CEARA. 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 Martius, 

 or even of more recent travellers, like Castelnau, 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 



