RESUME. 



369 



nothing could be more pleasant than the weather when I was there in 

 June. 



The country everywhere in Peru, at the eastern foot of the Andes, is 

 such as I have described above. Further down we find the soil, the 

 peculiar condition, the productions of a country which is occasionally 

 overflowed, and then subjected, with still occasional showers, to the 

 influence of a tropical sun. From these causes we see a fecundity of 

 soil and a rapidity of vegetation that is marvellous, and to which even 

 Egypt, the ancient granary of Europe, affords no parallel, because, 

 similar in some other respects, this country has the advantage of Egypt 

 in that there is here no drought. Here trees, evidently young, shoot 

 up to such a height that no fowling piece will reach the game seated 

 on their topmost branches, and with such rapidity that the roots have 

 not strength or sufficient hold upon the soil to support their weight, and 

 they are continually falling, borne down by the slightest breeze, or by 

 the mass of parasites and creepers that envelop them from root to top. 



This is the country of rice, of sarsaparilla, of India-rubber, balsam 

 copaiba, gum copal, animal and vegetable wax, cocoa, Brazilian nutmeg, 

 Tonka beans, ginger, black pepper, arrow-root, tapioca, annatto, indigo, 

 sapucaia, and Brazil nuts ; dyes of the gayest colors, drugs of rare 

 virtue, variegated cabinet woods of the finest grain, and susceptible of 

 the highest polish. The forests are filled with game, and the rivers 

 stocked with turtle and fish. Here dwell the anta or wild cow, the 

 peixi-boi or fish-ox, the sloth, the ant-eater, the beautiful black tiger, 

 the mysterious electric eel, the boa constrictor, the anaconda, the deadly 

 coral snake, the voracious alligator, monkeys in endless variety, birds of 

 the most brilliant plumage, and insects of the strangest forms and gayest 

 colors. 



The climate of this country is salubrious and the temperature agree- 

 able. The direct rays of the sun are tempered by an almost constant 

 east wind, laden with moisture from the ocean, so that one never 

 suffers either from heat or cold. The man accustomed to this climate 

 is ever unwilling to give it up for a more bracing one, and will generally 

 refuse to exchange the abandon and freedom from restraint that char- 

 acterises his life there, for the labor and struggle necessary even to 

 maintain existence in a more rigorous climate or barren soil. The 

 active, the industrious, and the enterprising, will be here, as elsewhere, 

 in advance of his fellows ; but this is the very paradise of the lazy and 

 the careless. Here, and here only, such an one may maintain life almost 

 without labor. 



I met with no epidemics on my route ; except at Para, the country 

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