NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



547 



Atlantic Isles, who are, generally speaking, husbandmen, had been dis- 

 tributed by the Government through the country, and furnished with 

 implements suitable to their employment. Some important privileges 

 had been granted to them as a body, and they were placed individually 

 in situations where their services and their example could be most effica- 

 cious. Others, who depended upon labour for their support, yet were 

 not in circumstances of absolute necessity, took small pieces of land in 

 the neighbourhood of the City, and supplied its Markets ; while many 

 more went to seek in the Southern Provinces, in St. Paul's and Minas 

 Geraes, abodes more cool and better adapted to their constitutions than 

 the Province of Rio could afford them. 



From this augmentation of the people, this accumulation of skill 

 and industry, arose a vast increase of comforts, and even of luxuries, 

 in all their variety both of natural and artificial combinations. Inhabitants 

 of the City were better accommodated with dwellings, which advancing 

 to a more suitable proportion to the increased number of residents, 

 enabled them to live in a less crowded state. New groups of houses had 

 arisen, and new roads had been formed, in almost every part of the 

 neighbourhood, by which means more agreeable scenes for riding and 

 walking were opened, and a greater taste for exercise was introduced. 

 Among Public Buildings, the ornaments of the place, may be enumer- 

 ated, one new Church, several Chapels and Steeples, a new Treasury 

 and an Exchange. Private houses displayed a greater quantity of fur- 

 niture, its fashion was modernized and adapted to the superior accom- 

 modation of its owners. Their style of dress was become more respec- 

 table ; their tables were covered with greater variety ; the markets were 

 more fully and more regularly supplied, not only with the solid 

 articles of subsistence, but with poultry, game, and fruit. 



Conveniences fell more within the reach of common people, for 



the demands of the great and those in office, who in this country enjoy 



a prescriptive riglit, bore a smaller proportion to the supply than they 



formerly did ; and even good things now might be obtained by persons 



in moderate circumstances, and when once found to be attainable, were 



3 z 2 



