1836.] SLAVERY. 363 



siori to pass through their gardens to an uncultivated hill, tor the 

 purpose of viewing the country. I feel glad that this happened in the 

 land of the Brazilians, for I bear them no good will a land also of 

 slavery, and therefore of moral debasement. A Spaniard would have 

 felt ashamed at the very thought of refusing such a request, or ot 

 behaving to a stranger with rudeness. The channel by which we went 

 to and returned from Olinda, was bordered on each side by mangroves, 

 which sprang like a miniature forest out of the greasy mud-banks. 

 The bright green colour of these bushes always reminded me of the 

 rank grass in a churchyard ; both are nourished by putrid exhalations ; 

 the one speaks of death past, and the other too often of death to come. 



The most curious object which I saw in this neighbourhood, was the 

 reef that forms the harbour. I doubt whether in the whole world any 

 other natural structure has so artificial an appearance.* It runs for a 

 length of several miles in an absolutely straight line, parallel to, and 

 not far distant from, the shore. It varies in width from thirty to sixty 

 yards, and its surface is level and smooth ; it is composed of obscurely 

 stratified hard sandstone. At high water the waves break over it ; at 

 low water its summit is left dry, and it might then be mistaken for a 

 break-water erected by Cyclopean workmen. On this coast the currents 

 of the sea tend to throw up in front of the land, long spits and bars of 

 loose sand, and on one of these part of the town of Pernambuco stands. 

 In former times a long spit of this nature seems to have become con- 

 solidated by the percolation of calcareous matter, and afterwards to 

 have been gradually upheaved ; the outer and loose parts during this 

 process having been worn away by the action of the sea, and the solid 

 nucleus left as we now see it. Although night and day the waves of 

 the open Atlantic, turbid with sediment, are driven against the steep 

 outside edges of this wall of stone, yet the oldest pilots knew of no 

 tradition of any change in its appearance. This durability is much the 

 most curious fact in its history ; it is due to a tough layer, a few inches 

 thick, of calcareous matter, wholly formed by the successive growth 

 and death of the small shells of Serpulae, together with some few 

 barnacles and nulliporae. These nulliporae, which are hard, very 

 simply-organized sea-plants, play an analogous and important part in 

 protecting the upper surfaces of coral-reefs, behind and within the 

 breakers, where the true corals, during the outward growth of the mass, 

 become killed by exposure to the sun and air. These insignificant 

 organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done good service to the 

 people of Pernambuco ; for without their protective aid the bar of sand- 

 stone would inevitably have been long ago worn away, and without 

 the bar, there would have been no harbour. 



On the igth of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank 

 God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear 

 a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when 

 passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, 

 and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet 



* I have described this Bar in detail, in the London and Edinburgh 

 Philosophic Magaxine, vol. xix. (1841), p. 257. 



