RECOLLECTIONS OF BRAZIL. 



province of Ceara. I could not help one day expressing, in company, 

 my sense of the folly that could have induced a paltry little place 

 like theirs to take such a step, but I was cut short by a mode of ar- 

 gument I certainly did not expect : Have the goodness to tell us, 

 Senhor Inglez, what was the beginning of Rome ? A community of 

 brigands, was my reply Pois. And since that was the case, to what 

 lofty destinies may not Pernaiba aspire, with her heroic population ? 

 Fuimos vendidos, we were sold, or you would have seen. I have al- 

 ways remarked, that both Portuguese and Brazilians invariably at- 

 tribute all their disasters to treachery a strong proof of the venality 

 of the national character. 



It will be readily conceived, that the official dignity of the public 

 employes was on a par with the supposed importance of a plan whose 

 influence on the future destinies of the world would, some day or 

 other, be so considerable. And, in fact, ceremony and punctilio were 

 carried to a pitch of most ridiculous extravagance. On passing the 

 house of a friend you were expected to remove your hat, though no 

 member of the family should be visible. In returning the visits of 

 ceremony I had received, I called on the Padre Vagario before the 

 Commandante das Armas " inde bellum !" the latter, who had never 

 heard of the revered maxim of " cedant anna togce," took it in high 

 dudgeon, and declared that I was a spy. " Would that heaven would 

 send us many more such spies," said the revered padre, giving me a 

 warm embrace. Now, whether this compliment was owing to the 

 respect I had shown to the holy mother church, or to a sense of my 

 own demerits, I shall not stop to examine, suffice it to say we became 

 sworn allies. The Reverendissimo Padre was a warm admirer of the 

 English style of living, particularly of our late dinners, a taste he 

 took almost daily opportunity of gratifying, and which, as we were 

 literally starving at the time, owing to a drought that had continued 

 upwards of two years without intermission, was certainly a delicate 

 mode of showing his admiration of Old England. 



One evening, I recollect provisions at the time were dreadfully 

 scarce the padre and myself were just sitting down to a fine capon, 

 when, 



" Medio de fonte leporis, surgit aliquod amari," 



the worthy man was called away to administer the extreme unction to ' 

 a dying sinner. " Agora, amigo," said he, " you see what it is to be 

 a padre A hi de me!" (I had been expatiating on the calm tran- 

 quillity and dignified retirement of the ecclesiastical profession) and 

 casting a longing look at the smoking capon, he bustled off j for my- 

 self, on the gastronomic principle, that 



" Un diner rechauffe ne valut jamais rien." 



And expecting to see no more of him for that evening, I plunged in 

 medias res, when, in less than a Credo, the padre was back. He had 

 been sent for by an old devotee, who had a megraine, and to whom he 

 told me he had already administered the viaticum five and twenty times. 

 Society, in a place where the women are kept in a stile of worse 

 than Turkish seclusion, it will be easily conceived was at a very low 



