124 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. ill. 



Mr. Wilson was obliged to be next day at Santo Amaro, a lit- 

 tle town about thirty miles distant, across one of the ridges, on 

 another river where he had a line of steamers plying, and he 

 asked us to ride there with him ; so we went back to his house 

 and dined, and spent the evening at his window inhaling the 

 soft, flower-perfumed air, and gazing at the stars twinkling in 

 their crystal dome of the deepest blue, and their travesties in 

 a galaxy of fire-flies glittering and dancing over the flowers in 

 the garden beneath us. It was late when we tossed ourselves 

 down to take a short sleep, for two o'clock was the hour fixed 

 to be in the saddle in the morning. We rode out of the town 

 in the starlight — Mr. AVilson, Captain Maclear, and myself, with 

 a native guide, on a fast mule. We were now obliged to trust 

 entirely to the instinct of our horses ; for if a path were visible 

 in the daylight, there was certainly none in the dark, and we 

 scrambled for a couple of hours right up the side of the ridge. 

 When we reached the top, we came out upon flat, open ground 

 with a little cultivation, bounded in front of us by the dark line 

 of dense forest. The night was almost absolutely silent ; only 

 now and then a peculiar shrill cry of some night-bird reached 

 us from the woods. As we got into the skirt of the forest, the 

 morning broke ; but the reveil in a Brazilian forest is won- 

 derfully different from the slow creeping-on of the dawn of a 

 summer morning at home, to the music of the thrushes answer- 

 ing one another's full rich notes from neighboring thorn-trees. 

 Suddenly a yellow light spreads upward in the east, the stars 

 quickly fade, and the dark fringes of the forest and the tall 

 palms show out black against the yellow sky, and, almost before " 

 one has time to observe the change, the sun has risen, straight 

 and fierce, and the whole landscape is bathed in the full light 

 of day. But the morning is for yet another hour cool and 

 fresh, and the scene is indescribably beautiful. The woods, so 

 absolutely silent and still before, break at once into noise and 

 movement. Flocks of toucans flutter and scream on the tops 



