Y72 



THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS. 



'the beautiful squares, streets, and avenues. ' 

 I found also the habits of the people con- 

 siderably changed. Many of the old religious 

 holidays had declined in importance, and 

 -.given way to secular amusements social 

 parties, balls, music, billiards, and so forth. 

 There was quite as much pleasure-seeking as 

 formerly, but it was turned iu a more rational 

 direction, and the Paraenses seemed now to 

 copy rather the customs of the noithern na- 

 tions of Europe, than those of the mother- 

 country, Portugal. I was glad to see seve- 

 jal new book-sellers' shops, and also a fine 

 edifice devoted to a reading-room, supplied 

 wilh periodicals, globes, and maps, and a cir- 

 culating library. There were now many 

 pi hit ing offices, and four daily newspapers. 

 The health of the place had greatly improved 

 since 1850, the year of the yellow fever, and 

 Para was now considered no longer danger- 

 ous t > new comers. 



S > much for the improvements vishile in 

 the place, and now for the dark side of the 

 picture. Tke expenses of living had in- 

 creased about fourfold, a natural consequence 

 of the demand for labor and for native pro- 

 ducts of all kinds having augmented in 

 .greater ratio than the supply, through large 

 arrivals of non - productive residents, and 

 considerable importations of money on ac- 

 r >uut of the steamboat company and foreign 

 merchants. Para, in 1848, was one of the 

 cheapest places of residence on the American 

 continent ; it was now one of the dearest. 

 Imported articles of fo:>d, clothing, an:l fur- 

 niture were mostly cheaper, although charged 

 with duties varying from 18 to 80 per cent, 

 besides high freights an 1 large profits, than 

 those produced in the neighborhood. Salt 

 codfish was twopence per pound cheaper 

 than the vile salt pirarucu of the country. 

 Oranges, which could formerly be had al- 

 most gratis, were now sold in the streets at 

 the rate of three for a penny ; large bananas 

 were a penny each ; tomatoes were from 

 twopence to threepence each, and all other 

 fruit in this fruit-producing country had ad- 

 vanced in like proportion. Mandioca-meal, 

 Ihe bread of the country, had become so 

 scarce and dear and bad, that the poorer 

 classes of natives suffered famine, and all 

 who could afford it were obliged to eat 

 wheaten bread at fourpence t;> fivepence per 

 pound, made from American flour, 1200 bar- 

 j Is of which were consumed monthly ; this 

 \vas now, therefore, a very serious item of 

 daily expense to all but the most wealthy. 

 House-rent was most exorbitant ; a miser- 

 able little place of two rooms, without fix- 

 tures or conveniences of any kind, having 

 simply blank walls, cost at the rale of 18 

 sterling a year. Lastly, the hire of servants 

 "was beyond the means of all persons in mod- 

 erate circumstances ; a lazy cook or porter 

 could not be had for less than three or four 

 shillings a day, besides his board and what 

 he could steal. It cost me balf-a-crown for 

 the hire of a small boat and one man, to dis- 

 embark from the steamer, a distance of 100 

 yards. 



In rambling over my old ground in th 

 forests of the neighborhood, I found great 

 changes had taken place tome, changes for 

 the worse. The mantle of shrubs, bushes, 

 and creeping plants which formerly, when 

 the suburbs were undisturbed by axe 01 

 spade, had been left free to arrange itself hi 

 rich, full, and smooth sheets and masses ovei 

 the forest borders, had been nearly all cut 

 away, and troops of laborers were still em- 

 ployed cutting ugly muddy roads for carts 

 and cattle, through the once clean and lonely 

 woods. Houses and mills had been erected 

 on the borders of these new roads The 

 noblo forest trees had been cut down, and 

 their naked half- burned stems remained in 

 the midst of ashes, muddy puddles, arid 

 heaps of broken branches. I was obliged to 

 hire a negro boy to show me the way to my 

 favorite path near Una, which I have de- 

 Fcribed in the second chapter of this narra- 

 tive, the new clearings having quite oblit- 

 erated the old forest roads. Only a few 

 acres of the glorious forest near Una now re- 

 mained in their natural state. On the other 

 side of the city, near the old road to the rice 

 mills, several scores of woodmen were em- 

 ployed, under government, in cutting a 

 broad carriage - road through the forest to 

 Maranham, the capital of the neighboring 

 province, distant 250 miles from Para, and 

 this had entirely destroyed the solitude of the 

 grand o'd forest path. In the course of a 

 few years, however, a new growth of creepers 

 will cover the naked tree-trunks on the bor- 

 ders 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, hence- 

 forward, 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 

 collections which Mr. Wallace and I suc- 

 ceeded in doing in the neighborhood of Para. 

 June 2d, 1859. At length, on the second 

 of June, I left Para, probably forever ; em 

 barking iu 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 Eng- 

 land. 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 of the 3d of 

 June, I took a last view of the glorious forest 

 for which I had so much love, and to ex- 

 plore 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 pHot Laving 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 al- 

 literative proverb, ' ' Quern vai para (o) Para 

 para/' " He whojfc-vs io Para stfj>s there." 



