PROVINCE OF RIO DE JANEIRO. 



75 



bones together, is covered with a loathsome disease, which the Portuguese call 

 sarna, but may more properly be denominated the scurvy. The poor wretches 

 undergo painful remedies to prepare them as speedily as possible for market. 

 If a visit to the street of warehouses appropriated to their reception be occa- 

 sioned by a desire of gratifying curosity, the sentiments brought into operation 

 by such a scene will soon hurry the visitor away in pity and disgust. They are 

 crowded together without regard to sex, and made to sit down in rows upon 

 the ground, being by turns roughly forced upon their feet, for the purpose of 

 exhibiting their bodily powers to a purchaser. Negroes are become very dear ; 

 those that might have been procured three years ago for thirty-five or forty 

 pounds, are now worth sixty or seventy. 



Strangers coming here are also subject to the sarna, as well as the natives, 

 which is an irruption attended with considerable irritation and itching about the 

 legs, feet, and ancles, and becomes troublesome unless great care is taken, by 

 washing them every night with warm water and cachaga. The hicho is also 

 another annoyance peculiar to the climate, ever filling the air, the water, and 

 the earth with new and infinite animation. This insect generates in the dust 

 and sand, and penetrating the foot not larger than an atom at first, increases to 

 the size of a small white worm, giving considerable pain till extracted ; in doing 

 which, it is necessary to remove all the little eggs which it leaves behind, other- 

 wise they would soon acquire life, and, if allowed, eat away the foot. I have 

 seen numbers of negroes, whose legs and feet, with the aid of the sarna, have 

 been literally destroyed, and almost corroded away by them. The little black 

 boys sitting down, and extracting them from their feet with a pin, reminded 

 me of the celebrated bronze figure of a boy, in the attitude of taking a thorn 

 from his foot, which occupies a place in the Salle de Laocoon, at the Louvre. 



In traversing the woods, the carrapato, with which the branches frequently 

 swarm, is an annoying and dangerous enemy. It is similar in appearance to a 

 sheep-tick, and introduces the head and main part of the body into the flesh, 

 when, if taken away forcibly, it leaves a disagreeable wound. One of these 

 vermin penetrated the leg of the King, and, being injudiciously forced away, 

 caused a wound, which has been occasionally troublesome to his Majesty ever 

 since. The application of oil is deemed an efficacious mode of removing them ; 

 but I found this, ineffectual, after using it copiously for about half an hour on 

 one that was nearly buried in the ear of a negro-boy. 



On first arriving here, the inharmonious sounds which begin to annoy the 

 ear about Avi Maria, sent forth by field-crickets, frogs, toads, and other 



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