Cuap. I. CHARACTER OF THE POPULATION. 21 
started on my long voyage to the Tapajos and the Upper Amazons, 
which occupied me seven years and a half. I became during this time 
tolerably familiar with the capital of the Amazons region, and its 
inhabitants. Compared with other Brazilian seaport towns, I was 
always told, Para shone to great advantage. It was cleaner, the suburbs 
were fresher, more rural and much pleasanter on account of their 
verdure, shade, and magnificent vegetation. ‘The people were simpler, 
more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions, and 
assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, 
were almost unknown. At the same time the Pard people were much 
inferior to Southern Brazilians in energy and industry. Provisions and 
house rents being cheap and the wants of the people few—for they 
were content with food and lodging of a quality which would be 
spurned by paupers in England—they spent the greater part of their 
time in sensual indulgences and in amusements which the government 
and wealthier citizens provided for them gratis. The trade, wholesale 
and retail, was in the hands of the Portuguese, of whom there were 
about 2500 in the place. Many handicrafts were exercised by coloured 
people, mulattos, mamelucos, free negroes and Indians. The better 
sort of Brazilians dislike the petty details of shopkeeping, and if they 
cannot be wholesale merchants prefer the life of planters in the country, 
however small may be the estate and the gains. The negroes consti- 
tuted the class of field-labourers and porters; Indians were universally 
the watermen, and formed the crews of the numberless canoes of all 
sizes and shapes which traded between Para and the interior. The 
educated Brazilians, not many of whom are of pure Caucasian descent 
—for the immigration of Portuguese, for many years, has been almost 
exclusively of the male sex—are courteous, lively, and intelligent 
people. They were gradually weaning themselves of the ignorant, 
bigoted notions which they inherited from their Portuguese ancestors, 
especially those entertained with regard to the treatment of women. 
Formerly the Portuguese would not allow their wives to go into society, 
or their daughters to learn reading and writing. In 1848, Brazilian 
ladies were only just beginning to emerge from this inferior position, 
and Brazilian fathers were opening their eyes to the advantages of 
education for their daughters. Reforms of this kind are slow. It is, 
perhaps, in part owing to the degrading position always held by women, 
that the relations between the sexes were and are still on so unsatis- 
factory a footing, and private morality at so low an ebb in Brazil. In 
Para I believe that an improvement is now taking place, but formerly 
promiscuous intercourse seemed to be the general rule amongst all 
classes, and intrigue and love-making the serious business of the greater 
part of the population. That this state of things is a necessity 
depending on the climate and institutions I do not believe, as I have 
resided at small towns in the interior, where the habits, and the 
_ general standard of morality of the inhabitants, were as pure as they 
are in similar places in England. 
visited Caripi on the Bahia of Marajo. June 8 to July 21, 1849, I visited Cameta and 
the lower part of the Tocantins. Lastly, from Sept. 22, 1849, to April 19, 1851, I 
made a preliminary voyage to Obydos, the Rio Negro, and Ega. 
