COMPUTATION OF TIME. 



89 



and round this both men and women were 

 dancing. A pipe was handed occasionally front 

 one to the other. Soon afterwards, one of tin- 

 Indian girls told one of her companions of a dif- 

 ferent cast from her own, as a great secret, that 

 she had been sent to sleep at a neighbour's hut 

 a few nights before, because her father and 

 mother were going to drink jurema. This be- 

 verage is obtained from a common herb ; but I 

 never could persuade any of the Indians to 

 point it out to me ; though when they positively 

 asserted that they were unacquainted with it, 

 their countenances belied their words. 



T had a visit in October from a strange old 

 man, whose age was generally supposed to bor- 

 der upon ninety years. He was a Creole black, 

 and had been a slave upon the plantation of 

 Santos Cosmo e Damiam in the Varzea to the 

 southward of Recife ; he had settled at Iguaracu, 

 after he obtained his manumission, having mar- 

 ried, when he was about seventy years of age, a 

 young woman of his own colour; and he was now 

 surrounded by a young family. This man did 

 not reckon his age by years, but by the gover- 

 nors ; and as each of these, with few excep- 

 tions, remained at the head of the province only 

 three years, something near the truth could be 

 collected. This mode of computation is very 

 common. I have often, on asking the age of 

 any person, received for answer, that the in- 



