Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/264

 232 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO. [November,

milk and cheese, coffee and cacao, molasses and sugar ; delicious fish, turtles and turtles' eggs, and a great variety of game, would furnish their table with constant variety, while vegetables would not be wanting, and fruits, both cultivated and wild, in superfluous abundance, and of a quality that none but the wealthy of our land can afford. Oranges and lemons, figs and grapes, melons and water-melons, jack-fruits, custard- apples, pine-apples, cashews, alligator pears, and mammee apples are some of the commonest, whilst numerous palm and other forest fruits furnish delicious drinks, which everybody soon gets very fond of. Both animal and vegetable oils can be procured in abundance for light and cooking. And then, having provided for the body, what lovely gardens and shady walks might not be made ! How easy to construct a natural orchid-house, beneath a clump of forest-trees, and collect the most beautiful species found in the neighbourhood ! What elegant avenues of palms might be formed ! What lovely climbers abound, to train over arbours, or up the walls of the house !

In the whole Amazon, no such thing as neatness or cultiva- tion has ever been tried. Walks, and avenues, and gardens have never been made ; but I can imagine how much beauty and variety might be called into existence from the gloomy monotony of the forest.

" England ! my heart is truly thine, — my loved, my native earth ! "

But the idea of the glorious life which might be led here, free from all the money-matter cares and annoyances of civilisation, makes me sometimes doubt, if it would not be wiser to bid thee adieu for ever, and come and live a life of ease and plenty in the Rio Negro.

This district is superior to any other part of the Amazon, and perhaps any other part of Brazil, in having a climate free from long droughts. In fact, the variableness of rain and sunshine, all the year round, is as great as in England itself; but it is this very thing which produces a perennial verdure. There are parts of the Rio Negro where the turtle, the peixe boi, and all sorts of fish abound ; advantages, for which many persons endure the tormenting " carapanas " of the Solimoes, but which can be had here without any insect torment, and with a far superior climate for agricultural purposes.