MANAOS AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 285 
with palm-trees brought from the forest for the occasion, 
and the open sides of the large rooms outside, usually 
working-rooms, but now fitted up for the breakfast, were 
all filled in with green arches built of trees and flowers, 
so that the whole space was transformed, for the time 
being, into an arbor. We were received with music and 
conducted to the main building, where all the guests 
gradually assembled, some two hundred in number. At 
about one o'clock the President led the way to the green 
arcades which, as yet, we had seen only from a distance. 
Nothing could be more tasteful than the arrangements. 
The tables were placed around a hollow square, in the 
centre of which was the American flag, with the Bra- 
zilian on either side of it ; while a number of other flags 
draped the room and made the whole scene bright with 
color. The landscape, framed in the open green arches, 
made so many pictures, pretty glimpses of water and 
wood, with here and there a palm-thatched roof among 
the trees on the opposite side of the river. A fresh breeze 
blew through the open dining-room, stirring the folds of 
the flags, and making a pleasant rustle in the trees, which 
added their music to that of the band outside. Since we 
are on the Amazons, a thousand miles from its mouth, 
it is worth while to say a word of the breakfast itself. 
There is such an exaggerated idea of the hardships and 
difficulty of a voyage on the Amazons, (at least so I infer 
from many remarks made to us, not only at home, but 
even in Rio de Janeiro by Brazilians themselves, when 
we were on the eve of departure for this journey,) that 
it will hardly be believed that a public breakfast, given 
in Manaos, should have all the comforts, and almost all 
the luxuries, of a similar entertainment in any other part 
