NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



109 



lasted, and seemed to lighten the burden, and to cheer the heart. I 

 sometimes thought that these people were not insensible to the pleasure 

 arising from recollections, thus produced, of a home which they had 

 lost, and were never to see again ; of friends, to whom nothing but 

 misfortune could reunite them. It is certain that their songs gave a 

 cheeriness to the streets which they would otherwise have wanted, for 

 the whole population seemed tongue-tied ; there was no playfulness of 

 boyhood, no sprightliness of youth, no obstreperous shouting of the 

 more advanced in years. In this respect Rio differed from every other 

 place which I had visited. The first general shout, uttered by the 

 people in my hearing, was on the birth-day of the Queen, in 1810. It 

 followed the feu-de-joie fired on that occasion, and "was a suppressed 

 huzza, not cold, but timid ; it seemed to ask whether it might be 

 repeated. 



Another method by which heavy goods were conveyed, and some 

 degree of life added to the streets, was by means of a clumsy truck, 

 with four very low wheels, fixed upon two thick axle-trees, which 

 turned round with them. To this wretchedly constructed carriage ten 

 or twelve black men yoked themselves, and hauled it forward with their 

 utmost might, singing their usual favourite airs. But the dull noise of 

 the Carreta itself, whose wheels were continually dropping into the 

 hollows of an irregular pavement, formed a harsh dissonance to the music. 



The old Carro of Portugal, drawn by oxen, and rolling along upon 

 clumsy slug wheels, fixed firmly on the ends of an axle, and forcing it 

 also to turn, in spite of the great friction occasioned by a heavy load, 

 commonly entered the city during the coolness of the night, and 

 produced a sound still farther removed from musical than that of the 

 Carreta. Perhaps the skill of man has seldom elicited so harsh and 

 grating a noise. He who could continue to sleep near a street, through 

 which these engines of discord passed, must have been favoiu-ed by 

 Morpheus beyond the common lot of mortals. 



Notwithstanding this and ever}^ other impediment, the lower order 

 of the population of Kio probably enjoyed, from habit, sound repose in 



