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MANAOS AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 287 



himself, which was drank in a closing bumper with per- 

 haps more animation than either of the others. The af- 

 ternoon closed with dancing, and at sunset the canoes 

 assembled and we returned to the city, all feeling, I 

 believe, that the festival had been a very happy one. 

 It certainly was so for those to whom it was intended to 

 give pleasure, and could hardly fail to be likewise for 

 those who had planned and executed it. It will seem 



i 



strange to many of my readers that Sunday should be 

 chosen for such a fete ; but here, as in many parts of 

 continental Europe, even in Protestant districts, Sunday is 

 a holiday and kept as such. 



November 27th. Yesterday I visited the prison where 

 the wife of the chief of police had invited me to see some 

 of the carved articles, straw work, <fcc., made by the prison- 

 ers. I had expected to be pained, because I thought, from 

 the retrograde character of things in general here, the 

 prison system would be bad. But the climate in these 

 hot countries regulates the prison life in some degree. 

 Men cannot be shut up in close, dark cells, without en- 

 dangering not only their own lives, but the sanitary con- 

 dition of the establishment also. Therefore the prison is 

 light and airy, with plenty of doors and windows, secured 

 by bars, but not otherwise closed. I infer, however, from 

 a passage on the prisons of the province, contained in one 

 of the able reports of President Adolfo de Barros (1864), 

 that within the last year there has been a great improve- 

 ment, at least in the prison of Manaos. He says : " The 

 state of the prisons exceeds all that can be said to their 

 disadvantage. Not only is it true that there is not to be 

 found throughout the province a prison which fulfils the 

 conditions imposed by the law, but there is not one which 



