1832.] MONTE VIDEO. 241 



sit down and send me a long account of yourself and 

 our friends ; both what you have, and what [you] intend 

 doing ; otherwise in three or four more years when I return 

 you will be all strangers to me. Considering how many 

 months have passed, we have not in the Beagle made much 

 way round the world. Hitherto everything has well repaid 

 the necessary trouble and loss of comfort. We stayed three 

 weeks at the Cape de Verds ; it was no ordinary pleasure 

 rambling over the plains of lava under a tropical sun, but 

 when I first entered on and beheld the luxuriant vegetation 

 in Brazil it was realizing the visions in the ' Arabian Nights.' 

 The brilliancy of the scenery throws one into a delirium of 

 delight, and a beetle hunter is not likely soon to awaken from 

 it, when whichever way he turns fresh treasures meet his eye. 

 At Rio de Janeiro three months passed away like so many 

 weeks. I made a most delightful excursion during this time 

 of 150 miles into the country. I stayed at an estate which 

 is the last of the cleared ground, behind is one vast impene- 

 trable forest. It is almost impossible to imagine the quietude 

 of such a life. Not a human being within some miles in- 

 terrupts the solitude. To seat oneself amidst the gloom of 

 such a forest on a decaying trunk, and then think of home, 

 is a pleasure worth taking some trouble for. 



We are at present in a much less interesting country. 

 One single walk over the undulatory turf plain shows every- 

 thing which is to be seen. It is not at all unlike Cambridge- 

 shire, only that every hedge, tree and hill must be levelled, 

 and arable land turned into pasture. All South America is 

 in such an unsettled state that we have not entered one port 

 without some sort of disturbance. At Buenos Ayres a shot 

 came whistling over our heads ; it is a noise I had never 

 before heard, but I found I had an instinctive knowledge of 

 what it meant. The other day we landed our men here, and 

 took possession at the request of the inhabitants of the central 

 fort. We philosophers do not bargain for this sort of work, 



