Chap. iv.J RIDE TO FEIRA ST. ANNA. 8 1 



with mostly dirty dilapidated two-storied houses, tailing off 

 towards the country into one-storied hovels. On the river, 

 canoes hollowed out of a single tree trunk, simple and trough- 

 like in form and pointed at both ends, ply between the town 

 and its suburb. They are large enough to contain six persons. 

 The hotel at which we stayed consisted of a restaurant 

 below and a long barn-like chamber above, with a passage 

 down the middle, and a series of small bed chambers on either 

 hand, enclosed by partitions about twelve feet in height. As 

 one lay in bed one looked up at the bare rafters and tiles, and 

 was apt to receive unpleasant remembrances from the bats. I 

 have seen sleeping places arranged in the same manner in the 

 hotel at Point de Galle, Ceylon, and it is closely similar in all 

 Japanese houses ; the great disadvantage is that you have to 

 put up with the snorings and conversations of all the guests in 

 the hotel. 



In the evening, just outside the town, in a small pond, a 

 number of small toads were making a perfectly deafening noise. 

 The sound is like a very loud harsh cat's mew, and I could 

 not at first believe that it would come from so small an animal. 

 It is, however, not unlike the extraordinary moan made by the 

 fire-bellied toad of Europe {Boinbiiiator ignetis), but much 

 louder and with more distinct intervals between the sounds. 

 The frog tribe made a horrible noise at night at Caxoeira, a 

 bull frog shouting the loudest with a deep bass voice. 



I started on my trip in the morning. I was to go to Feira 

 St. Anna, about 28 miles from Caxoeira, to see the great fair 

 held there every Monday, and thence go down to St. Amaro, 

 a town on another river running into the bay, whence I could 

 take steamer for Bahia. Caxoeira, Feira St. Anna, and St. 

 Amaro, form with each other roughly an equilateral triangle, 

 being each distant from the other about eight leagues. 



My guide was a German, who acted as interpreter on the 

 railroad. He spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish and 

 Portuguese, and had been in Brazil about twelve years. He 

 was a wild sort of young fellow, and had undergone various 

 vicissitudes of fortune, having been once reduced to selling 

 jerked beef, and once having been a dancing-master. He was 

 a capital merry companion, knowing every one on the road and 

 having a joke for all. 



We rode extremely well-broken mules of large size that 

 ambled along, rendering it no labour to ride. Mine much 

 preferred his natural rough trot to ambling, and tried to make 

 me put up with it, finding that 1 was a tyro at mule riding. 

 But I was informed that I was ruining the beast by letting him 

 get into bad habits, and was told to dig in my spurs and jerk 



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