1850.] SENHOR BR AND A 0. 129 



forest, planted orange, tamarind, mango, and many other fruit- 

 bearing trees, made pleasant avenues, gardens, and pastures, 

 stocked them well with cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, and set 

 himself down to the full enjoyment of a country life. But 

 about twenty years ago, while his family were yet young, 

 disturbances and revolutions broke out, and he, as well as all 

 natives of Portugal, though he had signed the constitution of 

 the Empire, and was in heart a true Brazilian, became an 

 object of dislike and suspicion to many of the more violent 

 of the revolutionists. A tribe of Indians who resided near 

 him, and to whom he had shown constant kindness, were 

 incited to burn down his house and destroy his property. 

 This they did effectually, rooting up his fruit-trees, burning his 

 crops, killing his cattle and his servants, and his wife and 

 family only escaped from their murderous arrows by timely 

 flight to the forest. During the long years of anarchy and 

 confusion which followed, he was appointed a magistrate in 

 Barra, and was unable to look after his estate. His wife died, 

 his children married, and he of course felt then little interest 

 in restoring things to their former state. 



He is a remarkably intelligent man, fond of reading, but 

 without books, and with a most tenacious memory. He has 

 taught himself French, which he now reads with ease, and 

 through it he has got much information, though of course 

 rather tinged with French prejudice. He has several huge 

 quarto volumes of Ecclesiastical History, and is quite learned 

 in all the details of the Councils, and in the history of the 

 Reformation. He can tell you, from an old work on geography, 

 without maps, the length and breadth of every country in 

 Europe, and the main particulars respecting it. He is about 

 seventy years of age, thirsting for information, and has never 

 seen a map ! Think of this, ye who roll in intellectual luxury. 

 In this land of mechanics' institutions and cheap literature few 

 have an idea of the real pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, 

 of the longing thirst for information which there is no 

 fountain to satisfy. In his conversation there was something 

 racy and refreshing : such an absence of information, but such 

 a fertility of ideas. He had read the Bible in Portuguese, as 

 a forbidden book, though the priests make no very great 

 objection to it here ; and it was something new to hear a 

 man's opinions of it who had first read it at a mature age, and 



