We here had an opportunity of seeing something of the arrangement and customs of a Brazilian country-house. The whole edifice in this case was raised four or five feet on piles, to keep it above water at the high spring tides. Running out to low-water mark was a substantial wooden pier, terminated by a flight of steps. This leads from a verandah, opening out of which is a room where guests are received and business transacted, and close by is the sugar-mill and distillery. Quite detached is the house where the mistress, children, and servants reside, the approach to it being through the verandah, and along a raised causeway forty or fifty feet in length. We took our meals in the verandah with Senhor Gomez, never once being honoured by the presence of the lady or her grown-up daughters. At six A.M. we had coffee; at nine, breakfast, consisting of beef and dried fish, with farinha, which supplies the place of bread; and, to finish, coffee and farinha cakes, and the rather unusual luxury of butter. We dined at three, and had rice or shrimp soup, more variety of meat or fresh fish, and terminating with fruit, principally pine-apples and oranges, cut up in slices and served in saucers; and at eight in the evening we had tea and farinha cakes. Two or three Negro and Indian boys wait at table, constantly changing the plates, which, as soon as empty, are whipped off the table, and replaced by clean ones, a woman just behind being constantly at work washing them. Our boy Antonio had here turned lazy, disobeyed orders, and was discharged on the spot, going off with a party who were proceeding up the Amazon after pirarucú. We now had but one man left, and with two that Senhor Gomez lent us to go as far as Baião, we left Vista Alegre on the morning of the 2nd of September. The river presented the same appearance as below,—innumerable islands, most of them several miles long, and the two shores never to be seen at once. As we had nothing for dinner, I went with Mr. Leavens in the montaria, which our Indians were to return in, to a house up an igaripé, to see what we could buy. Cattle and sheep, fowls and ducks were in plenty, and we thought we had come to the right place; but we were mistaken, for the following conversation took place between Mr. Leavens and a Negro woman, the only person we saw:—“Have you any fowls to sell?”—“No.” “Any ducks?”—“No.” “Any meat?”—“ No.” “What do you do here then?”—“Nothing.” “Have you any eggs to sell?”—“No, the hens don’t lay any eggs.” And notwithstanding our declaration that we had nothing to eat, we were obliged to go away as empty as we came, because her master was not at home, and nothing was hers to sell. At another house we were lucky enough to buy a small turtle, which made us an excellent meal.