CEAKA. 443 
tolerable heat, with the absence of any nourishing food or 
suitable lodgings, with mosquitoes, with Jacares and wild 
Indians. If you consult a physician, he gives you a good 
supply of quinine, and tells you to take a dose every other 
day as a preventive against fever and chills ; so that if you 
escape intermittent fever you are at least sure of being poi- 
soned by a remedy which, if administered incautiously, may 
cause a disease worse than the one it cures. It will take 
perhaps from the excitement and novelty of Amazonian 
travelling to know that the journey from Para to Tabatinga 
may be made with as much ease as a reasonable traveller 
has a right to expect, though of course not without some 
privations, and also with no more exposure to sickness than 
the traveller incurs in any hot climate. The perils and ad- 
ventures which attended the voyages of Spix and Martins, 
or even of more recent travellers, like Cas'telnau, Bates, and 
Wallace, are no longer to be found on the main course of 
the Amazons, though they are met at every step on its great 
affluents. On the Tocantins, on the Madeira, on the Purus, 
on the Rio Negro, the Trombetas, or any of the large trib- 
utaries, the traveller must still work his way slowly up in 
a canoe, scorched by the sun or drenched by the rain ; sleep- 
ing on the beach, hearing the cries of the wild animals in 
the woods around him, and waking perhaps in the morning, 
to find the tracks of a tiger in unpleasant proximity to his 
hammock. But along the course of the Amazons itself, 
these days of romantic adventure and hair-breadth escapes 
are over ; the wild beasts of the forest have disappeared be- 
fore the puff of the engine ; the canoe and the encampment 
on the beach at night have given place to the prosaic con- 
veniences of the steamboat. It is no doubt true of the 
Amazons, as of other tropical regions, that a long residence 
