126 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



This description applies almost exclusively to the country. In the 

 city persons retire, after dinner, to their own houses, to take their repose, 

 and spend the evening as they please. Out of the city, particularly if 

 the moon be nearly full, evening finds the remaining guests in full gaiety 

 of spirits ; sleep has dissipated the fumes of wine, if too much had been 

 taken, the company is enlarged by an assemblage of the neighbourhood, 

 the guitar strikes up, for every one can touch it ; the song succeeds, 

 generally in soft and plaintive notes, and the dance is not forgotten. In 

 this way the hours of evening pass, or in the ever varying deals of 

 manilla, in free remarks and smart replies, in feats of agility and harmless 

 frolics. The reserved character, which seldom fails to make itself conspi- 

 cuous in the earlier part of the day, wears off, and not unfrequently 

 people run to the opposite extreme. The loose attire of the ladies is 

 peculiarly favourable to the exertion of their limbs, and they engage 

 with great hilarity in the rough, but innocent exercises of the other sex. 

 Here and there a jealous old husband looks after his young and sprightly 

 wife, and she deems it prudent to restrain her gaiety ; but it makes little 

 difference, and occasions no interruption of the general glee. 



It was to escape from one of these parties in the country, where he 

 thought that boisterous frolic was overstepping the boundaries of pro- 

 priety, that one of the guests, in order to avoid his friendly pursuers, 

 sprang into a boat, where were two British sailor-lads, and playfully- 

 pushed off from the beach, challenging them to follow him. They, of 

 course, declined, and he stretched over to the Ilha dos Fradres, intending 

 to visit an ecclesiastic, with whom he had formed an acquaintance in the 

 city, and who had received permission to go, for fourteen days, to this 

 place of recreation. The fugitive landed upon the island without 

 difficulty, and proceeded to the Convent, where, to his utter astonishment, 

 he found, in one end of the Varanda, fourteen or fifteen fine young 

 women. Never before had he been used to combine, even in thought, 

 the inhabitants of a Monastery with a Coterie of females. Yet he pos- 

 sessed prudence enough to go forward, and inquire for his friend; in 



