fingers as you’re accustomed to do, and then you’ll find your appetites and enjoy your dinner.” His advice was followed, and I must say they seemed much more comfortable in consequence, and did more justice to the good fare. Although the Indians who live in the neighborhood of the towns have seen too much of the conventionalities of life not to understand the use of a knife and fork, no Indian will eat with one if he can help it. When the dinner was over, the room was cleared of the tables and swept; the music, consisting of a viola, flute, and violin, was called in, and the ball was opened. The forest belles were rather shy at first in the presence of strangers; but they soon warmed up and began to dance with more animation. They were all dressed in calico or muslin skirts, with loose, cotton waists, finished around the neck with a kind of lace they make themselves by drawing the threads from cotton or muslin, so as to form an open pattern, sewing those which remain over and over to secure them. Some of this lace is quite elaborate and very fine. Many of the women had their hair dressed either with white jessamine or with roses stuck into their round combs, and several wore gold beads and ear-rings. The dances were different from those I saw in Esperança’s cottage, and much more animated; but the women preserved the same air of quiet indifference which I noticed there. Indeed, in all the Indian dances I have seen the man makes the advances, while the woman is coy and retiring, her movements being very languid. Her partner throws himself at her feet, but does not elicit a smile or a gesture; he stoops and pretends to be fishing; making motions as if he were drawing her in with a line, he dances around her, snapping his fingers as if he were playing on castanets, and half encircling her with his arms, but she remains reserved and cold. Now and then they join together in something like a waltz, but this is only occasionally and for a moment. How different from the negro dances which we saw frequently in the neighborhood of Rio, and in which the advances generally come from the women, and are not always of the most modest character. The ball was gayer than ever at ten o’clock when I went to my room,—or rather to the room where my hammock was slung, and which I shared with Indian women and children, with a cat and her family of kittens, who slept on the edge of my mosquito-net and made frequent inroads upon the inside, with hens and chickens and sundry dogs, who went in and out. The music and dancing, the laughter and talking outside, continued till the small hours. Every now and then an Indian girl would come in to rest for a while, take a nap in a hammock, and then return to the dance. When we first arrived in South America we could hardly have slept soundly under such circumstances; but one soon becomes accustomed, on the Amazons, to sleeping in rooms with mud floors and mud walls, or with no walls at