1850.] FREI JOZE. 157 



wait patiently and idly at Guia. For days I would go out into 

 the forest, and not get a bird worth skinning; insects were 

 equally scarce. The forest was gloomy, damp, and silent as 

 death. Every other day was wet, and almost every afternoon 

 there was a thunderstorm : and on these dull days and weary 

 evenings, I had no resource but the oft-told tales of Senhor L., 

 and the hackneyed conversation on buying and selling calico, 

 on digging salsa, and cutting piassaba. 



At length, however, the Padre*, Frei Joze, arrived with Senhor 

 Tenente Filisberto, the Commandante of Marabitanas. Frei 

 Joz dos Santos Innocentos was a tall, thin, prematurely old 

 man, thoroughly worn out by every kind of debauchery, his 

 hands crippled, and his body ulcerated ; yet he still delighted 

 in recounting the feats of his youth, and was celebrated as the 

 most original and amusing story-teller in the province of Pard. 

 He was carried up the hill, from the river-side, in a hammock ; 

 and took a couple of days to rest, before he commenced his 

 ecclesiastical operations. I often went with Senhor L. to visit 

 him, and was always much amused with his inexhaustible fund 

 of anecdotes : he seemed to know everybody and everything 

 in the Province, and had always something humorous to tell 

 about them. His stories were, most of them, disgustingly 

 coarse; but so cleverly told, in such quaint and expressive 

 language, and with such amusing imitations of voice and 

 manner, that they were irresistibly ludicrous. There is always, 

 too, a particular charm in hearing good anecdotes in a foreign 

 language. The point is the more interesting, from the obscure 

 method of arriving at it ; and the knowledge you acquire of 

 the various modes of using the peculiar idioms of the language, 

 causes a pleasure quite distinct from that of the story itself. 

 Frei Joze" never repeated a story twice in the week he was 

 with us ; and Senhor L., who has known him for years, says 

 he had never before heard many of the anecdotes he now 

 related. He had been a soldier, then a friar in a convent, and 

 afterwards a parish priest: he told tales of his convent life, 

 just like what we read in Chaucer of their doings in his time. 

 Don Juan was an innocent compared with Frei Joze* ; but he 

 told us he had a great respect for his cloth, and never did 

 anything disreputable during the day / 



At length the baptisms took place : there were some fifteen 

 or twenty Indian children of all ages, to undergo the operation 



