SOUTH AMERICA. 



127 



I shall not stop to describe the dinner, which was 

 partly American, and partly in the style of the country. 

 The fish of Rio are equal to any in the world, the 

 poultry is good, and the beef very indifferent. The 

 vegetables are uncommonly fine, but the potatoes are 

 imported from Great Britain. The desert was com- 

 posed of a great variety of fruits and sweetmeats; the 

 fruits were melons, bananas, mangoes, oranges, and 

 a number of others peculiar to the climate; to the 

 natives, all no doubt exquisite; but by a stranger, 

 even some of those that are most esteemed, are not re- 

 lished at first. In the immediate vicinity of this place, 

 our northern fruits do not succeed so well; but in the 

 high mountains, to the south-west, I am informed they 

 do. Among the guests at table, were two young men, 

 one a Portuguese^ and the other a Frenchman by 

 birth; they were both addressed, Segnior Conde, or 

 Count, and wore small slips of ribbon in the button- 

 hole. What rank of nobility they held I did not 

 know; they were plain and modest in their demea- 

 nor, and but for the designation before mentioned, I 

 should have taken one of them, who had been touching 

 the piano, for a music master, and the other for a teach- 

 er of the French language. The Frenchman was the 

 more communicative of the two; and in a conversation 

 with him, he gave me to understand that he was in 

 some kind of public employment. I put a great many 

 questions to him respecting the country, but found that 



by the Spanish minister to counteract their plans; and among the 

 means resorted to for this purpose, the reader need not be surpris- 

 ed to find, that of rendering their agents suspected in their fideli- 

 ty to their country, in order to sow dissentions in the republic, 

 and embarrass its affairs. 



