PLANS FOR JOURNEY TO BRAZIL. 625 



employ my summer. I foresaw that in going 

 to Nahant 1 should not find the rest I need 

 after all the fatigue of the two last years, or, 

 at least, not enough of change and relaxation. 

 I felt that I must have new scenes to give me 

 new life. But where to go and what to do ? 



Perhaps I wrote you last year of the many 

 marks of kindness I have received from the 

 Emperor of Brazil, and you remember that 

 at the time of my d^but as an author, my 

 attention was turned to the natural history 

 of that country. Lately, also, in a course of 

 lectures at the Lowell Institute, I have been 

 led to compare the Alps, where I have passed 

 so many happy years, with the Andes, which 

 I have never seen. In short, the idea came to 

 me gradually, that I might spend the summer 

 at Rio de Janeiro, and that, with the present 

 facilities for travel, the journey would not be 

 too fatiguing for my wife. . . . Upon this, 

 then, I had decided, when most unexpectedly, 

 and as the consummation of all my wishes, 

 my pleasure trip was transformed into an im- 

 portant scientific expedition for the benefit of 

 the Museum, by the intervention of one of my 

 friends, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer. By chance I 

 met him a week ago in Boston. He laughed 



at me a little about my roving disposition, 

 VOL. n. 16 



