CuapP. XIII. VIRTUES OF FREE NEGROES. 379 
The only companionable man I found in the place, except José 
Patricio, who was absent most part of the time, was the negro tailor of 
the village, a tall, thin, grave young man, named Mestre Chico (Master 
Frank), whose acquaintance I had made at Pard several years previously. 
He was a free negro by birth, but had had the advantage of kind 
treatment in his younger days, having been brought up by a humane 
and sensible man, one Captain Basilio, of Pernambuco, his padrinho, or 
godfather. He neither drank, smoked, nor gambled, and was thoroughly 
disgusted at the depravity of all classes in this wretched little settlement, 
which he intended to quit as soon as possible. When he visited me at 
night, he used to knock at my shutters in a manner we had agreed on, 
it being necessary to guard against admitting drunken neighbours, and 
we then spent the long evenings most pleasantly, working and conversing. 
His manners were courteous, and his talk well worth listening to, for 
the shrewdness and good sense of his remarks. I first met Mestre 
Chico at the house of an old negress of Parad, Tia Rufina (Aunt Rufina), 
who used to take charge of my goods when I was absent on a voyage, 
and this affords me an opportunity of giving a few further instances of 
the excellent qualities of free negroes in a country where they are not 
wholly condemned to a degrading position by the pride or hatred of the 
white race. This old woman was born a slave, but like many others in 
the large towns of Brazil, she had been allowed to trade on her own 
account, as market-woman, paying a fixed sum daily to her owner, and 
keeping for herself all her surplus gains. In a few years she had saved 
sufficient money to purchase her freedom, and that of her grown-up son. 
This done, the old lady continued to strive until she had earned enough 
to buy the house in which she lived, a considerable property situated in 
one of the principal streets. When I returned from the interior, after 
seven years’ absence from Parad, I found she was still advancing in 
prosperity, entirely through her own exertions (being a widow) and those 
of her son, who continued, with the most regular industry, his trade as 
blacksmith, and was now building a number of small houses on a piece 
of unoccupied land attached to her property. I found these and many 
other free negroes most trustworthy people, and admired the constancy 
of their friendships and the gentleness and cheerfulness of their manners 
towards each other. They showed great disinterestedness in their 
dealings with me, doing me many a piece of service without a hint at 
remuneration ; but this may have been partly due to the name of 
Englishman, the knowledge of our national generosity towards the 
African race being spread far and wide amongst the Brazilian negroes. 
I remained at St. Paulo five months ; five years would not have been 
- suificient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in Zoology and 
Botany. Although now a forest-ramblef of ten years’ experience, the 
beautiful forest which surrounds this settlement gave me as much 
enjoyment as if I had only just landed for the first time in a tropical 
country. The Zoology revealed plainly the nearer proximity of the 
locality to the eastern slopes of the Andes than any I had yet visited, 
by the first appearance of many of the peculiar and richly coloured 
forms (especially of insects), which are known only as inhabitants of the 
warm and moist valleys of New Granada and Peru. The plateau on 
