These years were busy, earnest ones, devoted to constant labor. To his father he wrote from Bahia, or San Salvador, the following spring: "No person could imagine anything so beautiful as the ancient town of Bahia; it is fairly embosomed in a luxuriant wood of beautiful trees, and situated on a steep bank, and overlooks the calm waters of the great Bay of All Saints. The houses are white and lofty, and, from the windows being narrow and long, have a very light and elegant appearance.... But the exquisite, glorious pleasure of walking amongst such flowers and such trees cannot be comprehended but by those who have experienced it.... I will not rapturize again, but I give myself great credit in not being crazy out of pure delight. Give my love to every soul at home.... I think one's affections, like other good things, flourish and increase in these tropical regions." Again he writes from Rio de Janeiro: "Here (at Rio-Macoa) I first saw a tropical forest in all its sublime grandeur--nothing but the reality can give any idea how wonderful, how magnificent the scene is.... I never experienced such intense delight. I formerly admired Humboldt, I now almost adore him; he alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics. I am now collecting fresh-water and land animals.... I am at present red-hot with spiders; they are very interesting, and, if I am not mistaken, I have already taken some new genera." Busy as he was, he was ever thinking of home, and anxious to receive letters. When they were received, he almost "cried for pleasure." He writes to his sister: "If you knew the glowing, unspeakable delight which I felt at being certain that my father and all of you were well, only four months ago, you would not grudge the labor lost in keeping up the regular series of letters." Later he writes: "It is too delightful to think that I shall see the leaves fall and hear the robin sing next autumn at Shrewsbury. My feelings are those of a schoolboy to the smallest point; I doubt whether ever boy longed for his holidays as much as I do to see you all again." To his "dear Henslow" he writes: "It is now some months since we have been at a civilized port; nearly all this time has been spent in the most southern part of Tierra del Fuego.... The Fuegians are in a more miserable state of barbarism than I had expected ever to have seen a human being. In this inclement country they are absolutely naked, and their temporary houses are like what children make in summer with boughs of trees."