4 



TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. 



[June, 



nected and definite impression on the mind. Thus it is that 

 travellers who crowd into one description all the wonders and 

 novelties which it took them weeks and months to observe, must 

 produce an erroneous impression on the reader, and cause him, 

 when he visits the spot, to experience much disappointment. 

 As one instance of what is meant, it may be mentioned that 

 during the first week of our residence in Para, though constantly 

 in the forest in the neighbourhood of the city, I did not see a 

 single humming-bird, parrot, or monkey. And yet, as I 

 afterwards found, humming-birds, parrots, and monkeys are 

 plentiful enough in the neighbourhood of Para ; but they 

 require looking for, and a certain amount of acquaintance 

 with them is necessary in order to discover their haunts, and 

 some practice is required to see them in the thick forest, even 

 when you hear them close by you. 



But still Para has quite enough to redeem it from the 

 imputations we may be supposed to have cast upon it. Every 

 day showed us something fresh to admire, some new wonder 

 we had been taught to expect as the invariable accompaniment 

 of a luxuriant country within a degree of the equator. Even 

 now, while writing by the last glimmer of twilight, the vampire 

 bat is fluttering about the room, hovering among the timbers 

 of the roof (for there are no ceilings), and now and then 

 whizzing past my ears with a most spectral noise." 



The city has been laid out on a most extensive plan ; many 

 of the churches and public buildings are very handsome, but 

 decay and incongruous repairs have injured some of them, 

 and bits of gardens and waste ground intervening between the 

 houses, fenced in v/ith rotten palings, and filled with rank 

 weeds and a few banana-plants, look strange and unsightly to 

 a European eye. The squares and public places are pictur- 

 esque, either from the churches and pretty houses which 

 surround them, or from the elegant palms of various species, 

 which with the plantain and banana everywhere occur; but 

 they bear more resemblance to village-greens than to parts 

 of a great city. A few paths lead across them in different 

 directions through a tangled vegetation of weedy cassias, 

 shrubby convolvuli, and the pretty orange-flowered Asclepias 

 curassavica^ — plants which here take the place of the rushes, 

 docks, and nettles of England. The principal street, the 

 Rua dos Mercadores " (Street of Merchants), contains almost 



