NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 229 



tribe made a horrible noise at night at Caxoeira, a Bull Frog (Rana pipiens) shouting the 

 loudest with a deep bass voice. 



" The trip commenced the next morning. It was to be to Feira St. Anna, about 28 

 miles from Caxoeira, to see the great fair held there ever)* Monday, and from thence down 

 to St. Amaro, a town on another river running into the bay, whence steamer could be taken 

 for Bahia. Caxoeira, Feira St. Anna, and St. Amaro form with each other roughly an 

 equilateral triangle, being each distant from the other about eight leagues. 



" The guide was a German, who acted as interpreter on the railroad. He spoke English, 

 French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and had been in Brazil about twelve years. 

 He was a wild sort of young fellow, and had undergone various vicissitudes of fortune, 

 having been once reduced to selling jerked beef, and once having been a dancing-master. 

 He was a capital merry companion, knowing everyone on the road and having a joke for all. 



" Our party rode extremely well-broken mules of large size,that ambled along, rendering 

 it no labour to ride. The mules much prefer their natural rough trot to ambling, and 

 try to make a tyro at mule riding put up with it. But a valuable animal would soon be 

 ruined by letting him get into bad habits, and the regular thing to do is to dig in the spurs 

 and jerk back his head with the bit at the same time. This receipt never fails to make 

 the poor brute so thoroughly uncomfortable that he ambles as softly as possible at once. 



" The road led up the steep side of the river valley to the table land above. From 

 the top cf the hill there is a fine view of the river and its valleys, and the white town 

 below. Some trees, the leaves of which turn scarlet before dropping, set off the green 

 of the rest of the landscape. In their action on foliage and plant life generally, the wet 

 and dry seasons take the place of summer and winter at home, and many plants become 

 bare of their leaves at the dry season, and only burst out again into leaf at the commence- 

 ment of the wet season. This condition is far more marked in other regions of South 

 America. Humboldt observed that certain trees anticipated the coming wet season, and 

 put out their leaves some weeks before there was any appearance of its approach. 



" The road was very much like an English green lane; in places quite a slough of mud, 

 in others dry and sandy ; it was broad, but usually more or less overgrown with grass and 

 weeds, with a narrow track picked out along the best ground by the mules. There were 

 numerous cottages along the road, and fields of tobacco, maize, and cassava. Every now 

 and then a bit of wood was passed with beautiful flowers growing about it, and amongst 

 them numerous forms of Melastomaceas, with their characteristic three-veined leaves. 



" Here were seen most of the plants collected at Fernando Noronha growing as road- 

 side weeds. As we rode on, a splendid Iguana, about three feet in length, ran across the 

 road, the brilliancy of which was astonishing. 



" Every now and then a village was passed. In the first, as it was Sunday, the villagers 

 were enjoying a cock-fight ; every villager keeps a fighting-cock. Good Lisbon wine 

 is sold along the road ; the drinking-places consist of a hole about a yard square in the 



