The temperature is equable and far from excessive, when its proximity. to the equator is considered, for it ranges between 78.0° and 90.0° Fahr., being rarely, I believe, much below the former, or much above the latter; this fortunate condition is brought about, for the most part, by the cool sea breezes which blow so frequently from the north-east and east.

The houses and buildings are considerable in number, substantial and well built; some, indeed, of the public erections being handsome and imposing edifices.

The common building material is in large part a peculiar porous, honey-combed brick, the bricks for which are made in the vicinity; the

stone and bricks for any buildings which are more substantial have to be imported, largely from Europe-so also are the paving-stones for the streets. These, at least many of them, are well paved; some, the older ones, are somewhat narrow, but many of the newer are fine and broad, and also, for the most part, planted with fine trees-mango and palm principally.

There are several small public gardens and fine plazas within the town, which are well cared for, while in the suburbs are parks and other pleasure resorts. A fine theatre decorates one, and public monuments others, of these plazas. The town is rapidly developing, and the suburbs are being laid out well and fine residential buildings erected in the principal streets. A good and frequent service of tramcars facilitates

rapid transit from one part of the town to another, but they are small, dirty-looking, and often crowded. Mules are, at present, entirely used for traction power there.

Paper is almost the only currency; a few large nickel and copper coins are occasionally met with. This paper money, made in the United States of North America, is so long in circulation that it is almost always, (especially the smaller values, such as 100, 500, 1000, 5000 and 10,000 reis), in a very filthy, dilapidated condition, so much so that the values are scarcely decipherable; these the people-tram-conductors, one especially notices- -do not hesitate to hold in the teeth and lips, and must be a fertile source of contagious disease. Tram-tickets, which are for the most part made with tough paper, are used over and over again, and also pass as smaller value currency.

The people are a mixed and heterogeneous lot: Whites (principally Portuguese and Brazilians of Portuguese origin, of the darker south European variety), through all shades of yellow and brown, to black. Most of these are half-breeds, crosses between Portuguese and Indian, Indian and Negro, White and Negro, together with mixtures in infinite variety and tenuity of all of these. The hair is also correspondingly variously textured; though universally dark in colour, one sees the lank and straight, the wavy, curly, and all degree of frizziness down to the Negro's woolly pate.

Presumably on account of the predominance among the population of persons with some degree of colour, no disability is caused by colour, all men being esteemed alike there, irrespective of shade of skin.

With this variety in shade, so also a corresponding mixture and variety in feature is in evidence: the long prognathous face and flat, spread nose of negroid type, and the broad, high cheek-boned and somewhat Mongolian cast of countenance of the Indian are very frequently seen, so that it is quite interesting to stand in the streets and examine the passers-by.

The population of Para is, as already mentioned, estimated at some eighty to one hundred thousand; no census has, with any degree of correctness, ever been taken, all Governmental and official work being of the loosest character. In number, however, it is continually fluctuating, because of the large influx of immigrants from Europe, as well as arrivals. from other parts of Brazil, especially from Ceara, a place on the north coast; these also are continually leaving again to pass on to the stations up the main river and its tributaries. A short line of railway, which runs some eighty to ninety miles to Bragança upon the coast, is the only means of travelling any distance otherwise than by boat.

There is a fairly regular and frequent service of steam-boats, which run along the coast to the south, as well as up the rivers; these, however, have, by legal enactments, been obliged to be under Brazilian management, or at least under the Brazilian flag; the result is that they, for the most part, do not pay; the accommodation is deplorable, the boats being frequently very much overcrowded, and dirt-largely because of the filthy habits of the people, even those of the better classes-reigns supreme, with the frequent and natural result, especially

upon the river boats, that the deaths on board during a single run can be counted by scores, and sometimes even by hundreds.

Fevers, both yellow and malarial, are very common, and the former especially causes much mortality among Europeans and Americans, particularly the new arrivals. The trade of Para, especially its export, is mostly in the hands of foreigners-German, British, and American; these have commodious offices and warehouses there. Its principal, almost sole, export is rubber, and one may say its very existence depends upon this valuable commodity; but nuts, cocoa, and other vegetable products are also exported to some extent.

Its imports are general goods, in great part manufactured articles

Baraca or Seringueiro's hut. "The Narrows."

and food, with the consequent result that all necessaries are dear there, and living very expensive. Practically no agriculture whatever is practised in this part of Brazil, though a little stock-farming and cocoagrowing is carried on up the river.

Though possessed of a fair port, the shipping facilities are poor, almost all having to be done by the help of lighters; these are frequently, however, not available, although a fleet of them is kept by the companies who trade there; this again is due to the dilatoriness of the Customs authorities. I saw some eighty 100-ton, or more, lighters lying there for the three weeks I was there at one time, waiting to be overhauled by them; months often elapse before they are attended to. This want of lighters causes ocean-going steamships to have to lie there as

long as three weeks sometimes, instead of the five days they would take to discharge, and is injuring the trade of the place, for perishable goods are frequently worthless when at last they are passed by the Customs.

Hotels, more or less primitive, are fairly numerous, but the accommodation is far from luxurious, nor are the sanitary arrangements perfect. The sanitary conditions of the place are very imperfect, and the watersupply, though said to be good, is frequently insufficient when rain is scarce; this naturally tends very greatly to increase the percentage of mortality, which is however unknown, and the people there delude themselves with the idea that it is low! The town is well lit by means of electric light.

Somewhat like the Portuguese, but more pronounced, is the fondness of the people of Para for fireworks; every evening, and frequently during the day even, rockets are fired off in large numbers, for fireworks of the noisier kinds are the greater favourites. Local festas with drinking and dancing are very commonly celebrated, and anything gives an excuse for a cheap firework display.

A habit which strikes the visitor to Brazil as very peculiar is the manner which the military have of changing guard at the numerous Government buildings where sentries are posted, for it is accompanied by a savage, ear-piercing yell, which without doubt is a copy of the Indian war-whoop.

After leaving Para one passes through the maze of low, densely wooded islands which lie at the confluence of the Para and the main Tocantin river. Turning into it, one ascends for a short while, some four or five hours, and then diverges to the right or west, and passing through ever-narrowing channels, at last, about twelve hours from Para, enters "the Narrows." Here the country, like that passed through already, is still apparently dead flat, and densely covered with tropical forest. Many islands of all sizes have been passed, but now the way lies through an archipelago of alluvial islands, separated from one another by only such narrow channels that it not infrequently appears inexplicable that there should be depth enough of water in them for ocean-going steamers of more than two thousand tons and eighteen feet and more draught to be able to navigate and pass through them. These channels are so intricate that only a pilot of long training can find his way through them, for there are apparently no vestiges of the slightest landmark. Soon after entering the Narrows we pass Breves, the principal settlement upon the Island of Marajo, where all the rubber upon the island and surrounding district is brought to be sent to Para and exported.

When passing through these narrow channels upon the high deck of a large steamer, the glorious prospect of the tropical forest in all its grandeur can best be seen, and one can begin to realise somewhat how vigorously tropical vegetation grows, and how keen the battle of life is. Emerging from a dense, tangled, almost impenetrable undergrowth, which covers and conceals the ground down to the water, which it also far overhangs, are the trees, many of them in full and gorgeous bloom. First in point of beauty, prominence, and, to the

VOL. XVII.

B

visitor, in point of interest, are the elegant and graceful palms, which so frequently overtop and tower above the rest: the delicate-looking, feathery Assyee palm, with its abundance of small, hard fruit, the heavier cocoa-nut, besides numerous other kinds, many of which can be readily distinguished from one another, together with numbers very much alike, yet of different species and varying in commercial value, all charm the eye.

Then the cedars, the acacias, the rubber- and Brazilian nut-trees, as well as numerous others which appear more like those familiar to the European, produce infinite variety. These again are frequently covered from base to summit with tangled, hanging creepers which, though to the eye they remarkably improve and beautify the whole,

Manaos-Rio Negro. Part of Town from the River.

are the enemies of, and often destroy, the trees. Many of these creepers also have fine blooms, and so too have the numerous parasites and epiphytes which are settled in the angles and cling to the branches of many of them; then the lichen-covered trunks and fantastically festooned limbs, the lichen- and fungus-grown dead trees and fallen branches-all present a picture of chaotic disorder, wild confusion, fierce strife, as well as of remarkable beauty, which must be seen to be appreciated. Even the water itself is invaded, and the surface along the shore is fringed for yards into the stream with long-stalked luxuriantly green grass and water-weeds, with the tops only out of the water and looking like meadow, but which rise and fall with the waves caused by the powerful wash of the ship as it passes along.