We are now at another Indian house on the bank of an arm of the river Ramos, connecting the Amazons, through the Mauhes, with the Madeira. Our two hours’ canoe-journey yesterday, in the middle of the day, was somewhat hot and wearisome, though part of it lay through one of the shady narrow channels I have described before. The Indians have a pretty name for these channels in the forest; they call them Igarapés, that is, boat-paths, and they literally are in many places just wide enough for the canoe. At about four o’clock we arrived at our present lodging, which is by no means so pretty as the one we have left, though it stands, like that, on the slope of a hill just above the shore, with the forest about it. But it lacks the wide porch and the open working-room which made the other house so picturesque. Mosquitoes are plentiful, and at nightfall the house is closed and a pan of turf burned before the door to drive them away. Our host and hostess, by name José Antonio Maia and Maria Joanna Maia, do what they can, however, to make us comfortable, and the children as well as the parents show that natural courtesy which has struck us so much among these Indians. The children are constantly bringing me flowers and such little gifts as they have it in their power to bestow, especially the painted cups which the Indians make from the fruit of the Crescentia, and use as drinking-cups, basins, and the like. One sees numbers of them in all the Indian houses along the Amazons. My books and writing seem to interest them very much, and while I was reading at the window of my room this morning, the father and mother came up, and, after watching me a few minutes in silence, the father asked me, if I had any leaves out of some old book which was useless to me, or even a part of any old newspaper, to leave it with him when I went away. Once, he said, he had known how to read a little, and he seemed to think if he had something to practise upon, he might recover the lost art. His face fell when I told him all my books were English: it was a bucket of cold water to his literary ambition. Then he added, that one of his little boys was very bright, and he was sure he could learn, if he had the means of sending him to school. When I told him that I lived in a country where a good education was freely given to the child of every poor man, he said if the “branca” did not live so far away, he would ask her to take his daughter with her, and for her services to have her taught to read and write. The man has a bright, intelligent face, and speaks with genuine feeling of his desire to give an education to his children.