have only to present yourself at their gates at the end of a day’s journey, and if you have the air of a respectable traveller, you are sure of a hearty welcome, shelter and food. The card of a friend or a note of introduction insures you all the house can afford for as long as you like to stay. The last three miles of our journey was over what is called the “temporary road,” the use of which will be discontinued as soon as the great tunnel is completed. I must say, that to the inexperienced this road looks exceedingly perilous, especially that part of it which is carried over a wooden bridge 65 feet high, with a very strong curvature and a gradient of 4 per cent (211 feet per mile). As you feel the engine laboring up the steep ascent, and, looking out, find yourself on the edge of a precipitous bank, and almost face to face with the hindmost car, while the train bends around the curve, it is difficult to resist the sense of insecurity. It is certainly greatly to the credit of the management of the line that no accident has occurred under circumstances where the least carelessness would be fatal.[17] It gives one an idea of the labor expended on this railroad, to learn that for the great tunnel alone, now almost completed (one of fourteen), a corps of some three hundred men, relieving each other alternately, have been at work day and night, excepting Sundays, for seven years. The sound of hammer and pick during that time has hardly ever been still, and so hard is the rock through which the tunnel is pierced, that often the heaviest blows of the sledge yield only a little dust,—no more in bulk than a pinch of snuff.[18] On our return we were detained for half an hour at a station on the bank of the river Parahyba. This first visit to one of the considerable rivers of Brazil was not without its memorable incident. One of our friends of the Colorado, who parts from us here on his way to San Francisco, said he was determined not to leave the expedition without contributing something to its results. He improvised a fishing apparatus, with a stick, a string, and a crooked pin, and caught two fishes, our first harvest from the fresh waters of Brazil, one of which was entirely new to Mr. Agassiz, while the other he had never seen, and only knew from descriptions.