PEEFACE. 

An earnest desire to visit a tropical country, to behold 
the luxuriance of animal and vegetable life said to exist 
there, and to see with my own eyes all those wonders 
which I had so much delighted to read of in the narra- 
tives of travellers, were the motives that induced me to 
break through the trammels of business and the ties of 
home, and start for 
“ Some far land where endless summer reigns.” 
My attention was directed to Para and the Amazon 
by Mr. Edwards’s little book, ‘A Voyage up the Ama- 
zon,’ and I decided upon going there, both on account 
of its easiness of access and the little that was known of 
it compared with most other parts of South America. 
I proposed to pay my expenses by making collections 
in Natural History, and I have been enabled to do so; 
and the pleasures I have found in the contemplation of 
the strange and beautiful objects continually met with, 
and the deep interest arising from the study in their 
native Avilds of the varied races of mankind, have been 
such as to determine my continuing in the pursuit I 
