1832.] ARRIVAL AT SOCEGO. 23 
was well suited to the climate. In the sitting-room gilded chairs 
and sofas were oddly contrasted with the whitewashed walls, 
thatched roof, and windows without glass. The house, together 
with the granaries, the stables, and workshops for the blacks, 
who had been taught various trades, formed a rude kind of quad- 
rangle; in the centre of which a large pile of coffee was drying. 
These buildings stand on a little Lill, overlooking the cultivated 
ground, and surrounded on every side by a wall of dark green 
luxuriant forest. The chief produce of this part of the country 
is coffee. Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, 
two pounds; but some give as much as eight. Mandioca or 
cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity. Every part of 
this plant is useful: the leaves and stalks are eaten by the horses, 
and the roots are ground into a pulp, which, when pressed dry 
and baked, forms the farinha, the principal article of sustenance 
in the Brazils. It is a curious, though well-known fact, that the 
juice of this most nutritious plant is highly poisonous. A few 
years ago a cow died at this Fazénda, in consequence of having 
drunk some of it. Senhdér Figuireda told me that he had planted; 
the year before, one bag of feijaé or beans, and three of rice; 
the former of which produced eighty, and the latter three hun- 
dred and twenty fold. The pasturage supports a fine stock of 
cattle, and the woods are soefull of game, that a deer had been 
killed on each of the three previous days. ‘This profusion of 
food showed itself at dinner, where, if the tables did not groan, 
the guests surely did : for each person is expected to eat of every 
dish. One day, having, as I thought, nicely calculated so that 
nothing should go away untasted, to my utter dismay a roast 
turkey and a pig appeared in all their substantial reality. Dur- 
ing the meals, it was the employment of a man to drive out of, 
the room sundry old hounds, and dozens of little black children, ; 
which crawled in together, at every opportunity. As longas the., 
idea of slavery could be banished, there was something exceed- | 
ingly fascinating in this simple and patriarchal style of living: | 
it was such a perfect retirement and independence from the rest 
of the world. As soon as any stranger is seen arriving, a large 
hell is set tolling, and generally some small cannon are fired. 
The event is thus anriounced to the rocks and woods, but to 
nothing else. One morning I walked out an hour before day- 
