FROM PARA 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 hardships 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 : u 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* 



