94 A NATURALIST ON THE " CHALLENGER." 



St. Amaro, form with each other roughly an equilateral triangle, 

 being each distant from the other about eight leagues. 



My guide was a German, who acted as interpreter on the 

 railroad. He spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish and 

 Portuguese, and had been in Brazil about twelve years. He 

 was a wild sort of young fellow, and had undergone various 

 vicissitudes of fortune, having been once reduced to selling 

 jerked beef, and once having been a dancing-master. He was 

 a capital merry companion, knowing everyone on the road and 

 having a joke for all. 



We rode extremely well-broken mules of large size that 

 ambled along, rendering it no labour to ride. Mine much 

 preferred his natural rough trot to ambling, and tried to make 

 me put up with it, finding that I was a tyro at mule riding. 

 But I was told that I was ruining the beast by letting Mm get 

 into bad habits, and was told to dig in my spurs and jerk back 

 his head with the bit at the same time. This receipt never 

 failed to make the poor brute so thoroughly uncomfortable that 

 he ambled as softly as possible at once. 



The road led up the steep side of the river valley on to the 

 table land above, From the top of the hill there is a fine view 

 of the river and its valleys, and the white town below. Some 

 trees, the leaves of which turn scarlet before dropping, set 

 off the green of the rest of the landscape. In their action on 

 foliage and plant life generally, the wet and dry seasons take 

 the place of summer and winter at home, and many plants 

 become bare of their leaves at the dry season, and only burst 

 out again into leaf at the commencement of the wet season. 

 This condition is far more marked in other regions of South 

 America. Humboldt observed that certain trees anticipated the 

 coming wet season, and put out their leaves some weeks before 

 there was any appearance of its approach. 



The road was very much like a green lane. In places a 

 regular slough of mud, in others dry and sandy ; it was broad, 

 but usually more or less overgrown with grass and weeds, with 

 a narrow track picked out along the best ground by the mules. 

 There were numerous cottages along the road, and fields of 

 tobacco, maize, and cassava ; every now and then a bit of wood 



