174 LOWER AMAZONS—OBYDOS TO MANAOS. Cnarp. VII. 
notwithstanding the endless number of trivial formalities which Brazilians 
employ in every small detail of administration, these have nothing to 
do the greater part of their time. None of the people who flocked to 
Barra on the establishment of the new government, seemed to care 
about the cultivation of the soil and the raising of food, although these 
would have been most profitable speculations. The class of Portuguese 
who emigrate to Brazil seem to prefer petty trading to the honourable 
pursuit of agriculture. If the English are a nation of shopkeepers, what 
are we to say of the Portuguese? I counted in Barra, one store for 
every five dwelling-houses. These stores, or ¢avernas, have often not 
more than fifty pounds’ worth of goods for their whole stock ; and the 
Portuguese owners, big lusty fellows, stand all day behind their dirty 
counters for the sake of selling a few coppers’ worth of liquors, or small 
wares. These men all give the same excuse for not applying themselves 
to agriculture—namely, that no hands can be obtained to work on the 
soil. Nothing can be done with Indians: indeed, they are fast leaving 
the neighbourhood altogether; and the importation of negro slaves, 
in the present praiseworthy temper of the Brazilian mind, is out of the 
question. The problem, how to obtain a labouring class for a new and 
tropical country, without slavery, has to be solved before this glorious 
region can become what its delightful climate and exuberant fertility fit 
it for—the abode of a numerous, civilised, and happy people. 
I found at Barra my companion, Mr. Wallace, who, since our joint 
Tocantins expedition, had been exploring, partly with his brother, lately 
arrived from England, the north-eastern coast of Marajé, the river 
Capim (a branch of the Guamd, near Para), Monte Alegre, and 
Santarem. He had passed us by night below Serpa, on his way 
to Barra, and so had arrived about three weeks before me. Besides 
ourselves there were half a dozen other foreigners here congregated— 
Englishmen, Germans, and Americans; one of them a natural-history 
collector, the rest traders on the rivers. In the pleasant society of these, 
and of the family of Senhor Henriques, we passed a delightful time ; the 
miseries of our long river voyages were soon forgotten, and in two or 
three weeks we began to talk of further explorations. Meantime we had 
almost daily rambles in the neighbouring forest. The country around 
Barra is undulating and furrowed by ravines, through which flow rivulets 
of clear, cold water, along whose banks many picturesque nooks occur. 
The whole surface of the land, down to the water’s edge, is covered by 
the uniform dark green rolling forest, the cad-apoam (convex woods) 
of the Indians, characteristic of the Rio Negro. This clothes also the 
extensive areas of low land, which are flooded by the river in the rainy 
season. ‘The olive-brown tinge of the water seems to be derived from 
the saturation in it of the dark green foliage during these annual inunda- 
tions. ‘The great contrast in form and colour between the forests of the 
Rio Negro and those of the Amazons arises from the predominance in 
each of different families of plants. On the main river palms of twenty 
or thirty different species form a great proportion of the mass of trees, 
whilst on the Rio Negro they play a very subordinate part. The cha- 
racteristic kind in the latter region is the Jaré (Leopoldinia pulchra), a 
