BAHIA. 95 



was passed with beautiful flowers growing about it, and amongst 

 them numerous forms of Melastomacece with their characteristic 

 three-veined leaves. 



I saw here most of the plants which I had collected at 

 Fernando do ISTorhona growing as road-side weeds. As we 

 rode on, a splendid Iguana, about three feet in length, ran across 

 the road. I was astonished at the brilliant dark green and 

 bright yellow-green colouring of the animal, and have never 

 seen any other lizard so bright. 



Every now and then a village was passed ; in the first, as it 

 was Sunday, the villagers were enjoying a cock-fight. Every 

 villager keeps a fighting-cock. Good Lisbon wine is sold along 

 the road ; the drinking-places consist of a hole about a yard 

 square in the gable-end of the usual mud-walled cottage, placed 

 at such a height as to be convenient to a man on horseback, who 

 thus gets his drink without dismounting. Ladies travel along 

 the road either in the saddle or in a sedan chair slung between 

 two horses or mules by means of a long pole. 



A thick growth of myrtles and shrubs which was passed, 

 was pointed out as having been the hiding-place of a notorious 

 highway robber, a negro named Lucas, who used to lay in wait 

 for merchants on their way to the fair at St. Anna ; he was the 

 terror of the district, and committed several murders and worse 

 atrocities. Though he was caught and executed in 1859, stories 

 about him are already beginning to assume a mythical dress, 

 and I was told that miraculous flowers grew out from a tree to 

 which he bound one of his victims, a white girl, leaving her to 

 die of exposure. 



We took seven and a half hours over the 28 miles to Feira 



St. Anna. 



Feira St. Anna. — The town consists of about three long 

 parallel streets, with a broad cross street, or rather open oblong 

 space on which the small dealers erect their booths on fair day. 

 We rode into the town at about five o'clock in the evening. 



The girls were all dressed in their best, expecting home their 

 various sweethearts who are away all the week in search of 

 cattle, and only come to town on Sundays in time for the fair 

 on Monday. Several of them greeted my guide as an old 



