PLANS FOR JOURNEY TO BRAZIL. 625 



employ my summer. I foresaw that in going 

 to Nahant I 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 rememher that 

 at the time of my dbut as an author, my 

 attention was turned to the natural history 

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

 lectures at the LoweU 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, 



40 



