544 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



it. The evening became wet, and, as we expected, no grass arrived. No- 

 thing but Indian Corn could be procured for the beasts which we rode, 

 except its hard and tasteless husks. For myself I ordered dinner at three 

 o'clock, not having tasted any thing during the whole day, and was com- 

 pelled to wait for it six hours longer. It was prepared at the house 

 of the Intendente, a pretended friend, and in reality, a shabby fellow. 



Hence we proceeded to cross the Parahyba, and took the direct 

 road to Governo, which I had not before travelled. It led over woody 

 and difficult hills, presenting, however, in a vale on the left, the 

 finest field of Sugar Cane, which I ever saw, and reckoned by some 

 to surpass every other in Brazil. 



On the road I met, and was obhged to acknowledge as an ac- 

 quaintance, a man, who had been guilty of assassination, but now 

 roamed at large, under the protection of a Carta Segura, the disgrace 

 of Brazilian Jurisprudence. It is a Royal Protection, which sets a 

 villain above the reach of law, and leaves to the friends of a mur- 

 dered person no other resource than private retaliation. Hence it 

 sanctions a bloody revenge, which no one thinks of blaming, which, 

 indeed, generally meets with open commendation. 



At the Venda was a poor woman exhausted with fatigue. — 

 She had been carrying a boy about four years old in search of a 

 Doctor. Her husband was with her, but as it is not the custom here 

 for these Lords of Creation to assist their help-mates in public, or in such 

 cases as these, he never thought of offering, nor, I believe, she of 

 asking him, to relieve her and carry the boy ; so powerful is custom. 

 In South America, he would have been ridiculed for submitting to 

 the duty and drudgery of a slave; in Europe, despised if he neg- 

 lected to aid any one in distress. 



The child appeared to have been bitten in the foot by some 

 venomous creature, and the parents could find no Surgeon to aid 

 them ; the limb was in a dreadful state, and I had the pleasure of 

 recommending such remedies as I thought best calculated to relieve 

 it. They soothed the mother's mind, if ineffectual to heal her son. 



