When we reached the plantation the guests had not all arrived. The special occasion of this excursion to the fazenda was the festival of San João, kept always with great ceremonies in the country; the whole week was to be devoted to hunting, and Senhor Lage had invited all the best sportsmen in the neighborhood to join in the chase. It will be seen in the end that these hunters formed themselves into a most valuable corps of collectors for Mr. Agassiz. After an excellent breakfast we started on horseback for the forest with such of the company as had already assembled. The ride through the dense, deep, quiet wood was beautiful; and the dead pause when some one thought the game was near, the hushed voices, the breathless waiting for the shot which announced success or failure, only added a charm to the scene. They have a strange way of hunting here; as the forest is perfectly impenetrable, they scatter food in a cleared space for the animals, and build green screens, leaving holes to look through; behind such a screen the hunter waits and watches for hours perhaps, till the paca, or peccary, or capivara steals out to feed. The ladies dismounted and found a cool seat in one of these forest lodges, where they waited for the hunt. No great success, after all, this afternoon, but some birds which were valuable as specimens. We rode home in the evening to a late dinner, after which an enormous bonfire, built by the negroes in honor of the Eve of St. João, was lighted in front of the house. The scene was exceedingly picturesque, the whole establishment, the neighboring negro huts, and the distant forest being illuminated by the blaze, around which the blacks were dancing, accompanying their wild gestures with song and drum. Every now and then a burst of fireworks added new brightness to the picture.