Chap. I. FREE NEGROES. 11 



stood ; in his efforts to do which he was very amusing. 

 Having no other medium through which we could make 

 kno^vn our wants, we progressed rapidly in learning 

 Portuguese. I was quite surprised to find little or no 

 trace in Isidoro of that baseness of character which I 

 had read of as being the rule amongst negroes in a slave 

 country. Isidoro was an old man, with an anxious, 

 lugubrious expression of countenance, and exhibited 

 signs of having been overworked in his younger days, 

 which I understood had been passed in slavery. The 

 first traits I perceived in him w^ere a certain degree of 

 self-respect and a spirit of independence : these I found 

 afterwards to be by no means rare qualities among the 

 free negroes. Some time after he had entered our service, 

 I scolded him one morning about some delay in getting 

 breakfast. It happened that it Avas not his fault, for 

 he had been detained, much against his will, at the 

 shambles. He resented the scolding, not in an insolent 

 way, but in a quiet, respectful manner, and told me how 

 the thing had occurred ; that I must not expect the 

 same regularity in Brazil which is found in England, 

 and that " paciencia" was a necessary accomplishment 

 to a Brazilian traveller. There was nothing ridiculous 

 about Isidoro ; there was a gravity of demeanour and 

 sense of propriety about him which would have been 

 considered becoming in a serving-man in any country. 

 This spirit of self-respect is, I think, attributable partly 

 to the lenient treatment which slaves have generally 

 received from their white masters in this part of Brazil, 

 and partly to the almost total absence of prejudice 

 against coloured people amongst the inhabitants. This 



