320 THE LOWER AMAZONS. Chap. YII. 



The only laborious work done during the year in 

 these establishments is the felling of timber for new 

 clearings ; this happens at the beginning of the dry 

 season, namely, from July to September. Whatever 

 employment the people were engaged in, they did not 

 intermit it during the hot hours of the day. Those 

 who went into the woods took their dinners with 

 them — a small bag of farinha, and a slice of salt fish. 

 About sunset all returned to the house ; they then had 

 their frugal suppers, and towards 8 o'clock, after coming 

 to ask a blessing of the patriarchal head of the house- 

 hold, went off to their hammocks to sleep. 



There was another visitor besides ourselves, a negro, 

 whom Joa5 Trinidade introduced to me as his oldest 

 and dearest friend, who had saved his life during the 

 revolt of 1835. I have, unfortunately, forgotten his 

 name ; he was a freeman, and had a sitio of his own, 

 situated about a day's journey from this. There was 

 the same manly bearing about him that I had noticed 

 with pleasure in many other free negroes ; but his quiet, 

 earnest manner, and the thoughtful and benevolent ex- 

 pression of his countenance showed him to be a superior 

 man of his class. He told me he had been intimate 

 with our host for thirty years, and that a wiy word had 

 never passed between them. At the commencement of 

 the disorders of 1835 he got into the secret of a plot for 

 assassinating his friend, hatched by some villains whose 

 only cause of enmity was their owing him money and 

 envying his prosperity. It was such as these who 

 aroused the stupid and brutal animosity of the Muras 

 against the whites. The negro, on obtaining this news. 



