sumptuously; having rice and fowls, biscuit, wine, and spirits, for
dinner; coffee in the evening, and fish with coffee for breakfast. All
this, with good food for the horses, only cost 2s. 6d. per head. Yet
the host of this venda, being asked if he knew anything of a whip which
one of the party had lost, gruffly answered, "How should I know? why
did you not take care of it?--I suppose the dogs have eaten it."
Leaving Mandetiba, we continued to pass through an intricate wilderness
of lakes; in some of which were fresh, in others salt water shells. Of
the former kinds, I found a Limnaea in great numbers in a lake, into
which, the inhabitants assured me that the sea enters once a year, and
sometimes oftener, and makes the water quite salt. I have no doubt
many interesting facts, in relation to marine and fresh water animals,
might be observed in this chain of lagoons, which skirt the coast of
Brazil. M. Gay [2] has stated that he found in the neighbourhood of
Rio, shells of the marine genera solen and mytilus, and fresh water
ampullariae, living together in brackish water. I also frequently
observed in the lagoon near the Botanic Garden, where the water is only
a little less salt than in the sea, a species of hydrophilus, very
similar to a water-beetle common in the ditches of England: in the same
lake the only shell belonged to a genus generally found in estuaries.
Leaving the coast for a time, we again entered the forest. The trees
were very lofty, and remarkable, compared with those of Europe, from
the whiteness of their trunks. I see by my note-book, "wonderful and
beautiful, flowering parasites," invariably struck me as the most novel
object in these grand scenes. Travelling onwards we passed through
tracts of pasturage, much injured by the enormous conical ants' nests,
which were nearly twelve feet high. They gave to the plain exactly the
appearance of the mud volcanos at Jorullo, as figured by Humboldt. We
arrived at Engenhodo after it was dark, having been ten hours on
horseback. I never ceased, during the whole journey, to be surprised
at the amount of labour which the horses were capable of enduring; they
appeared also to recover from any injury much sooner than those of our
English breed. The Vampire bat is often the cause of much trouble, by
biting the horses on their withers. The injury is generally not so
much owing to the loss of blood, as to the inflammation which the
pressure of the saddle afterwards produces. The whole circumstance has
lately been doubted in England; I was therefore fortunate in being
present when one (Desmodus d'orbignyi, Wat.) was actually caught on a
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