NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



18^ 



which our ingenuity could devise was tried ; we opened a Store so large 

 and variously furnished as St. Pedro had never seen before ; we filled several 

 of the retail-shops, employing their owners to sell on our account ; we sent 

 Hawkers through the neighbourhood and to a distance, and accepted 

 articles in barter. All would not do, and we resolved, at length, to try 

 a public auction, to be held in the Custom-house, and under the super- 

 intendence of the officers of government. The quantity of goods thus 

 offered to sale would have been thought insignificant in any considerable 

 European town ; here it created a great sensation, and occasioned much 

 talk. It was rumoured that there was enough to stock the country for 

 three years, and as the whole must, of necessity, be sold, the attendants 

 at the sale might purchase at their own prices. Such representations 

 were sufficiently mortifying, so were the proceedings at the sale ; but it 

 afforded as much of the ludicrous as the gloomy. The second officer of 

 the Customs presided, and he appointed the clerk and the auctioneer. 

 To the latter, a black man, the President, with all becoming gravity, 

 delivered a bit of straw, when the lot was too bulky for him to carry 

 round the room ; directing him to present it to the company as repre* 

 sentative of a certain Lot of goods, containing so many pieces, or yards, 

 or dozens, or pints, and distinguished by its peculiar number. With 

 this straw, hfted above our heads, he danced about like a Merry-Andrew, 

 loudly vociferating the words of the President, and calling upon the 

 people to buy. Having, by his boisterous and absurd gestures, produced 

 more merriment than serious attention to business, and gotten to the 

 highest bidding, he returned the straw in form, announcing the price 

 of the lot, and the name of the purchaser. Aware of the prevailing 

 opinion, we had provided a person, on whom we could rely, to run up 

 the lots to a certain amount ; in consequence the first fell back into our 

 hands, and the second and third followed wdthout awakening suspicion. 

 At length a conviction of the truth excited among the bidders much 

 laughter at their own simplicity, and the superior address of the strangers. 

 No change, however, was produced in their disposition to buy, and not 

 a single lot was disposed of. 



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