TROPICAL ABUNDANCE. 
125 
1849.] 
after any handsome flowers I admired, or to gather the 
fruit of the passion-flowers, which hung like golden 
apples in the thickets on the banks. His cane-field this 
year was a mile and a half long and a quarter of a mile 
wide, and very luxuriant ; across it were eight roads, 
all planted on each side with bananas and pine-apples. 
He informed me that when the fruit was in full season 
all the slaves and Indians had as much as they liked to 
take, and could never finish them all ; but, said he, “ It 
is not much trouble planting them when setting the 
cane-field, and I always do it, for I like to have plenty.” 
It was altogether a noble sight, — a sample of the over- 
flowing abundance produced by a fertile soil and a tro- 
pical sun. Plaving mentioned that I much wished to 
get a collection of fish to preserve in spirits, he set 
several Indians to work stopping up igaripes to poison 
the water, and others to fish at night with line and bow 
and arrow ; all that they procured being brought to me 
to select from, and the rest sent to the kitchen. The 
best way of catching a variety was however with a large 
drag-net fifty or sixty yards long. We went out one 
day in two canoes, and with about twenty Negroes and 
Indians, who swam with the net in the water, making a 
circuit, and then drew it out on to a beach. We had 
not very good fortune, but soon filled two half-bushel 
baskets with a great variety of fish, large and small, 
from which I selected a number of species to increase 
my collection. 
Senhor Calistro was now going to send several Indian 
hunters up a small stream into the deep forest to hunt 
for him, and salt and dry game, and bring home live 
