and woods, stands on gently sloping ground on the eastern side of the Tapajos, close to its point of junction with the Amazons. A small eminence on which a fort has been erected, but which is now in a dilapidated condition, overlooks the streets, and forms the eastern limit of the mouth of the tributary. The Tapajos at Santarem is contracted to a breadth of about a mile and a half by an accretion of low alluvial land, which forms a kind of delta on the western side; fifteen miles further up, the river is seen at its full width of ten or a dozen miles, and the magnificent hilly country, through which it flows from the south, is then visible on both shores. This high land, which appears to be a continuation of the central table-lands of Brazil, stretches almost without interruption on the eastern side of the river down to its mouth at Santarem.

Before leaving the subject of Pará, where I resided, as already stated, in all eighteen months, it will be necessary to give a more detailed account of several matters connected with the customs of the people and the Natural History of the neighbourhood, which have hitherto been only briefly mentioned. I reserve an account of the trade and improved condition of Pará in 1859 for the end of this narrative.

During the first few weeks of our stay many of those religious festivals took place, which occupied so large a share of the time and thoughts of the people. These were splendid affairs, wherein artistically-arranged processions through the streets, accompanied by thousands of people, military -displays, the clatter of fireworks, and the clang of military music, were superadded to pompous religious services in the churches. To those who had witnessed similar ceremonies in the southern countries of Europe, there would be nothing remarkable perhaps in these doings, except their taking place amidst the splendours of tropical nature; but to me they were full of novelty, and were besides interesting as exhibiting much that was peculiar in the manners of the people. The festivals celebrate either the anniversaries of events concerning saints, or those of the more important transactions in the life of Christ To them have been added, since the Independence, many gala days connected with the events in the Brazilian national history: but these have all a semi-religious character.