478 PERNAMUUCO, BRAZIL. [ HAI-. xxi. 



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 consolidated 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 know 

 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 Serpute, 

 together with some few barnacles and nulliporre. These nulli- 

 pora, -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, especial ly 

 the Serpulee, have done good service to the people of Pernambuco ; 

 for without their protective aid the bar of sandstone would inevitably 

 have been long ago worn away, and without the bar, there would 

 have been no harbour. 



On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I 

 thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this clay, 

 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 knew that I was as powerless as a child even to 

 remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured 

 slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. 

 Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept 

 screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a 

 house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was 

 reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the 

 lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, sis or seven years old, 

 struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his 

 naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not qniie clean ; 

 I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. 

 These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in, a Spanish colony, in 



