Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/197

 by water in a small montaria, with an Indian lad to paddle. The neighbourhood yielded me, up to the last day of my residence, an uninterrupted succession of new and curious forms in the different classes of the animal kingdom, but especially insects.

I lived, as may already have been seen, on the best of terms with the inhabitants of Ega. Refined society, of course, there was none; but the score or so of decent, quiet families which constituted the upper class of the place were very sociable; their manners offered a curious mixture of naïve rusticity and formal politeness; the great desire to be thought civilised leads the most ignorant of these people (and they are all very ignorant, although of quick intelligence) to be civil and kind to strangers from Europe. I was never troubled with that impertinent curiosity on the part of the people in these interior places which some travellers complain of in other countries. The Indians and lower half-castes—at least such of them who gave any thought to the subject—seemed to think it natural that strangers should collect and send abroad the beautiful birds and insects of their country. The butterflies they universally concluded to be wanted as patterns for bright-coloured calico-prints. As to the better sort of people, I had no difficulty in making them understand that each European capital had a public museum, in which were sought to be stored specimens of all natural productions in the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms. They could not comprehend how a man could study science for its own sake; but I told them I was collecting for the "Museo de Londres," and was paid for it; that was