[Illustration: Esperança’s Cottage.] Last evening, with some difficulty, we induced Laudigári to play for us on a rough kind of lute or guitar,—a favorite instrument with the country people, and used by them as an accompaniment for dancing. When we had him fairly _en train_ with the music, we persuaded Esperança and Michelina to show us some of their dances; not without reluctance, and with an embarrassment which savored somewhat of the self-consciousness of civilized life, they stood up with two of our boatmen. The dance is very peculiar; so languid that it hardly deserves the name. There is almost no movement of the body; they lift the arms, but in an angular position with no freedom of motion, snapping the fingers like castanets in time to the music, and they seem rather like statues gliding from place to place than like dancers. This is especially true of the women, who are still more quiet than the men. One of the boatmen was a Bolivian, a finely formed, picturesque-looking man, whose singular dress heightened the effect of his peculiar movements. The Bolivian Indians wear a kind of toga; at least I do not know how otherwise to designate their long straight robe of heavy twilled cotton cloth. It consists of two pieces, hanging before and behind, fastened on the shoulder; leaving only an aperture for the head to pass through. It is belted around the waist, leaving the sides open so that the legs and arms are perfectly free. The straight folds of his heavy white drapery gave a sort of statuesque look to our Bolivian as he moved slowly about in the dance. After it was over, Esperança and the others urged me to show them the dance “of my country,” as they said, and my young friend R—— and I waltzed for them, to their great delight. It seemed to me like a strange dream. The bright fire danced with us, flickering in under the porch, fitfully lighting its picturesque interior and the group of wondering Indians around us, who encouraged us every now and then with a “Mûito bonito, mia branca, mûito bonito” (Very pretty, my white, very pretty). Our ball kept up very late, and after I had gone to my hammock I still heard, between waking and sleeping, the plaintive chords of the guitar, mingling with the melancholy note of a kind of whippoorwill, who sings in the woods all night. This morning the forest is noisy with the howling monkeys. They sound very near and very numerous; but we are told that they are deep in the forest, and would disappear at the slightest approach.