64 THE TOCANTINS AND CAMETA. Cuap. IV. 
The situation of the place, and the nature of the woods around it, 
promised well for novelties in birds and insects ; so we had no reason ~ 
to be vexed at the delay, but brought our apparatus and store-boxes up 
from the canoe, and set to work. 
The easy, lounging life of the people amused us very much. I after- 
wards had plenty of time to become used to tropical village life. There 
is a free, familiar, Axo dono pudblico style of living in these small places, 
which requires some time for a European to fall into. No sooner were 
we established in our rooms, than a number of lazy young fellows came to 
look on and make remarks, and we had to answer all sorts of questions. 
Thé houses have their doors and windows opened to the street, and 
people walk in and out as they please ; there is always, however, a more 
secluded apartment, where the female members of the families reside. 
In their familiarity there is nothing intentionally offensive, and it is 
practised simply in the desire to be civil and sociable. A young Mame- 
luco, named Soares, an Escrivad, or public clerk, took me into his 
house to show me his library. I was rather surprised to see a number 
of well-thumbed Latin classics, Virgil, Terence, Cicero’s Epistles, and 
Livy. I was not familiar enough, at this early period of my residence in 
the country, with Portuguese, to converse freely with Senhor Soares, 
or ascertain what use he made of these books ; it was an unexpected 
sight, a classical library in a mud-plastered and palm-thatched hut on 
the banks of the Tocantins. 
The prospect from the village was magnificent, over the green wooded 
islands, far away to the grey line of forest on the opposite shore of 
the Tocantins. We were now well out of the low alluvial country of 
the Amazons proper, and the climate was evidently much drier than it 
is near Para. They had had no rain here for many weeks, and the 
atmosphere was hazy around the horizon; so much so that the sun, 
before setting, glared like a blood-red globe. At Para this never happens ; 
the stars and sun are as clear and sharply defined when they peep 
above the distant tree-tops as they are at the zenith. This beautiful 
transparency of the air arises, doubtless, from the equal distribution 
through it of invisible vapour. I shall ever remember, in one of my 
voyages along the Para river, the grand spectacle that was once 
presented at sunrise. Our vessel was a large schooner, and we were 
bounding along before a spanking breeze, which tossed the waters into 
foam, when the day dawned. So clear was the air, that the lower rim 
of the full moon remained sharply defined until it touched the western 
horizon, whilst, at the same time, the sun rose in the east. The two 
great orbs were visible at the same time, and the passage from the 
moonlit night to day was so gentle, that it seemed to be only the 
brightening of dull weather. The woods around Baiao were of second 
growth, the ground having been formerly cultivated. A great number 
of coffee and cotton trees grew amongst the thickets. A fine woodland 
pathway extends for miles over the high, undulating bank, leading from 
one house to another along the edge of the cliff. I went into several of 
them, and talked to their inmates. They were all poor people. The 
men were out fishing, some far away, a distance of many days’ journey ; 
the women plant mandioca, make the farinha, spin and weave cotton, 
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