It was not till the afternoon of the 6th that I found myself sufficiently recovered to leave our solitary encampment, when we resumed our journey at a slow pace till after eleven at night. The moon had risen about six, and shone with a brilliancy such as I have seldom witnessed; this together with the coolness of the evening, renders travelling after sunset very agreeable, although to the naturalist it is not the most profitable. During the whole of my extensive journies I made it a rule never to travel at night, unless through a decidedly desert country, in order that nothing of interest should be overlooked. The seven leagues which we accomplished this evening was through a country of much the same barren nature as that we had already gone over, with the exception of one low range of hills covered with small trees and shrubs; on the level portion scarcely anything was to be seen but Carnahuba palms, Pao Branco, a _Zizyphus_, and a species of _Aspidospermum_, a small tree that grows gregariously and to which the inhabitants give the name of Pereira; the bark of it is very bitter, and its infusion is used to destroy lice, and other vermin infecting cattle. We passed through several large open gravelly spaces (_vargems_), nearly destitute of trees, and the herbaceous vegetation that had sprung up during the rains was now nearly parched up. The stillness of the night was only broken by the cries of a small species of goatsucker (_Caprimulgus_), that was flying about in great numbers. We rested for the night under the veranda of a house close to the road-side, in approaching which we passed through a flock of several hundred sheep, being the greatest number I have seen collected together in any part of the country, but the excessive heat of the climate had wrought a remarkable change in their appearance, their skin being wholly destitute of wool and replaced by a short hair, not unlike that of a cow. In the same manner goats lose the long hair natural to them in cold countries, which proves how much the economy of animals can suit itself to change of circumstances. On the following morning we traversed a country still abounding with the elegant Carnahuba palm, and numerous small fresh-water lakes, teeming with wild ducks and other kinds of water-fowl, and arrived at a place where there are several houses near to the Rio Jaguaribe, in the neighbourhood of which some small trees of _Cochlospermum serratifolium_, DC., were beautifully in flower, their large golden blossoms gleaming in the sun like oranges; here I found that in consequence of the pack-saddles being too narrow, the back of the cargo horse was so much galled, that it could no longer carry its load, in consequence I was obliged to hire another from a person whom I met going up to Icó with loads of salt, and who had some spare animals with him. The weather being fine, I preferred taking up my quarters under the shade of a broad-spreading wild fig tree standing some distance from any