Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/80

56 beef, poultry, and pork, with oranges, bananas, and abundance of other fruits and vegetables, thrive with little care. With these articles in abundance, a house of wood, calabashes, cups and pottery of the country, they may live in plenty without a single exotic production. And then what advantages there are in a country where there is no stoppage of agricultural operations during winter, but where crops may be had, and poultry be reared, all the year round; where the least possible amount of clothing is the most comfortable, and where a hundred little necessaries of a cold region are altogether superfluous. With regard to the climate I have said enough already; and I repeat, that a man can work as well here as in the hot summer months in England, and that if he will only work three hours in the morning and three in the evening, he will produce more of the necessaries and comforts of life than by twelve hours' daily labour at home.

Nothing more of importance occurred, and we arrived safely at Para on the 30th of September, just five weeks from the day we left. We had not had a wet day the whole voyage, yet found to our surprise that it had been there the same as usual—a shower and a thunderstorm every second or third day.