34 RIO DE JANEIRO CHAP. II 
attend, nor were gentlemen’s sons ever excused; each of 
these was dressed in a black cassock with a short red 
cloak reaching half-way down the shoulders, and carried in 
his hand a lantern hung on the end of a pole about six or 
seven feet long. The light caused by this (for there were 
always at least 200 lanterns) is greater than can be imagined ; 
I myself, who saw it out of the cabin windows, called my 
messmates, Imagining that the town was on fire. 
Besides this travelling religion, any one walking through 
the streets has opportunity enough to show his attachment 
to any saint in the calendar, for every corner and almost 
every house has before it a little cupboard in which some 
saint or other keeps his residence; and lest he should not 
see his votaries in the night, he is furnished with a small 
lamp which hangs before his little glass window. To these 
it is very customary to pray and sing hymns with all the 
vociferation imaginable, as may be imagined when I say 
that I and every one in the ship heard it very distinctly 
every night, though we lay at least half a mile from the 
town. 
The government of this place seems to me to be much 
more despotic even than that of Portugal, although many 
precautions have been taken to render it otherwise. The 
chief magistrates are the Viceroy, the Governor of the town, 
and a Council, whose number I could not learn, but only 
that the viceroy had in this the casting vote. Without the 
consent of this council nothing material should be done, yet 
every day shows that the viceroy and governor at least, if 
not all the rest, do the most unjust things without consult- 
ing any one; putting a man into prison without giving him 
a hearing, and keeping him there till he is glad at any rate 
to get out, without asking why he was put in, or at best, 
sending him to Lisbon to be tried there without letting his 
family here know where he is gone, as is very common. 
This we experienced while here, for every one who had 
interpreted for our people, or who had only assisted in buy- 
ing provisions for them, was put into jail, merely, I suppose, 
to show us their power. I should, however, except from 
