iSso.] 



FREI JOZL 



^57 



wait patiently and idly at Guia. For days I would go out into 

 the forest, and not get a bird worth skinning; insects were 

 equally scarce. The forest was gloomy, damp, and silent as 

 death. Every other day was wet, and almost every afternoon 

 there was a thunderstorm : and on these dull days and weary 

 evenings, I had no resource but the oft-told tales of Senhor L., 

 and the hackneyed conversation on buying and selHng calico, 

 on digging salsa, and cutting piassaba. 



At length, however, the Padre, Frei Joze, arrived with Senhor 

 Tenente Filisberto, the Commandante of Marabitanas. Frei 

 Joze dos Santos Innocentos was a tall, thin, prematurely old 

 man, thoroughly worn out by every kind of debauchery, his 

 hands crippled, and his body ulcerated ; yet he still delighted 

 in recounting the feats of his youth, and was celebrated as the 

 most original and amusing story-teller in the province of Para. 

 He was carried up the hill, from the river-side, in a hammock ; 

 and took a couple of days to rest, before he commenced his 

 ecclesiastical operations. I often went with Senhor L. to visit 

 him, and was always much amused with his inexhaustible fund 

 of anecdotes : he seemed to know everybody and everything 

 in the Province, and had always something humorous to tell 

 about them. His stories were, most of them, disgustingly 

 coarse; but so cleverly told, in such quaint and expressive 

 language, and with such amusing imitations of voice and 

 manner, that they were irresistibly ludicrous. There is always, 

 too, a particular charm in hearing good anecdotes in a foreign 

 language. The point is the more interesting, from the obscure 

 method of arriving at it ; and the knowledge you acquire of 

 the various modes of using the peculiar idioms of the language, 

 causes a pleasure quite distinct from that of the story itself. 

 Frei Joze never repeated a story twice in the week he was 

 with us ; and Senhor L., who has known him for years, says 

 he had never before heard many of the anecdotes he now 

 related. He had been a soldier, then a friar in a convent, and 

 afterwards a parish priest: he told tales of his convent life, 

 just like what we read in Chaucer of their doings in his time. 

 Don Juan was an innocent compared with Frei Joze ; but he 

 told us he had a great respect for his cloth, and never did 

 anything disreputable — during the day 1 



At length the baptisms took place : there were some fifteen 

 or twenty Indian children of all ages, to undergo the operation 



