business to come on a three months' picnic. It is the annual
custom of this class of people throughout the province to spend a
few months of the fine season in the wilder parts of the country.
They carry with them all the farinha they can scrape together,
this being the only article of food necessary to provide. The men
hunt and fish for the day's wants, and sometimes collect a little
India-rubber, salsaparilla, or copaiba oil, to sell to traders on
their return; the women assist in paddling the canoes, do the
cooking, and sometimes fish with rod and line. The weather is
enjoyable the whole time, and so days and weeks pass happily
away.

One of the men volunteered to walk with us into the forest, and
show us a few cedar trees. We passed through a mile or two of
spiny thickets, and at length came upon the banks of the rivulet
Trocara, which flows over a stony bed, and, about a mile above
its mouth, falls over a ledge of rocks, thus forming a very
pretty cascade. In the neighbourhood, we found a number of
specimens of a curious land-shell, a large flat Helix, with a
labyrinthine mouth (Anastoma). We learned afterwards that it was
a species which had been discovered a few years previously by Dr.
Gardner, the botanist, on the upper part of the Tocantins.

We saw here, for the first time, the splendid Hyacinthine macaw
(Macrocercus hyacinthinus, Lath., the Araruna of the natives),
one of the finest and rarest species of the Parrot family. It
only occurs in the interior of Brazil, from 16' S. lat. to the
southern border of the Amazons valley. It is three feet long from
the beak to the tip of the tail, and is entirely of a soft
hyacinthine blue colour, except round the eyes, where the skin is