Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

The story of this expedition has been told in the partly scientific, partly personal diary published after Agassiz's return, under the title of ‘A Journey in Brazil,’ and therefore a full account of it here would be mere repetition. He was absent sixteen months. The first three were spent in Rio de Janeiro, and in excursions about the neighborhood of her beautiful bay and the surrounding mountains. For greater efficiency and promptness he divided his party into companies, each working separately, some in collecting, others in geological surveys, but all under one combined plan of action.

The next ten months were passed in the Amazonian region. This part of the journey had the charm of purely tropical scenery, and Agassiz, who was no less a lover of nature than a naturalist, enjoyed to the utmost its beauty and picturesqueness. Much of the time he and his companions were living on the great river itself, and the deck of the steamer was by turns laboratory, dining-room, and dormitory. Often, as they passed close under the banks of the river, or between the many islands which break its broad expanse into narrow channels, their improvised working room was overshadowed by the lofty wall