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 



