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South America

   - - nec herba, nec latens in asperis 
  Radix fefellit me locis.

In the month of April 1812 I left the town of Stabroek to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America.

The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali poison and to reach the inland frontier-fort of Portuguese Guiana.

In the year 1816, two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. There is little at this time of the year, in the European part of the Atlantic, to engage the attention of the naturalist. As you go down the Channel you see a few divers and gannets. The middle-sized gulls, with a black spot at the end of the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance.

  Desertosque videre locos, littusque relictum.

Gentle reader, after staying a few months in England, I strayed across the Alps and the Apennines, and returned home, but could not tarry. Guiana still whispered in my ear, and seemed to invite me once more to wander through her distant forests.

  Nunc huc, nunc illuc et utrinque sine ordine curro.

Were you to pay as much attention to birds as the sculptor does to the human frame, you would immediately see, on entering a museum, that the specimens are not well done.

Acaiari, the resinous gum of the hiawa-tree. 
Acouri, one of the agutis; a rodent about the size of a rabbit. 
Acuero, a species of palm. 

I was dining one day with a very successful business man who, although his business had extensive relations in many lands, was meagerly informed about the work of missions. I thought I might interest him by telling him something of the effects of missions upon commerce. So I told him about how the civilizing presence of missionary effort creates new demands which in turn increases trade.

This very breaking away in some places is piling up additional burdens and the pitifully inadequate force is called upon to meet demands that twice their number could hardly satisfy. If we had the same distribution of Baptist ministers in our Southern country that we have in Brazil there would be only four ministers in Texas, two in Virginia, three in Georgia and other States in like proportion. Think of E. A. Nelson, the only representative of our board in the Amazon region, trying to spread himself over four States which comprise a territory five times as large as Texas.

We had sailed in a southeasternly direction from New York twelve days when we rounded Cape St. Roque, the easternmost point of South America. A line drawn due north from this point would pass through the Atlantic midway between Europe and America. If we had sailed directly south we should have touched the western instead of the eastern coast, for the reason that practically the entire continent of South America lies east of the parallel of longitude which passes through New York.

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