36 A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



We alighted at a hut — I can call it nothing else — with 

 a verandah. After attending to the horses and taking 

 them to pasture, we had dinner at six, which was composed 

 of a few very greasy beef and pork fritters, black beans, 

 mandioca flour {farinka) — like sawdust — rice, and cab- 

 bage, washed down by sweet white Portuguese wine. We 

 were attended by some really good-looking negresses, and 

 our hostess looked on all the time ; the latter had a huge 

 goitre, also a large quid of black tobacco protruding 

 from the corner of her mouth, and she expectorated pro- 

 miscuously on the floor of our dining-room. The house was 

 lighted up by earthenware lamps shaped like the old Greek 

 and Roman type, with a wick dipped in castor-oil. My 

 " camarade " and I slept in a small room ofT the verandah 

 — without a window — two bedsteads being the whole furni- 

 ture ; but I must allow that the maize-husk mattresses were 

 the best I have had for a fortnight. 



The next morning, after coffee and " cachaga," * and 

 settling our modest bill, we left at 6.30, reaching Brumado 

 before ten. We went to the house of Senhor Joao Baptista 

 de Oliveira e Souza, whose acquaintance I had made some 

 days before, when he rode over to Paraopeba to greet us. 

 He received us very kindly, and gave me much information 

 about the neighbourhood, as also a letter of introduction 

 to a gentleman who has a fazenda (farm) a little beyond 

 Suassuhy. While I was at Brumado, a priest came in. He 

 was a jolly sort of man, with a strong tinge of nigger blood, 

 a small tonsure about an inch in diameter, a lace collar, 

 white dust-coat, big black straw hat, grey gloves, and top 

 boots— not exactly one's idea of a parish priest ; moreover, 

 he drank Bass's beer, the cork drawn by an English patent 

 corkscrew. 



* The native rum. 



