family affections; and though the mothers are very fond of their babies, they seem comparatively indifferent to them as they grow up. It is, indeed, impossible to rely upon the affection of an Indian, even though isolated cases of remarkable fidelity have been known among them. But I have been told over and over again, by those who have had personal experience in the matter, that you may take an Indian child, bring him up, treat him with every kindness, educate him, clothe him, and find him to be a useful and seemingly faithful member of the household; one day he is gone, you know not where, and in every probability you will never hear of him again. Theft is not one of their vices. On the contrary, such an Indian, if he deserts the friend who has reared him and taken care of him, is very likely to leave behind him all his clothes, except those he has on, and any presents he may have received. The only thing he may be tempted to take will be a canoe and a pair of oars: with these an Indian is rich. He only wants to get back to his woods; and he is deterred by no sentiment of affection, or consideration of interest. To-day we are passing the hills of Almeyrim. The last time we saw them it was in the glow of a brilliant sunset; to-day, ragged edges of clouds overhang them, and they are sombre under a leaden, rainy sky. It is delightful to Mr. Agassiz, in returning to this locality, to find that phenomena, which were a blank to him on our voyage up the river, are perfectly explicable now that he has had an opportunity of studying the geology of the Amazonian Valley. When we passed these singular flat-topped hills before, he had no clew to their structure or their age,—whether granite, as they have been said to be, or sandstone or limestone; whether primitive, secondary, or tertiary: and their strange form made the problem still more difficult. Now he sees them simply as the remnants of a plain which once filled the whole valley of the Amazons, from the Andes to the Atlantic, from Guiana to Central Brazil. Denudations on a colossal scale, hitherto unknown to geologists, have turned this plain into a labyrinth of noble rivers, leaving only here and there, where the formation has resisted the rush of waters, low mountains and chains of hills to tell what was its thickness.[89]