64 



PROVINCE OF RIO DE JANEIRO. 



the roads of Cidade Nova, Catimby, and Matta Porcas are covered, on those 

 occasions, with officers, and numerous persons in cabriolets, on horseback, and 

 on foot, pressing tovt'ards the palace, consisting of those who have some object 

 to carry with his Majesty. When the door is opened there is a promiscuous 

 rushing forward, and a mulatto will be seen treading upon the heels of a general. 

 They advance in single rank up one side of the room to the upper part, where 

 his Majesty is seated, attended by his fidalgos in waiting, and, passing him in 

 review, they countermarch in the same order. It is said that the King has an 

 extraordinary memory, and recollects each individual as he passes, and the 

 object of his visit ; those who please speak to him, but a great proportion do 

 not. It would appear that his Majesty is partial to seeing people in this way 

 for a considerable period before he concedes what they want. A gentleman 

 from Lisbon informed me that he had come to Rio expressly to gain some object 

 with the government, and he anticipated a residence of twelve months there 

 before he accomplished it. He purposed omitting none of those numerous 

 attendances of beija-mao, unless his neglecting to do so might be observed by 

 his Majesty; who, he observed was particularly desirous of detaining all 

 Europeans there as long as possible. Senhor Thomas Antonio de Portugal, the 

 minister of state, w ho has a shacara upon the left side of the road, already 

 described, leading to Andrahi, holds a sort of public levee two days in each 

 week, where crowds of officers and others attend, to submit their applications 

 or to solicit his patronage, afterwards proceeding to perform the accustomed 

 ceremony of beija-mao at the palace, during which period, from eight to nine 

 o'clock, a baud of music, in no very harmonious strains, is heard through a 

 portion of the valley. 



The fidalgos, and those who may be denominated the higher orders of society 

 here, are infinitely behind corresponding classes in the leading states of Europe, 

 both in the knowledge and practice of civilized life. The pleasures and refine- 

 ments of social intercourse are alike unknown to them : jealous of foreigners, 

 their conduct towards them is not marked by that attention or hospitality so 

 conspicuous in other countries, where the cultivation of a liberal system of 

 society prevails. Their main occupation consists in outward show, in the 

 punctilious observance of court-etiquette, and a regular attendance upon the 

 superstitious rites and festivals of the Catholic religion. Whatever little exists 

 of pomp and splendour in this city is to be discovered in the temples, which are 

 fitted up with rich profusion, more especially the parish churches, their altars 

 and shrines exhibiting decorations of the most costly kind, in which respect 



