but
content to live and enjoy what nature spontaneously offers. The most a
Brazilian wants is farina and coffee, a hammock and cigar. Brazilian
ladies have led a dreary life of constraint and silence, without
education or society, the husband making a nun of his wife after the old
bigoted Portuguese notion; but during the last twenty years the doors
have been opened. Brazil attained her independence in 1823; Brazilian
women in 1848.

Here, in this virgin valley, where every plant is an evergreen,
possessing the most agreeable and enjoyable climate in the world, with a
brilliant atmosphere, rivaled only by that of Quito, and with no changes
of seasons--here we may locate the paradise of the lazy. Life may be
maintained with as little labor as in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps no
country in the world is capable of yielding so large a return for
agriculture. Nature, evidently designing this land as the home of a
great nation, has heaped up her bounties of every description--fruits of
richest flavors, woods of finest grain, dyes of gayest colors, and drugs
of rarest virtues; and left no sirocco or earthquake to disturb its
people. Providence, moreover, has given the present emperor a wise and
understanding heart; and the government is a happy blending of imperial
dignity and republican freedom. White, Negro, half-caste, and Indian may
be seen sitting side by side on the jury-bench. Certainly "the nation
can not be a despicable one whose best men are able to work themselves
up to positions of trust and influence."

God bless the Empire of the South!

CHAPTER XXIII.

How to Travel in South
America.--Routes.--Expenses.--Outfit.--Precautions.--Dangers.

The most vague and incorrect notions prevail in respect to traveling in
South America. The sources of trustworthy and desirable information are
very meagre. Murray has not yet published a "Hand-book for the Andes;"
routes, methods, and expenses of travel are almost unknown; and the
imagination depicts vampires and scorpions, tigers and anacondas, wild
Indians and fevers without end, impassable rivers and inaccessible
mountains as the portion of the tourist. The following statements, which
can be depended upon, may therefore be acceptable to those who
contemplate a trip on the Andes and the Amazon.

The shortest, cheapest, most feasible, and least interesting route
across the continent is from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres. The breadth of
South America is her