in North-eastern Brazil. 319 



I saw nothing. Antonio himself was armed, like most Bra- 

 zilians, Avitli an ancient muzzle-loader of French make; it 

 was quite uncertain whether or not this weapon would go off 

 when needed. Usually it missed fire three or four times in 

 succession, by which time the bird aimed at had generally 

 been prudent enough to retire out of range. Hence he did 

 not increase my bag very much, though his astonishment at 

 the shooting-powers of my own gun, a double-barrelled central- 

 fire of 16 bore, was immense, a successful shot being invariably 

 greeted with much gesticulation of delight and loud remarks 

 of " Espingarda boa, espingarda tngleza," &c. 



After a very pleasant week at Parahyba I returned to Recife 

 by the steamer on the 24th. The ^Espirito Santo, ■* which 

 had come from Para, had on board as miscellaneous an assort- 

 ment of passengers as I have ever travelled with, and it 

 would be difficult to say whether there were more parrots or 

 slaves on board ; of the latter we had at least 200, on their 

 way south to Rio to be sold for the coffee-plantations. Besides 

 the parrots, chiefly Chrysotis cestiva, there were a lot of other 

 birds and. beasts, including a nice and tame Lagothrix and 

 some electric eels. Of the birds, the most noticeable was an 

 Icterus chrysocephalus, said to have come from the Rio Negro. 

 This I bought, and kept alive in Recife, but unfortunately it 

 died on its way home just as we got to Lisbon. I never saw 

 the species alive in Europe nor elsewhere in Brazil. 



When I left England I hoped to be able to go over- 

 land from Recife to the great waterfall Paulo Affonso, the 

 '' Niagara of Brazil,^'' on the S. -Francisco river. However, 

 the state of the roads up to the present time, as well as the 

 difficulty of getting an interpreter (my own knowledge of 

 Portuguese being very rudimentary), had prevented my 

 making a start as soon as I had hoped. At length I suc- 

 ceeded in getting hold of a man who would do, and a day or 

 two after my return from Parahyba, started with him from 

 Recife, I had also endeavoured to get some one to skin and 

 shoot, but in this was unsuccessful, the only man I could 

 hear of wanting terms for his services which were quite 

 unreasonable. The Recife and S. -Francisco railway runs 



