1850.] 
THE HOT SEASON. 
189 
information which there is no fountain to satisfy. In 
his conversation there was something racy and refresh- 
ing : such an absence of information, but such a fertility 
of ideas. He had read the Bible in Portuguese, as a 
forbidden book, though the priests make no very great 
objection to it here ; and it was sometliing new to hear a 
man’s opinions of it who had first read it at a mature 
age, and solely from a desire for information. The idea 
had not entered his mind that it was all inspired, so he 
made objections to all parts which he thought incredible, 
or which appeared to him to be capable of a simple ex- 
planation ; and, as might have been expected, he found 
of his own accord confirmation of the doctrines of the 
religion in which he had been brought up from child- 
hood. 
On arriving at Barra, the expected canoe had not 
arrived, and many weeks passed wearily away. The 
weather was fine, but Barra is a very poor locality for 
making collections. Insects were remarkably scarce and 
uninteresting, and I looked forward anxiously to the 
time when I could start for some distant and more pro- 
mising district. The season was very dry and hot : the 
thermometer, at two, every afternoon, reaching 94° and 
95° in the shade, and not often sinking belovf 75° dur- 
ing the night. The lowest which I observed, just before 
sunrise, was 70°, and the highest in the afternoon, 96°. 
There was scarcely any rain during the months of July 
and August, so the grass about the city was completely 
burnt up. The river was now falling rapidly, and the 
sand-banks in the Amazon were, some of them, just 
rising above the water. 
