70 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



arias,' a peculiar kind of boat used by the natives. . . . 

 When travelling in this manner, they stopped for the night, 

 and indeed sometimes lingered for days, in Indian settle- 

 ments, or in the more secluded Indian lodges, which are 

 to be found settled on the shores of almost every lake or 

 channel. . . . Sometimes the party were settled, for weeks 

 at a time, in more civilized fashion, in the towns or villages 

 on the banks of the main river, or its immediate neighbor- 

 hood, at Manaos, Ega, Obydos, and elsewhere. Wherever 

 they sojourned, whether for a longer or a shorter time, the 

 scientific work went on uninterruptedly. There was not 

 an idle member in the company." 



Mrs. Agassiz's narrative in the Journey in Brazil is im- 

 personal, and only in an occasional episode she inadvert- 

 ently throws a side-light upon her own place in the party; 

 as, for example, in her description of an evening while she 

 was staying at the lodge of an Indian, Esperanga, in a re- 

 mote part of the Amazons, when after two of the natives 

 had danced an Indian dance for her, she executed a waltz 

 with Mr. Thayer to gratify their request that she show 

 them a dance "from her country." But in general she suc- 

 cessfully avoids drawing attention to herself in her story. 

 She says also very little, if anything, of the pleasant inter- 

 course with the Imperial family that was accorded her as 

 well as Agassiz, and that formed an important element in 

 their visit to Rio de Janeiro. She refrained, too, from pub- 

 lishing statements that might have been interpreted as 

 criticisms of a country where special favors had so recently 

 been accorded to Agassiz, yet that now have a certain kind 

 of historic interest as a description of conditions in the 

 Brazil of fifty years ago. A few selections from her Bra- 



