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It was at Buenos Ayres that I received the intelligence of the death of my beloved mother. Shortly before her decease she had expressed the wish that I should arrange and prepare for publication the papers she left concerning her last voyage to Madagascar. The dangerous illness which befell her in the Mauritius immediately after she had left Madagascar, and which, in spite of the most careful medical attention, and the kindest nursing on the part of her friends, proved fatal, prevented her from doing this herself.

When, after a few months, I returned from Buenos Ayres to Rio de Janeiro, I found my mother’s papers waiting for me there; but the loss was too recent, and my grief too violent, to allow me to read them then, much less to peruse them with the care and attention which must necessarily precede their publication.

At length I made up my mind to the task. I was obliged to go through it, for it was my mother’s last wish. Filial duty induced me to leave my dear mother’s journal as little altered as possible. In thus giving this last work of my mother to the world, I trust that our kind readers will receive it with the indulgence they have so frequently extended to the other works of the late enterprising traveler.

Oscar Pfeiffer.

Rio de Janeiro, July 8th, 1860.