332 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



these torrents of water, and every shower is a fresh sur 

 prise. Yet the rainy season is no such impediment to 

 travelling and working as we had supposed it would be. 

 The rain is by no means continuous, and there are often 

 several days together of clear weather. Indeed, it no 

 more rains all the time in the rainy season here than 

 it snows all the time in the winter with us. One word 

 of the geology. The Pedreira granite, of which we had 

 heard, proves to be a granitoid mica-slate, a highly 

 metamorphic rock, indistinctly stratified, but resembling 

 granite in its composition. It is in immediate contact 

 with the red drift which rests above it. 



This morning we had a melancholy proof of the bru 

 tality of recruiting here, of which we have already heard 

 so nmch. Several Indians, who had been kept in confine 

 ment in Pedreira for some days, waiting for an opportunity 

 to send them to Manaos, were brought out to the ship. 

 These poor wretches had their feet passed through heavy 

 blocks of wood, the holes being just large enough to fit 

 around the ankles. Of course they could only move 

 with the greatest difficulty ; and they were half pushed, 

 half dragged up the side of the vessel, one of them hav 

 ing apparently such a fit of ague upon him that, when he 

 was fairly landed on his feet, I could see him shake from 

 my scat at a distance of half the deck. These Indians 

 can speak no Portuguese : they cannot understand why 

 they are forced to go ; they only know that, they are 

 seized in the woods and treated as if they were the worst 

 criminals ; punished with barbarity for no crime, and then 

 sent to fight for the government which so misuses them. 

 To the honor of our commander be it said, that he showed 

 the deepest indignation at the condition in which these 



