344 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
are no trifling labour, and I am incessantly at work. It is a long while 
since I received any home letters. I am at a great distance from Dar- 
jeeling, and my post is often twenty days in reaching me from thence. 
I mean to remain in this place a few days, and then descend leisurely 
to Choongtam.” “J. D. Hooker 
> 
Mr. Spruce’s Voyage to Para. 
Our readers will be glad to learn that Mr. Spruce, whom we had 
announced as on the point of embarking on a botanical voyage up the 
Amazon River, has safely reached Para, after the extraordinarily quick pas- 
sage, in a sailing vessel, from Liverpool, of only thirty-five days. “ I write 
a hasty note,” Mr.S. says, on the 13th July, dated Para, “ to inform 
you of our arrival. We made the port of Para yesterday (the 12th) 
about 10 o'clock, p.M., after a splendid run of thirty-five days ; while 
the Windsor, which sacle eighteen days before us, arrived here only 
this morning! Notwithstanding our short passage, we were becalmed 
eight days in the tropics, between losing the N. E. trades and falling 
in with the S. E. trades; and a dreary time we poor passengers had of 
it; though we perhaps could not have had a better introduction to the 
heat of the tropies, and we shall scarcely ever suffer more from the 
same cause. Incoming up the Rio Para by night, with an ignorant 
and drunken pilot, we struck on a sunken rock, which took us about 
midships, while we had deep water at both stem and stern; and there 
we lay, with the ship almost on her beam-ends, a tremendous tide run- 
ning, which threatened every moment to cant us over, though, happily, 
at the end of three anxious hours it floated us off in safety. 
You will not expect much information about plants. I strolled out 
this morning before breakfast, and fell in with a few of the charac- 
teristic plants of this coast. On the river-banks are some Amaryllises, 
in flower, some large Cyperi, &c. In waste places trails a pretty 
Ipomea. A suffruticose Verbena, one of the Brazilian “teas,” grows 
everywhere on ruinous walls. By the river, the walls of soft sandstone 
are clad with a moss resembling Trichostomum Barbula. A species of 
Manihot (not the real Mandiocca) grows everywhere, and two or 
three other pretty Euphorbiaceous plants. However, I mention this 
