TO RIO JANEIRO. 31 



matical of royalty ! A chapel, jail, and barracks constitute the 

 principal public buildings. The fort, which flanks the town, is almost 

 entirely in decay. This is the case with almost every thing we saw 

 here : the place is, indeed, little better than an African town. The 

 'louses are of stone, one story high, partly thatched, and others tiled. 

 Their interior presents only a few articles of absolute necessity. Of 

 comfort and cleanliness, in our sense of the words, they have no idea. 

 The houses and streets are filthy in the extreme, and in both of them, 

 pigs, fowls, and monkeys appear to claim, and really possess, equal 

 rights with the occupants and owner. 



The population is made up of an intermixture of descendants from 

 the Portuguese, natives, and negroes from the adjacent coast. The 

 Negro race seems to predominate, woolly hair, flat noses, and thick 

 lips being most frequently met with. The number of inhabitants in St. 

 Jago is about thirty thousand. Porto Praya contains two thousand 

 three hundred, of which number one hundred are native Portuguese. 



The language spoken, is a jargon formed by a mixture of the 

 Portuguese and Negro dialects. Most of the blacks speak their native 

 tongue. Mr. Hale, our philologist, obtained here a vocabulary of the 

 Mandingo language, and found it to agree with that given by Mungo 

 Park. 



The officers of this garrison were, like the governor, all black. 

 The latter made a brilliant appearance, dressed in a military frock 

 coat, red sash, two large silver epaulettes, and a military cross on 

 his breast. He was quite good-looking, although extremely corpulent, 

 and speaks both French and Spanish well. He was very civil and 

 attentive. Fruit, bread, cheese, and wines were handed about. Some 

 of the wine was made on the island of Fogo, and resembled the light 

 Italian wines. The cheese also was made here from goats' milk, and 

 resembled the Spanish cheese. After doing ample justice to his excel- 

 lency's good fare, we proceeded to view the lions of the place. 



The first and greatest of these is the fountain, or common watering 

 place of the town, above half a mile distant by the path, in a valley to 

 the west of the town, and almost immediately under it. The fountain 

 is surrounded by a variety of tropical trees, consisting of dates, cocoa- 

 nuts, bananas, papayas, sugar-cane, and tamarinds, with grapes, 

 oranges, limes, &c. &c, and when brought into comparison with the 

 surrounding lands, may be termed an enchanting spot ; but what adds 

 peculiarly to its effect on a stranger, is the novelty of the objects that 

 are brought together. Over the spring is a thatched roof, and round 

 about it a group of the most remarkable objects in human shape that 

 can well be conceived. On one side blind beggars, dirty soldiers, and 



