PROVINCE OF PERNAMBUCO. 



38.9 



spontaneously acceded to by the governor, the different public officers, and the 

 people, without any effusion of blood, in the month of January, 1821. The impri- 

 sonment at Bahia, since 1818, of some of the first men of Pernambuco, arrested 

 on suspicion of being implicated in the revolution, will now no doubt have its 

 termination. That event brought upon Pernambuco a strict military govern- 

 ment, and at the corner of every street after dusk, the ear was assailed by the 

 military watch-word ; under such a system, the inhabitants could not have been 

 more fortunate than in the selection of General Rego for their governor, whose 

 military experience was acquired with much credit in the Peninsular campaign, 

 and whose gentlemanly and friendly conduct would tend to soften the rigours of 

 a military occupation of the town. To the ready assistance and attention of 

 the governor to all matters in which their interests are concerned, the English 

 merchants bear their united testimony. 



During the Christmas holidays, and the hottest weather, P090 de Panela, 

 Ponta de Cho, and the neighbouring, and more distant villages of Monteiro 

 (the road to which partly leads by a bridle-way through woods) and of Caxanga, 

 (where there is a spring of chalybeate water, approached also by a bye-way after 

 crossing the river,) are fully occupied by the families of Jiecife, in their 

 gayest attire and the ladies are frequently seen at the windows or at the doors, 

 the men devoting the days of the holidays to gambling, seated in the verandas, 

 playing at cards or backgammon. At this season the roads are also enlivened 

 with horsemen going their evening rounds to these places of resort. Another 

 very pleasing excursion to Ponta de Cho, P090 de Panela, and Monteiro, is 

 by the river Capibaribe, whose winding banks are bordered with white cottages 

 and houses, some of a very superior appearance, also inhabited during this period, 

 and each having a bathing house rudely enough formed of the branches of the 

 cocoa-nut tree. Innumerable canoes are seen gliding along the river, impelled 

 with more velocity than by the oar or the paddle, by two vara men, who are 

 negroes dressed in white cotton trowsers, exhibiting all the muscular movements 

 of their naked arms and bodies io the exertion of using the vara, which, when 

 well and regularly executed, is rather a graceful labour. A whole family, with 

 furniture, and all the et ceteras, are moved up the river to their summer abode 

 in this manner ; and the ladies, in their smart dresses, with French liats and 

 white plumes nodding to the river's breeze, do not seem to regret that it is l)ut 

 transient liberty they are going to enjoy, and which they indulge in by a more 

 free exhibition of themselves, and also by daily bathing in the river, probably 

 two or three times, remaining in the water an hour or an hour and a half at 



