408 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



To-day the soil has varied, from a fine, rich, red clay, mingled with 

 mica, to a white, glittering, micaceous sand, held together by a soft, sapo- 

 naceous substance. Our road winds round the sides of hills, and 

 across deep ravines, for ten miles, in a direction of N. W. We 

 passed by the village of Paiol, which contains six or seven huts, 

 and being two hundred feet higher, than at our last resting place, 

 found the thermometer 60°. at six o'clock in the morning, with fine 

 weather, at 80°. in the afternoon, with a cloudy sky, and 74°. at ten 

 at night. 



Upon the heights I shot a Toucan, a species of bird M'hich we begin 

 frequently to meet with, whose plumage was exceedingly beautiful. The 

 upper mandible had a streak of black along the top of it, the sides were 

 a brownish white, the lower one entirely black. The head and neck 

 were dark purple, the back, between the wings, dark green, at^ the root 

 of the tail, and on its upper side, was a large patch of vivid red, a broad 

 bar of the same colour stretched across its breast from wing to wing ; the 

 colour of these was dark green, with seventeen pennated feathers in 

 each ; the tail had four long and as many short feathers, the upper side 

 of which was green ; the breast and belly were yellow. Though the 

 plumage of these birds is not only very beautiful, but perhaps the most 

 various of any species of birds that exists in Brazil, the green and purple 

 colours were of that kind which appear so only when beheld in a certain 

 direction relative to the light, in every other position they appear a 

 dark and dirty brown. The flight of Toucans is heavy, and their 

 appearance in the air singular, for they carry their bill, head, neck, 

 and body in a right line, so that they seem to be overweighted forward. 



In the afternoon several Gold Searchers came to us, and exhibited 

 specimens of what their labour produced. The sale of it in the state of 

 dust is prohibited, nor would any Foreigner, who has property at stake 

 in the country, purchase it without extreme caution. Yet it is as 

 impossible to convince these people that a stranger, who appears among 

 them, has any other object in view, as it is to make the cutters of Fustic 

 and Brazil-wood sensible that he has not a vessel hovering on the coast ; 



