_February 24th._—Pará, Nazareth. Our time has passed so quietly here that it gives me nothing to record. Mr. Agassiz has found himself in such absolute need of rest, after having arranged and put in order for transportation to the United States the collections accumulated, that our intended trip to the island of Marajo has been postponed day after day. Yesterday I witnessed a religious procession in Pará,—one of the many festas said to be gradually dying out, and to be already shorn of much of their ancient glory. It represented a scene from the passion of Christ. The life-size figure of the Saviour, sinking under the cross, is borne on a platform through the streets. Little girls, dressed as angels, walk before it, and it is accompanied by numerous dignitaries of the Church. Altars are illuminated in the different churches; the populace, even down to the children, are dressed in black; and the balconies of every house filled with figures in mourning, waiting for the sad procession to pass by. _February 28th._—Off Marajo, in the steamer Tabatinga. All great rivers, as the Nile, the Mississippi, the Ganges, the Danube, have their deltas; but the largest river in the world, the Amazons, is an exception to this rule. What, then, is the geological character of the great island which obstructs its opening into the ocean? This is the question which has made a visit to Marajo of special interest to Mr. Agassiz. Leaving Pará at midnight, we reached the little town of Sourés early this morning. It is a village lying on the southeastern side of the island, and so far seaward that, in the dry season, when the diminished current of the Amazonian waters is overborne by the tides, the water is salt enough to afford excellent sea-bathing, and is resorted to for that purpose by many families from Pará. At this moment, however, the water has not even a brackish character. The only building of any interest in the town is the old Jesuit church, a remnant of the earliest chapter in the civilization of South America. However tinged with ambition and a love of temporal power, the work of the Jesuits in Brazil tended toward the establishment of an organized system of labor, which one cannot but wish had been continued. All that remains of the Jesuit missions goes to prove that they were centres of industry. These men contrived to impart, even to the wandering Indian, some faint reflection of their own persistency and steadfastness of purpose. Farms were connected with all the Indian missions; under the direction of the fathers, the Indians learned something of agriculture, which the Jesuits readily saw to be one of the great civilizing influences in a country so fertile. They introduced a variety of vegetables and grains, and had herds of cattle where cattle now are hardly known. Humboldt, speaking of the destruction of the Jesuit missions, says, in reference to the Indians of Atures, on the Orinoco: “Formerly, being excited to labor by the Jesuits, they did