1832.] ARRIVAL AT SOCEGO. 23 



was well suited to the climate. In the sitting-room gilded chairs 

 and sofas were oddly contrasted with the whitewashed walls, 

 thatched roof, and windows without glass. The house, together 

 with the granaries, the stables, and workshops for the blacks, 

 who had been taught various trades, formed a rude kind of quad- 

 rangle ; in the centre of which a large pile of coffee was drying. 

 These buildings stand on a little hill, overlooking the cultivated 

 ground, and surrounded on every side by a wall of dark green 

 luxuriant forest. The chief produce of this part of the country 

 is coffee. Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, 

 two pounds; but some give as much as eight. Mandioca or 

 cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity. Every part of 

 this plant is useful : the leaves and stalks are eaten by the horses, 

 and the roots are ground into a pulp, which, when pressed dry 

 and baked, forms the farinha, the principal article of sustenance 

 in the Brazils. It is a curious, though well known fact, that the 

 juice of this most nutritious plant is highly poisonous. A few 

 years ago a cow died at this Fazenda, in consequence of having 

 drunk some of it. Senhor Figuireda told me that he had planted, 

 the year before, one bag of feijao or beans, and three of rice ; 

 the former of which produced eighty, and the latter three hun- 

 dred and twenty fold. The pasturage supports a fine stock of 

 cattle, and the woods are so full of game, that a deer had been 

 killed on each of the three previous days. This profusion of 

 food showed itself at dinner, where, if the tables did not groan, 

 the guests surely did : for each person is expected to eat of every 

 dish. One day, having, as I thought, nicely calculated so that 

 nothing should go away . untasted, to my utter dismay a roast 

 turkey and a pig appeared in all their substantial reality. Dur- 

 ing the meals, it was the employment of a man to drive out of 

 the room sundry old hounds, and dozens of little black children, 

 which crawled in together, at every opportunity. As long as the 

 idea of slavery could be banished, there was something exceed- 

 ingly fascinating in this simple and patriarchal style of living: 

 it was such a perfect retirement and independence from the rest 

 of the world. As soon as any stranger is seen arriving, a large 

 bell is set tolling, and generally some small cannon are fired 

 The event is thus announced to the rocks and woods, but to 

 nothing else. One morning I walked out an hour before day- 



