CHAP. III.] BAHIA TO THE CAPE. 123 



on board the steamer Mr. Iliigli Wilson, a countryman of our 

 own and a leading engineer at Bahia, who was at the time car- 

 rying out some railway operations at Caxoeira. He had an es- 

 tablishment in the town, with clerks and draughtsmen at work ; 

 there he kindly put us up, and w^e rode out with him to see the 

 railway' works. The town is on a river between two low mount- 

 ain ridges, and the railway winds along the flank of one of these. 

 The country is excessively rough, with no regular roads, and it 

 was at first rather nervous work riding up and down places 

 which no civilized horses would have dreamed of attempting. 

 Mr. Wilson was accustomed to it, however, and led the way with 

 the utmost confidence, and we soon learned to place complete 

 trust in the intelligence of the handsome black entire horses, 

 which seemed to be strong enough for any thing, and to know 

 perfectly what they were about, often absolutely refusing to 

 take the path indicated to them, and choosing one which to our 

 less instructed eyes appeared ten times more diflicult. In our 

 ride we crossed here and there steep tracks w^inding through 

 ravines among the mountains, and at intervals an extraordinary 

 amount of noise — men shouting and cracking their long bullock 

 whips, cattle struggling and scrambling among the loose bowl- 

 ders, and, above all, the shrill creaking of wheels — announced 

 the approach of one of the huge drays, dragged by ten or twelve 

 pairs of bullocks, carrying supplies to or produce from the inte- 

 rior. The ponderous affair comes creaking and groaning up to 

 the bottom of what looks like, and I suppose is, the dry bed of 

 a torrent, and one can not at first imagine that they can mean to 

 attempt to go up. After a spell of a few minutes, however, they 

 go at it, the men shouting and lashing, and every now and then 

 putting their shoulders to the great solid, sjDokeless wheels ; and, 

 to your surprise, you find that they are making a little way. 

 One leader of a team whom we spoke to had a very confident 

 expectation, in spite of appearances, of getting to his destination, 

 somewhere a good way up country, in rather less than a week. 



