_October 24th._—Manaos. We reached Manaos yesterday. As we landed in the afternoon, and as our arrival had not been expected with any certainty, we had to wait a little while for lodgings; but before night we were fairly established, our corps of assistants and all our scientific apparatus, in a small house near the shore, Mr. Agassiz and myself in an old, rambling edifice, used when we were here before for the public treasury, which is now removed to another building. Our abode has still rather the air of a public establishment, but it is very quaint and pleasant inside, and, from its open, spacious character, is especially agreeable in this climate. The apartment in which we have taken up our quarters, making it serve both as drawing-room and chamber, is a long, lofty hall, opening by a number of doors and windows on a large, green enclosure, called by courtesy a garden, but which is, after all, only a ragged space overgrown with grass, and having a few trees in it. Nevertheless, it makes a pleasant background of shade and verdure. At the upper end of our airy room hang our hammocks, and here are disposed our trunks, boxes, &c.; in the other half are a couple of writing-tables, a Yankee rocking-chair that looks as if it might have come out of a Maine farmer’s house, a lounging-chair, and one or two other pieces of furniture, which give it a domestic look and make it serve very well as a parlor. There are many other apartments in this rambling, rickety castle of ours, with its brick floors and its rat-holes, its lofty, bare walls, and rough rafters overhead; but this is the only one we have undertaken to make habitable, and to my eye it presents a very happy combination of the cosey and the picturesque. We have been already urged by some of our hospitable friends here to take other lodgings; but we are much pleased with our quarters, and prefer to retain them, at least for the present.