196 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
for a good distance, and the current was so furious 
that even with the strong wind we could not make 
head against it, so that we were obhged to creep 
up as close inshore as the depth of water would 
allow, and aid with poles. . . . 
On the morning of the 2nd of December, a 
montaria came up with us, in which was an old man 
who was bound for a sugar engenho that an 
Englishman named M'Culloch was forming on a 
Parana-min', separated from the main channel of 
the Amazon by a long island called Tamatari. I 
had made Mr. M'Culloch's acquaintance at Para, so 
that I gladly availed myself of the opportunity to 
go forward in the montaria and visit him. We 
reached the engenho at 2 p.m., and I remained 
there until our boat came up, about noon the next 
day. There was at that epoch no manufactory of 
sugar on the Amazon, except near Para, and at 
this distance in the interior the difficulties to be 
overcome in carrying out such an undertaking 
were immense. Mr. M'Culloch's career, indeed, 
as he himself sketched it to me, furnishes an in- 
structive example of the risks and difficulties 
attending any enterprise on a large scale — any 
e77tpresa en grande — in the far interior of South 
America. I know no better field for the skilled 
artisan, with steady habits, than the coast towns of 
both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of South 
America. The pay is so good that a man with a 
turn for saving soon accumulates capital ; and if he 
employ it in business on his own account, and stick 
to the neighbourhood of the coast, he is almost 
certain to become wealthy ; but if he be tempted 
to embark it in industrial, and especially in agri- 
