3842 Natural-History Collectors. 



banks, especially off the rocky points. There is no current or tide to 

 aid in descending the river, and to complete the difficulty, the trade- 

 winds blow furiously upward from the Amazons all day, and often at 

 night. The slightest wind is sufficient to obstruct all progress by oar, 

 but the wind generally blew a gale, and sometimes a regular hurri- 

 cane. Three times we were near being wrecked. The time for 

 travelling is at night, when sometimes a gentle land-breeze from the 

 eastern shore assists, but this is apt, towards midnight, to veer too 

 much towards the North. When this was the case, or when there 

 was no wind at all, we got along by poleing; the vessel went very well 

 in one fathom of water, which was generally the depth about half a 

 mile from the shore, and thus we were at last enabled to reach Santa- 

 rem in safety. In travelling at night, it was necessary to calculate 

 well the voyage from one harbour (of which there are several along 

 the coast, called by the inhabitants esperas, or waiting-places) to ano- 

 ther. However, I am glad to have to tell you that 1 am safe again in 

 a civilized town, with all my collections landed in good condition. 



" The river Cupare proved an excellent locality. The banks of the 

 Tapajos are too dry and sandy, and the forest too sparse for any great 

 abundance of insects ; but the district of the Cupare proved to be a 

 deep and wide valley, between the dry hilly country, the soil clayey, 

 and the forest very luxuriant. I reached the country of the savage 

 Indians, passing the last half-civilized village (called Maloca) of the 

 Mundurucus, and must have been near the sources of the Xinga. I 

 was sorry to find no great amount of novelty among the Diurnes, i. e. 9 

 groups of new species of conspicuous things, which we may say make 

 a great change in the fauna of a country, as was the case in passing 

 up the Amazons to Ega. But the number of new species, one or two 

 of a genus of those genera frequent at Para, &c, will be great, and I 

 have no doubt will much please our friends. In the genus Papilio I 

 found nothing new, and the usual species very rare ; this was the case 

 generally in the Nymphalidae, but I have plenty of species new to me 

 in Pieris, Leptalis. Heliconia, Ithomia, Eurygona and allied genera, 

 Nymphidium, Calospilus, Satyridae, Theclae and Hesperiadae. A few 

 Ega species occurred, such as Papilio Pausanias, Timetes Themisto- 

 cles, and Margarea, two species of Cybdelis and one Arisba, but only 

 one or two individuals of each. There is a small but I think very good 

 collection of Coleoptera and other orders. I also paid much attention 

 to the fishes ; most of them were very curious and new to me. Of the 

 small kinds I preserved two or three specimens of all the species I 

 could get, perhaps forty species ; of the larger species I could not get 



