NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



447 



My guide and friend having extracted from me a promise that I 

 would not attempt, in St. John D' El Rey, to go to an Estalagem, but 

 ride directly to the house of a gentleman, to whom, according to his 

 own account, he was under engagement to deliver me, and who, he 

 added, must, ere that time, expect me, I set out early in the forenoon, 

 with three servants of the people who had left us that morning. We 

 proceeded Westward over a broad expanse of uninteresting country, 

 where the eye surveys few traces of animated life, and is cheered 

 by no rising steeples, no seats of opulence, no waving crops, no 

 useful hedge-rows, no ornamental planting, and few natural coppices ; 

 all is one wearisome waste. The hills we saw yesterday have the same 

 outline to-day, with their apparent dimensions somewhat enlarged, and 

 a bluer and deeper tint, but still grey in distance. 



Passing some Farm-houses and a Church prettily situated in a 

 bottom, we attempted in vain to procure some liquid or fruit to allay 

 a burning thirst. The uneasy sensation was occasioned chiefly by the 

 dry and harsh state of the wind, which continuing to blow from the N, E. 

 and being no longer softened by the influence of the ocean or the forest, 

 but sweeping over vast tracts of woodless and parched land, like the 

 Harmattan of Guinea, dried up every particle of moisture from the 

 skin, and absolutely excoriated the lips and the fauces. The season had 

 been an uncommonly dry one, and to this the people attributed the 

 cause of our suffering, assuring me that they had never before experienced 

 the effect in so high a degree, and that it would cease on the first appear- 

 ance of rain. Probably in my own case, the distressing sensation might 

 be increased by the low temperature of the atmosphere, which was such 

 as I had not been accustomed to for several years before, and entirely 

 checked the process of perspiration. 



After meeting on the summit of one of the Morros, with an 

 agreeable French Gentleman, Mr. Montalban, we rode on together as 

 far as Esteva, an extensive establishment, where by the good offices 

 of my late guide and the friends who had preceded me and made 

 themselves a sort of Avant-Couriers, I was admitted to all reasonable 



