126 A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



received, but supplied with all the luxuries obtainable. 

 Our hostess was a charming old lady of ninety. She is 

 the ruling spirit, very active and voluble. A son and three 

 grown-up grandchildren — one of them a widow with one 

 girl — do the work. They gave us an excellent dinner by 

 the light of castor-oil lamps ; a good bedroom, the door 

 of which opened on to a verandah in front of the house, 

 and very soft beds of maize husks ; to these we retired at 

 8.30, tired out, and slept in sheets the first time for four 

 months ! 



The ox-cart did not reach the site of our new camp till 

 11.30 the next day, having been twenty-two hours coming 

 some eight miles ! Such is travelling in the rainy season 

 in Minas Geraes. We soon had the tents up, and then 

 returned to breakfast at our last night's abode. After this 

 refreshment, by special request, I exhibited my beetle-box, 

 with the captures of the last twenty-four hours ; and then 

 heard an acquaintance, Joaquim Gongalves de Souza, 

 explaining to our hostess (the old lady of ninety, who 

 is his grandaunt) that I went in for buying everything — 

 humming-birds, butterflies, and beetles — to send them home 

 to my country. Rather an exaggeration. We dined in 

 camp ; one of the chickens which had been shut up for 

 twenty-eight hours without food or water was taken out 

 of the wicker-work hamper and prepared for us. 



On first settling down to camp-life, I was convinced that 

 so far my tin boxes were a delusion and a snare, as they 

 had been so battered about in the journey by rough 

 handling that it was with the greatest difficulty I could 

 open and shut them. This conclusion, however, has been 

 greatly shaken on examining the condition of their con- 

 tents, for on taking out (December 22) all my clothes to 

 be aired and placed in the sunshine, I found those which 



