28 RIO DE JANEIRO. April^ 1832. 



was superior to the common run of men. It may be said 

 there exists no limit to the bhndness of interest and selfish 

 habit. I may mention one very trilling anecdote^ which at 

 the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. 

 I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly 

 stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked 

 loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near 

 his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and 

 was going to strike him ; for instantly, with a frightened 

 look and half- shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never 

 forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing 

 a great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow^ 

 directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been 

 trained to a degradation lower than the slavery of the most 

 helpless animal. 



April. I8tu. — In returning we spent two days at So- 

 cego, and I employed them in collecting insects in the 

 forest. The greater number of trees, although so lofty, are 

 not more than three or four feet in circumference. There 

 are, of course, a few of much greater dimension. Senhor 

 Manuel, was then making a canoe seventy feet in length 

 from a solid trunk, which had originally been 110 feet long, and 

 of great thickness. The contrast of palm-trees, growing amidst 

 the common branching kinds, never fails to give the scene an 

 intertropical character. Here the woods were ornamented by 

 the Cabbage Palm — one of the most beautiful of its family. 

 With a stem so narrow that it might be clasped with the 

 two hands, it waves its elegant head at the height of forty 

 or fifty feet above the ground. The woody creepers, them- 

 selves covered by other creepers, were of great thickness : 

 some which I measured were two feet in circumference. 

 Many of the older trees presented a very curious appearance 

 from the tresses of a liana depending from their boughs, and 

 resembling bundles of hay. If the eye was turned from 

 the world of foliage above, to the ground beneath, it was 

 attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns 



