a while, hammocks of various color and texture being immediately brought and hung up for our accommodation, the gentlemen went down to bathe in the igarapé, while the Senhora and her daughter, a very pretty Indian woman, showed me the rest of the establishment. The elder of the two had the direction of everything now, as the master of the house was absent, having a captain’s commission in the army. In the course of our conversation I was reminded of a social feature which strikes us as the more extraordinary the longer we remain on the Amazons, on account of its generality. Here were people of gentle condition, although of Indian blood, lifted above everything like want, living in comfort and, as compared with people about them, with a certain affluence,—people from whom, therefore, in any other society, you might certainly expect a knowledge of the common rules of morality. Yet when I was introduced to the daughter, and naturally asked something about her father, supposing him to be the absent captain, the mother answered, smiling, quite as a matter of course, “Naō tem pai; é filha da fortúna,”—“She hasn’t any father; she is the daughter of chance.” In the same way, when the daughter showed me two children of her own,—little fair people, many shades lighter than herself,—and I asked whether their father was at the war, like all the rest of the men, she gave me the same answer, “They haven’t any father.” It is the way the Indian or half-breed women here always speak of their illegitimate children; and though they say it without an intonation of sadness or of blame, apparently as unconscious of any wrong or shame as if they said the father was absent or dead, it has the most melancholy significance; it seems to speak of such absolute desertion. So far is this from being an unusual case, that among the common people the opposite seems the exception. Children are frequently quite ignorant of their parentage. They know about their mother, for all the care and responsibility falls upon her, but they have no knowledge of their father; nor does it seem to occur to the woman that she or her children have any claim upon him.