190 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



the back and shoulders ; they wear stockings and showy coloured shoes ; 

 their head-dress is Portuguese, adorned with flowers, and sometimes, in 

 the evening, with fire-flies. Females of the second class wear, out of 

 their houses, a sort of great coat, called a Capota, made of cassimere, 

 and gaudily trimmed with plush. Female slaves have only the Baeta, 

 a square cloth or baize, often decorated with a hair-list ; their hair bound 

 with a piece of red binding, or a Bandana handkerchief ; their feet inva- 

 riably bare. 



In this part of the continent there is more than the common propor- 

 tion of pretty young women and girls ; the elder are frank and chatty ; 

 none of them go much abroad, though less restrained than in the capital 

 and its neighbourhood, more regarded as companions and friends, and 

 more freely admitted into society. There appeared among them affec- 

 tionate sisters and wives, and in their houses a much higher degree of 

 domestic and social happiness than I had before witnessed in the 

 country. 



Marriages were rare at St. Pedro, compared with the population, 

 though the town and province enjoyed, in this respect, some privileges 

 not common to the colony. In other parts, if not here also, when Brazil 

 was decisively considered as a Portuguese dependency, it was necessary 

 to obtain from Lisbon a licence for the solemnization of marriage. If the 

 swain made any pretences to wealth or distinction, it was not unusual for 

 him to go thither to seek it, with voluminous testimonials of his birth, 

 baptism, residence, and means. In the gay circles of the capital he not 

 unfrequently found another charmer, or perhaps, on his return, had to 

 lament a new instance of human instability, his fair one having forsaken 

 him. So did state policy unite with other causes to impair social virtue 

 and domestic comfort. 



Indeed here, as in Rio de Janeiro, moral principles seemed to have 

 little influence ; there was the same want of fidelity, honour, and confi- 

 dence. Religion frightened some into uprightness, and a strict police 

 restrained and compelled greater numbers. The country, too, was pas- 

 toral, and uninfected with the mania of mining. Yet if it possessed a 



