178 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



to find the police of the place strict and suspicious. So it proved *, and 

 the consequent promptness of its measures was extraordinary. 



At one time, I lighted upon a friend just at the momerit when he 

 had been foully assaulted, in the street, by a drunken sailor, calling 

 himself an Englishman. Some altercation ensued, and after a gTeat deal 

 of abusive and threatening language, we left him quite ashamed of our 

 countryman. In less than a quarter of an hour we learned that he was 

 in prison ; and on the following morning, waiting on the Governor to 

 thank him for his interference, we found that the man was really a 

 Swede, and one of the many vagabonds who had deserted from the 

 British subsequent to their attack upon Buenos Ayres. The country 

 was full of such characters, who indulged a rooted hatred of the people 

 whom they had abandoned, and a double portion of rancour towards any 

 by whom they seemed likely to be pointed out, and given up to justice. 

 T^e Governor expressed his earnest wish that it was in his power to 

 send every one of them out of his district ; but he felt himself em- 

 barrassed by the gross misbehaviour of these men on the one hand ; 

 and, on the other, by tbe orders of his Court to treat British subjects 

 with lenity. • 



At a subsequent period, during my stay in Rio Grand^, the Captain 

 of a British vessel went by land to Monte Video, with the hope of 

 obtaining a licence to enter his Cargo at that port. The Mate, having in 

 his absence embezzled a sum of money, absconded with a comrade, when he 

 learned that the Captain had returned. It was concluded that, in such A 

 country, they would never more be heard of. No time, however, was lost in 

 making application to the Governor, who expressed his confident persuasion 

 that the culprits would be apprehended before ten o'clock that night, if 

 they had not gotten beyond the limits of his jurisdiction ; before that time, 

 he said, they would be anticipated in every direction to the distance of 

 fifty miles. Intelligence soon arrived, that the officers of justice had 

 certainly outrun the fugitives, and at the end of nine days they were 

 brought back ; aifording another proof that, undei* a vigilant and active 

 Police, a desert, though of wide extent, afforded less security to criminals 



