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in Portugal, where he enjoys considerable reputation as a mender of broken bones. He has a chapel at Belem, in itself a picturesque building, and finely situated above the river; it is well represented in one of Colmenar's prints: here his annual festival is celebrated as in Brazil, and ribbons with his name in silver letters sold to the credulous crowd. Follies of this kind are not promoted by the Secular clergy, a body, says Mr. Koster, as distinct from the Regulars in their knowledge, manners and utility, as in their way of life. There are no nunneries in the province, but there are Recolhimentos or retreats, in which elderly women, who are bound by no vows, educate girls, and receive such persons of their own sex as are sent to them by their relatives, to amend their morals ;such institutions are probably useful, but liable to obvious abuse. There is a Foundling Hospital at Recife: the infirmaries are in a wretched state; they may be expected to improve, for the Portugueze government is munificent in works of charity, and the science of medicine is cultivated with great ardour in Portugal.

The provincial form of government in Brazil is well contrived if the laws were duly exercised; but as the sovereigns made themselves despotic, and delegated to their governors a like despotic authority, the laws lost all their efficacy, and justice became only a name. Mr. Koster speaks in the highest terms of the present governor of Pernambuco, Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro, who, to the great advantage of the captaincy, has held his office ten years, three being the regular term. Civil and military officers are multiplied without end and without use; the collective expense falls heavy upon the revenue, and yet every office is so wretchedly underpaid, that necessity becomes a ready self-justification for peculation and corruption. These crimes are regarded as things of course, and pass unpunished and even unnoticed. There are men, however, of high integrity, and the governor of Pernambuco is one. Education is not neglected as far as the means of knowledge go.The Seminary, though chiefly intended for divinity students, is not confined to them; the education here is gratuitous; and there are free schools in most of the small towns. There is no press in Pernambuco, there was none in Brazil till the Court took shelter there, and sent for one from England! There is no bookseller in Pernambuco. Such a state of things is more disgraceful to the government than to the people, but it may become us to remember the state of our own islands;-ten years ago the only bookseller in Barbadoes was an apothecary, who sold-ruled account books! We may well be proud of our Indian empire,—the only dominion under which those nations have ever enjoyed justice and security; and we may well boast of the stores of oriental literature which our civilians, soldiers and missionaries seem to vie with

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each other in increasing; but if we look to the west, it must be with very different feelings. Little as the Brazilians have added to literature, they have done ten times more than the English creoles.

Almanacks, lives of the saints, and books of devotion, (among which it must be remembered the Bible and Testament are not to be found,) are sold at the Benedictine Convent, having been brought from Lisbon. There is a theatre wretchedly conducted, and little amendment can be expected till the Portugueze have something like a drama of their own. The post-office is in the rudest state, it merely receives the bags which are brought by trading vessels, and sends others by the same accidental opportunities; no delivery is made of the letters in Recife, nor are there any means established for conveying them into the country. Some improvement in this most important branch may be looked for as one of the first consequences of an increasing commerce and advancing civilization.Criminal justice is, if possible, even more defective than in Portugal;—a white person cannot even be tried for any capital offence, but must be removed to Bahia. The execution of a man of family in that city, for the murder of his wife and daughter, is recorded by Rocha Pitta, as an extraordinary instance, not of guilt, but of punishment. The only police in Recife is a sort of intermitting volunteer establishment. When any punishment is inflicted, it is usually that of transportation to the island of Feruam de Noronha. There are no women upon this island, none are permitted to go there, the inhabitants consist of a great number of convicts, and a garrison of about 120 men who are relieved every year. Twice a year it is supplied with clothing, &c. The Chaplain serves for a twelvemonth; those who are liable to be sent on this disgusting duty conceal themselves when the time is come, and the matter is generally settled by pressing the first young priest whom they meet. It is extraordinary that this abominable system should be pursued by a government so moral and so religious as that of Brazil!

After residing nearly a twelvemonth in Recife, Mr. Koster resolved to make a journey into the less populous and less cultivated part of the country; instead therefore of travelling southward towards Bahia, the original capital of Brazil, he set out for Goiana with a Portugueze friend who had a brother residing in that town, and who expected to proceed from thence into the country, on some objects connected with trade. Goiana, which is sixty miles from Recife, is one of the largest and most flourishing towns in the captaincy, and stands upon a river of the same name, four leagues from the sea in a direct line, seven by the course of the stream: the tide ascends above the town, and the planters have the advantage of water-carriage for their produce. The population is between four and five thousand, and the place is increasing in size, wealth,

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and importance; the weekly cattle fair, which used to be held at Iguaraçú, having been removed to this neighbourhood, Iguaraçú in consequence is falling into decay, but the communication between Recife and Goiana is so considerable, that the only regular inn in the country is established there for the convenience of travellers. This road is the great way from the interior or Sertam, as it is called, by which cattle descend from the estates upon the Açu,and there is no other road than what the cattle have made; they beat down the underwood, but the large trees, if any grow upon the way, remain there: where any rising ground intervenes they make the path straight, the heavy rains take the same course, and soon cut the track into a ravine, so that it is very unsafe to travel such roads by night; a day or two of the usual rain renders them impassable. Here, as in Spain and Portugal, crosses are erected by the wayside wherever a murder has been committed, and they are frequent enough to evince a similar state of popular feeling, and a similar relaxation of law. At Goiana, Mr. Koster visited Dr. Manoel Arruda, author of a Flora Pernambucana, of which a specimen is given in the Appendix to the present volume. The work entitles him to a distinguished rank among botanists: he was very ill at this time, and did not survive long. From thence the traveller accompanied a Portugueze friend to the city of Paraiba, a distance of thirteen leagues; the measured league is four miles, but there are long leagues, short leagues, and legoas de nada, or leagues that are nothing at all. Nothing indeed can be more vague than the computed distances in Portugal, where huma legoa bem boa will sometimes prove a full two hours' journey.

Paraiba contains from two to three thousand inhabitants. It has six churches and three convents. There are public fountains, the only works of the kind which Mr. Koster saw; and some of the houses have glass windows, an improvement which has only lately been introduced at Recife. The governor resides in what was formerly the Jesuit college, commanding a prospect of the best Brazilian scenery ;-extensive and evergreen woods, bounded by a range of hills, and watered by several branches of the river, with here and there a whitewashed cottage on the higher part of their banks half concealed by lofty trees. The cultivated specks are so small as to be scarcely perceptible.' The lower town is situated upon a spacious lake formed by three rivers, which there discharge their waters into the sea by one considerable stream; the bar admits vessels of 150 tons, and the basin is so sheltered that a rope yarn,' says Mr. Koster, would keep them still.' This whole track is memorable ground in Brazilian history, having repeatedly been fought over in the long and obstinate struggle with the Dutch. The sugar produced here is equal to that of any part

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of Brazil, but notwithstanding this, Paraiba is declining in impor tance: its custom-house is seldom opened; it is not in the direct road from the towns upon the coast farther north to the capital, and the people of the interior naturally go to Recife as the more extensive market. The late governor, Amaro Joaquim, brought this captaincy into good order by wholesome severity. Men used to carry on their irregular practices in the town at night muffled in large cloaks and with crape over their faces; one night he arrested all persons who were found thus disguised, and some of the principal inhabitants were found among them. A mulatto, by name Nogueira, son of one of the first men in the captaincy, had made himself much dreaded by his audacious conduct; he had carried off the daughters of respectable persons from their parent's houses, murdering those who opposed his entrance. Amaro Joaquim would have had him executed, but the law was not strong enough in Paraiba for this; he ordered him, however, to be flogged. Nogueira pleaded privilege, saying he was half a fidalgo, upon which the governor directed that he should be flogged only upon one side, and desired him to say which was the fidalgo side, that it might remain inviolate. A similar case in Lisbon some years ago was decided more tragically for the criminal: he had committed murder ⚫under such circumstances of atrocity, that even in Portugal it did not escape unpunished; the mode of execution was beheading for a fidalgo, hanging for a person of inferior rank: he, like Nogueira, objected to a plebeian punishment, as being a semi-noble, and the point of law was adjusted with great equity by cutting his head half off.

On returning to Goiana, Mr. Koster found that his friend had given up all thought of proceeding farther; he therefore departed without him, having hired a white man as guide, and two Indian lads of about sixteen years of age; with these and an English servant, and two sumpter beasts, he set out, the Indians going on foot. The first stage was Dous Rios, or the Two Rivers, though no stream is to be seen there; it is the place where the great weekly cattle fair is held for the Pernambuco market,-a large open piece of land with cottages upon the skirts, to each of which a large pen is attached. The second day the traveller was entertained with genuine hospitality by the Capitam-Mor, or chief captain of Paraiba, at a sugar plantation upon the banks of that river. The host was a man of great family, who seldom left his estate to go to Recife or even to Paraiba, living in the usual style of the Brazilian gentry, in a kind of feudal state. The house had only a ground floor, and no ceiling, the tiles and rafters being in full view; the floors were of brick, the shutters and doors unpainted; and the furniture of two spacious rooms, which were the principal apartments, con

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sisted of a few chairs in each, a long table in one, a sofa and several hammocks in the other. The hammock, which in Brazil is generally called rede-a net,-has been adopted from the native savages; it serves the labourer for a bed, and the idler for an ottoman. Oviedo perceived how useful it would be in European armies, and strongly recommended it as a means for saving the lives of the soldiers, who suffer so severely from sleeping upon the wet ground: the Brazilian net can be wrapt up into so small a compass, that it may easily be worn like a sash. Supper of dried meat, mandioc flour made into paste and called piram, hard biscuits and red wine were set before the traveller, who sat down by himself at one end of the long table, while his host sate on the other, talking to him, and some of the chief persons of the establishment stood round, looking in astonishment at an Englishman: one of them, hearing him converse fluently in Portugueze, concluded either that this was an Englishman who did not speak English,-or that any Portugueze on going to England would speak English there with equal facility. The dress, or undress of the host, consisted in a shirt, drawers, slippers, and a long bed-gown called a chambre,-the usual dress of those who have no work to perform. Supper was followed by a dessert of sweetmeats, in which the Brazilians, like the Portugueze, delight. The party then adjourned to the adjoining apartment, where each took his hammock, and swung and talked till they were half asleep. After the next day's journey, Mr. Koster stopt at a hamlet where the huts were so small and miserable, being merely constructed of palm leaves, that he preferred the open air. The horses were turned into a piece of land rather more cleared of wood than the surrounding country, for which accommodation the customary price was paid of about five farthings each for the night. The traveller slung his hammock between two trees, fires were made, and the segar followed the supper. Finding the air very sharp in the hammock, he removed and lay down upon a hide under the lee of the fire. The men by this time were all asleep, each by his own fire, pack saddles and trunks scattered about; a rivulet murmuring by, and the wind rustling in the forest. It was the first time that he had bivouacked, and he lay contemplating the unaccustomed scene, and thinking with mingled pain and pleasure of the way before him and of England, when these thoughts were interrupted by hearing the name of Jesus uttered every half minute in a dismal voice. He awoke the guide, supposing that it proceeded from some one in distress: a person was at the point of death in one of the huts, and some friend, according to custom, was helping the sufferer a bem morrer,—to die well, by pronouncing the name of the Redeemer, that the dying person might bear it in mind till the last breath, and that the devil by that invocation might be kept at a distance.

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