NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



427 



stalk along before the sportsman, and when pressed turn into the 

 coppice and disappear. Still the ground before us is rising, and our 

 elevation has increased to-day about three hundred feet. We found 

 the Thermometer as high as 82°. 



In the evening we^were joined at the Rancho by three people, in 

 the habit and with the manners of Mineiros, as the inhabitants of Minas 

 Geraes are usually called. They had lately left the City, with each a 

 slave and a sumpter mule, travelled to the Parahyba by the Western 

 road, and brought with them a Rio Gazette of the latest date. By this 

 I learned, even in the depth of the wilderness, that the British Packet 

 had arrived, and with her some agreeable domestic news, which became 

 more interesting, probably, from the casual and unexpected manner in 

 which it had been conveyed to me. The strangers appear to be respect- 

 able men, who have filled different stations in the ranks of society, and 

 whose minds have not only been cast in different moulds, but also 

 subjected to very different impressions. The chief of the party was 

 concluded to be a man of simple unaffected manners, possessing a good 

 temper, and with whom a pleasing acquaintance might be formed ; the 

 second appeared to be much inferior to him, both in intellect and dispo- 

 sition, a person who to ignorance added positivity, if not obstinacy ; 

 about the last were evident symptoms of cunning and mean self-interest- 

 edness, he talked much, and, to all appearance, perpetually calculated in 

 his own mind the effect of Avhat he said. I would not willingly do 

 injustice to these people, or judge them severely, but it became neces- 

 sary for me to form some opinion of them quickly, for in the course of 

 the evening it was arranged that I should quit the troop, and travel with 

 them to St. John D' El Rey. 



Early in the morning the whole company, except myself, attended 

 Mass, and afterwards, at breakfast, it appeared that the plan of separating 

 was given up, that the strangers, who were acquainted only with an old 

 and circuitous route by Barbacena, should continue with the troop, which 

 the owner proposed to conduct by a new and nearer road, with the 



utmost speed which the animals could endure. Our talkative friend 



3 H 2 



