On the day of our arrival the dinner was interrupted by the entrance of the Indians with their greetings and presents of game to the President; yesterday it was enlivened by quite a number of appropriate toasts and speeches. I thought, as we sat around the dinner-table, there had probably never been gathered under the palm-roof of an Indian house on the Amazons just such a party before, combining so many different elements and objects. There was the President, whose chief interest was of course in administering the affairs of the province, in which the Indians shared largely his attention; there was the young statesman, whose whole heart is in the great national question of peopling the Amazons and opening it to the world, and the effect this movement is to have upon his country; there was the able engineer, much of whose scientific life has been passed in surveying the great river and its tributaries with a view to their future navigation; and there was the man of pure science, come to study the distribution of animal life in their waters, without any view to practical questions. The speeches touched upon all these different interests, and were received with enthusiasm, each one closing with a toast and music; for our little band of the night before was brought in to enliven the occasion. The Brazilians are very happy in their after-dinner speeches, expressing themselves with great facility, either from a natural gift or because speech-making is an art in which they have had much practice. The habit of drinking healths and giving toasts is very general throughout the country, and the most informal dinner among intimate friends does not conclude without some mutual greetings of this kind.