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 

 case was perforated with holes leading into the ground 



