EMBAKKED FOR HOME. 323 



Upon the l8tli of January we bade fai-ewell to Para, 

 and upon the " Tigrcs " embarked for home. As we passed 

 slowly down the Para River, the sliores became more and 

 more indistinct, and, while we were still upon its turbid 

 waters, land entirely disappeared. From the mouth of 

 the river we sailed directly to Barbadoes, one of the 

 Windward Islands of the West Indies. Here we delayed 

 one day, the Sabbath, and then again weighed anchor. 

 In the gray light of the morning of the 11th of February, 

 we welcomed the snowy hills of Neversink; soon we 

 were pushing through the floes of ice that choked the 

 harbor of New York, and in a few hours the cars were 

 bearing us rapidly along the banks of the ice-locked Hud- 

 son, toward our home. Nothing impressed more deeply 

 upon our minds the equatorial scenes we had left, than tlie 

 stransre contrast between the snow-clad banks of our 

 frozen Hudson and the forest-fringed shores of the ever- 

 verdant Amazons. Pleasant were our wanderings, and 

 ever vivid will be our recollections of Nature under the 

 Tropics. 



