NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



163 



deal of company during dinner. The conversation was lively, and 

 turned on a most unexpected subject. A few days before I left Rio the 

 Spanish frigate Zwoa had touched there, in her way from Plymouth to 

 the Plate. In England the crew had been furnished, by the British and 

 Foreign Bible Society, with copies of the New Testament, in Spanish, 

 two of which I had bought in the streets for six hundred and forty 

 Reis, that is, three shillings and sixpence each ; intending to improve 

 my knowledge of the language during the voyage. In this object I was 

 disappointed, the translation proving to be an impure dialect of the 

 Spanish, which none of our crew well understood. The people belonging 

 to the Frigate had sold other copies at Maldonado, before we arrived 

 there, one of which appeared in the inn. Several persons were poring 

 over it, and endeavouring to turn a narrative, on which they had lighted, 

 in one of the Evangelists, into intelligible Spanish. The matter was 

 evidently new to them, and excited a very lively interest. On this 

 subject the conversation turned, and led by their inquiries, we were 

 induced to become lecturers in Christianity Divinity, while we ate our 

 dinner ; the office devolving chiefly on one of our party, who spake the 

 language of the listeners with fluency. The scene appeared to us most 

 extraordinary at the time, occurring as it did among subjects of the 

 most bigotted of Catholic powers in Christendom ; nor can I, at this 

 distant period^ cease to contemplate it in something of the same light 



Business afterwards called us to the habitation of one of the 

 principal people of the town, where we were freely introduced to the 

 family, although the master was from home. We entered by a low 

 broad gateway, and on our right hand, beneath it, found the door of the 

 Sala or Drawing-room. This apartment was nearly square, furnished 

 with one large window, placed -very high for the purpose of admitting 

 light without exposing the room to public view from the street, and 

 had wooden forms placed all round, close to the whitewashed walls. The 

 Lady of the house was lively and polite • she paid me a compliment in 

 the true Spanish style by supposing me a native of Old Castile, although 

 she must have perceived my extreme ignorance of the language, I 



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