"Brazilians and Indians will not work," said his informant. "The immigrants from Europe live by trading. Since their emancipation, the negroes prefer fishing to any other mode of existence, and the Americans that came here as colonists have mostly gone back disappointed. There is really no laboring class here, and until there is we can have no agriculture. The land would produce abundantly, but there is nobody to cultivate it. I doubt if there are five hundred acres of tilled land on the Amazon, between this point and the foot of the Andes." The exports of Manaos are rubber, coffee, sarsaparilla, Brazil nuts, pissaba, chinchona, fish, and turtles. The imports are cotton cloth, beads, and other "Indian goods" for the natives, and various articles of necessity or luxury for the European inhabitants. The surrounding country is diversified with valleys, hills, and ravines, and not far from the place is a pretty cascade ten feet high and fifty feet wide, falling over a precipice of red sandstone. The sheet of water resembles Minnehaha in its general outline, but its peculiarity is in its deep orange color, obtained from the soil through which the streams flows. The youths wished to ascend the Rio Negro, but circumstances did not permit the excursion. The Negro rises in Colombia, and is twelve hundred miles in length; at one place it is ten or twelve miles in width, and at Manaos not less than two miles. During the flood of the Amazon the dark waters of the Negro are dammed and held back, for hundreds of miles, by the rise of the giant stream. The natural canal, the Cassiquari, which connects the Negro with the Orinoco, is half a mile wide, and drains off the superfluous waters which go to swell the lower part of the last-named river. [Illustration: NATIVES OF THE BANKS OF THE UCAYALI.] Other great tributaries of the Amazon are the Huallaga and the Ucayali; both rise on the Peruvian Andes, the latter near ancient Cuzco. Either can be compared to the Ohio, and both are navigable for long distances. Like the other streams that flow into the Amazon, they run through regions with few inhabitants, and consequently there is little commerce along their banks. There are many rivers as large as the Hudson or the Connecticut, that are unknown to geographers, and not named on the maps. Glad enough were our friends to leave Manaos, after a day's detention, and descend the Amazon. The heat was severe, the thermometer mounting to ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit, with a damp atmosphere, which made the temperature very oppressive. Manaos has the reputation of being the warmest spot on the Amazon; the mercury mounts very often to the nineties, and can touch ninety-eight without apparent effort. There are few amusements, and the most comfortable occupation is to do nothing. The European residents indulge in balls and parties, but more as a matter of form than for the sake of enjoyment.