their doors and windows open to the street, and people walk in
and out as they please; there is always, however, a more secluded
apartment, where the female members of the families reside. In
their familiarity there is nothing intentionally offensive, and
it is practised simply in the desire to be civil and sociable. A
young Mameluco, named Soares, an Escrivao, or public clerk, took
me into his house to show me his library. I was rather surprised
to see a number of well-thumbed Latin classics: Virgil, Terence,
Cicero's Epistles, and Livy. I was not familiar enough, at this
early period of my residence in the country, with Portuguese to
converse freely with Senhor Scares, or ascertain what use he made
of these books; it was an unexpected sight, a classical library
in a mud-plastered and palm-thatched hut on the banks of the
Tocantins.

The prospect from the village was magnificent, over the green
wooded islands, far away to the grey line of forest on the
opposite shore of the Tocantins. We were now well out of the low
alluvial country of the Amazons proper, and the climate was
evidently much drier than it is near Para. They had had no rain
here for many weeks, and the atmosphere was hazy around the
horizon-- so much so that the sun, before setting, glared like a
blood-red globe. At Para this never happens; the stars and sun
are as clear and sharply defined when they peep above the distant
treetops as they are at the zenith. This beautiful transparency
of the air arises, doubtless, from the equal distribution through
it of invisible vapour. I shall ever remember, in one of my
voyages along the Para river, the grand spectacle that was once
presented at sunrise. Our vessel was a large schooner, and we
were bounding along before a spanking breeze, which tossed the