388 EXCURSIONS BEYOND EGA. Cuap. XIII. 
been erected on the borders of these new roads. The noble forest 
trees had been cut down, and their naked half-burnt stems remained in 
the midst of ashes, muddy puddles, and heaps of broken branches. 
I was obliged to hire a negro boy to show me the way to my favourite 
path near Una, which I have described in the second chapter of this 
narrative ; the new clearings having quite obliterated the old forest 
roads. Only a few acres of the glorious forest near Una now remained 
in their natural state. On the other side of the city, near to the old 
road to the rice mills, several scores of woodsmen were employed, 
under government, in cutting a broad carriage-road through the forest 
to Maranham, the capital of the neighbouring province, distant 250 
miles from Para, and this had entirely destroyed the solitude of the 
grand old forest path. In the course of a few years, however, a new 
growth of creepers will cover the naked tree-trunks on the borders of 
this new road, and luxuriant shrubs form a green fringe to the path: 
it will then become as beautiful a woodland road as the old one was. 
A naturalist will have, henceforward, to go farther from the city to find 
the glorious forest scenery which lay so near in 1848, and work much 
more laboriously than was formerly needed, to make the large collec- 
tions which Mr. Wallace and I succeeded in doing in the neighbourhood 
of Para. 
June 2nd, 1859.—At length, on the 2nd of June, I left Para, 
probably for ever; embarking in a North American trading-vessel, the 
Frederick Demming, for New York, the United States route being 
the quickest as well as the pleasantest way of reaching England. My 
extensive private collections were divided into three portions, and sent 
by three separate ships, to lessen the risk of loss of the whole. On the 
evening ofthe 3rd of June, I took a last view of the glorious forest for 
which I had so much love, and to explore which I had devoted so 
many years. The saddest hours I ever recollect to have spent were 
those of the succeeding night, when, the mameluco pilot having left us 
free of the shoals and out of sight of land, though within the mouth of the 
river, at anchor, waiting for the wind, I felt that the last link which 
connected me with the land of so many pleasing recollections was 
broken. The Paraenses, who are fully aware of the attractiveness of 
their country, have an alliterative proverb, “Quem vai para (0) Para 
para,” “He who goes to Parad stops there,’ and I had often thought 
I should myself have been added to the list of examples. The desire, 
however, of seeing again my parents and enjoying once more the rich 
pleasures of intellectual society, had succeeded in overcoming the 
attractions of a region which may be fittingly called a Naturalist’s 
Paradise. During this last night on the Para river a crowd of unusual 
thoughts occupied my mind. Recollections of English climate, scenery, 
and modes of life came to me with a vividness I had never before 
experienced during the eleven years of my absence. Pictures of 
startling clearness rose up of the gloomy winters, the long grey twi- 
lights, murky atmosphere, elongated shadows, chilly springs, and sloppy 
summers ; of factory chimneys and crowds of grimy operatives, rung to 
work in early morning by factory bells; of union workhouses, confined 
rooms, artificial cares, and slavish conventionalities. To live again 
