FROM PAKA TO MANAOS. 153 
We came on board last night, accompanied to the boat by 
a number of the friends who have made our sojourn in 
Para" so agreeable, and who came off to bid us farewell. 
Thus far the t liardsliips of this South American journey 
seem to retreat at our approach. It is impossible to travel 
with greater comfort than surrounds us here. My own 
suite of rooms consists of a good-sized state-room, with 
dressing-room and bath-room adjoining, and, if the others 
are not quite so luxuriously accommodated, they have 
space enough. The state-rooms are hardly used at night, 
for a hammock on deck is far more comfortable in this 
climate. Our deck, roofed in for its whole length, and 
with an awning to let down on the sides, if needed, looks 
like a comfortable, unceremonious sitting-room. A table 
down the middle serving as a dinner-table, but which is at 
this moment strewn with maps, journals, books, and papers 
of all sorts, two or three lounging-chairs, a number of camp- 
stools, and half a dozen hammocks, in one or two of which 
some of the party are taking their ease, furnish our drawing- 
room, and supply all that is needed for work and rest. At 
one end is also a drawing-table for Mr. Burkhardt, beside a 
number of kegs and glass jars for specimens. This first day, 
however, it is almost impossible to do more than look and 
wonder. Mr. Agassiz says : " This river is not like a river ; 
the general current in such a sea of fresh water is hardly 
perceptible to the sight, and seems more like the flow of 
an ocean than like that of an inland stream." It is true 
we are constantly between shores, but they are shores, not 
of the river itself, but of the countless islands scattered 
throughout its enormous breadth. As we coast along 
their banks, it is delightful to watch the exquisite vege- 
tation with which we have yet to become familiar. The 
7* 
