8 



PARA 



* paciencia * was a necessary accomplishment to a Brazilian 

 traveller. There was nothing ridiculous about Isidoro ; 

 there was a gravity of demeanour and sense of propriety 

 about him which would have been considered becoming 

 in a serving-man in any country. This spirit of self- 

 respect is, I think, attributable partly to the lenient 

 treatment which slaves have generally received from 

 their white masters in this part of Brazil, and partly to 

 the almost total absence of prejudice against coloured 

 people amongst the inhabitants. This latter is a very 

 hopeful state of things. It seems to be encouraged by 

 the governing class in Brazil ; and, by drawing together 

 the races and classes of the heterogeneous population, 

 will doubtless lead to the most happy results. I had 

 afterwards, as I shall have to relate in the course of my 

 narrative, to number free negroes amongst my most 

 esteemed friends : men of temperate, quiet habits, de- 

 sirous of mental and moral improvement, observant of 

 the minor courtesies of life, and quite as trustworthy, 

 in more important matters, as the whites and half- 

 castes of the province. Isidoro was not, perhaps, scrupu- 

 lously honest in small matters : scrupulous honesty is a 

 rare quality in casual servants anywhere. He took pains 

 to show that he knew he had made a contract to perform 

 certain duties, and he tried, evidently, to perform them 

 to the best of his ability. 



Our first walks were in the immediate suburbs of Para. 

 The city lies on a corner of land formed by the junction 

 of the river Guama with the Para. As I have said before, 

 the forest, which covers the whole country, extends close 

 up to the city streets ; indeed, the town is built on a 

 tract of cleared land, and is kept free from the jungle 

 only by the constant care of the Government. The sur- 

 face, though everwhere low, is slightly undulating, so that 

 areas of dry land alternate throughout with areas of 

 swampy ground, the vegetation and animal tenants of 

 the two being widely different. Our residence lay on the 

 side of the city nearest the Guama, on the borders of one 

 of the low and swampy areas which here extend over a 

 portion of the suburbs. The tract of land is intersected 

 by well-macadamized suburban roads, the chief of which, 

 the Estrada das Mongubeiras (the Monguba road), about 

 a mile long, is a magnificent avenue of silk-cotton trees 

 (Bombax monguba and B. ceiba), huge trees whose trunks 



