104 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
after all, this afternoon, but some birds which were valuable 
as specimens. We rode home in the evening to a late 
dinner, after which an enormous bonfire, built by the 
negroes in honor of the Eve of St. Joao, was lighted in 
front of the house. The scene was exceedingly pictu- 
resque, the whole establishment, the neighboring negro 
huts, and the distant forest being illuminated by the 
blaze, around which the blacks were dancing, accompa- 
nying their wild gestures with song and drum. Every 
now and then a burst of fireworks added new brightness 
to the picture. 
The next day, the 24th, began with a long ride on horse- 
back before breakfast, after which I accompanied Mr. Agassiz 
on a sort of exploration among the Cupim nests (the nests 
of the Termites). These are mounds sometimes three or 
four or even six feet high, and from two to three or four 
feet in diameter, of an extraordinary solidity, almost as 
hard as rock. Senhor Lage sent with us several negroes 
carrying axes to split them open, which, with all their 
strength, proved no easy task. These nests appear usually 
to have been built around some old trunk or root as a 
foundation ; the interior, with its endless serpentine pas- 
sages, looked not unlike the convolutions of a meandrina or 
brain coral ; the walls of the passages seemed to be built of 
earth that had been chewed or kneaded in some way, giv- 
ing them somewhat the consistency of paper. The interior 
was quite soft and brittle, so that as soon as the negroes 
could break through the outer envelope, about six inches 
in thickness, the whole structure readily fell to pieces. 
It had no opening outside, but we found, on uprooting 
one of these edifices from the bottom, that the whole 
base was perforated with holes leading into the ground 
