Unless the weather be perfectly settled, of which the barometer is the best index, the landing is not unattended with danger. I have known many a boat lost in crossing the bar or bank which lies between the outer and inner roads[10]. Nor is the bank the only danger: thick fogs at times come on, suddenly enveloping land and water in total darkness without the slightest previous indication; in such a dilemma, if a boat be caught without the means of anchoring, the chances are that she may be carried down the river by the currents, and the people half-starved before they are picked up or can find the land again. But supposing these dangers passed, nothing can be more inconvenient or strikingly characteristic of the country than the actual landing. A ship's boat has seldom water enough to run fairly on shore, and, or arriving within forty or fifty yards of it, is beset by carts, always on the watch for passengers, the whole turn-out of which I defy any other people in the world to produce anything at all approaching. On the broad flat axle of a gigantic pair of wheels, seven or eight feet high, a sort of platform is fixed of half a dozen boards, two or three inches apart, letting in the wet at every splash of the water beneath; the ends are open--a rude hurdle forms the side, and a short strong pole from the axle completes the vehicle; to this unwieldy machine the horse is simply attached by a ring at the end of the pole, fastened to the girth or surcingle, round which his rider has the power of turning him as on a pivot, and of either drawing or pushing the machine along like a wheelbarrow, as may be momentarily most convenient:--in this manner, for the first time in my life, I saw the cart fairly before the horse:--in Europe we laugh at the idea; in South America nothing is more common than the reality. The wild and savage appearance of the tawny drivers of these carts, half naked, shouting and screaming and jostling one another, and flogging their miserable jaded beasts through the water, as if to show the little value attached to the brute creation in these countries, is enough to startle a stranger on his first arrival, and induce him for a moment to doubt whether he be really landing in a Christian country. It is a new and a strange specimen of human kind, little calculated to create a favourable first impression.