The day after to-morrow we leave Pará in the Santa Cruz for Ceará. It will be like leaving a sort of home to say good by to our kind friends in the Rua de Nazareth. We have become attached to this neighborhood also from its beauty. The wide street, bordered for two or three miles with mangueiras, leads into the wooded country, where many a narrow green path in the forest tempts one to long rambles. One of these paths has been a favorite walk of mine on account of the beauty and luxuriance of the vegetation, making some parts of it shady even at noonday. I have often followed it for two or three miles in the early morning, between six and eight o’clock, when the verdant walls on either side are still fresh and dewy. Beautiful as it is, it leads to one of the saddest of all abodes. For a long time I could not understand why this lane was always in such good condition, the heavy rains making unfrequented forest-paths almost impassable in the wet season. I found on inquiry that it led to a hospital for lepers, and was kept in good repair because the various stores and supplies for the hospital were constantly carried over it. The prevalence of leprosy has made it necessary to provide separate establishments for its victims; and both at Pará and Santarem, where it is still more common, there are hospitals devoted exclusively to this purpose. This terrible disease is not confined wholly to the lower classes, and where it occurs in families whose circumstances are good the invalid is often kept at home under the care of his own friends. Bates states that leprosy is supposed to be incurable, and also adds that, during his eleven years’ residence on the Amazons, he has never known a foreigner to be attacked by it. We have, however, been told by a very intelligent German physician in Rio de Janeiro, that he has known several cases of it among his own countrymen there, and has been so fortunate as to effect permanent cures in some instances. He says it is a mistake to suppose that it does not yield to treatment when taken in time, and the statistics of the disease show that, where there are good physicians, it is found to be gradually disappearing.