SOUTH AMERICA. 



143 



and it is probable, that this has not changed since the 

 arrival of the royal family. The Portuguese are said 

 to be the only people in Europe, who preserve that 

 Moorish jealousy, which has been banished even from 

 Spain. The female part of their families are shut up 

 in the strictest manner, and never venture abroad, un- 

 less it be to church; and then, their faces wrapt up in 

 a black mantle, which passes over the head. Men 

 seldom introduce their most intimate friends to their 

 wives or daughters; and except at the theatre, they 

 are rarely seen in public. Sometimes indeed, they 

 venture to sit in the evening at their windows; and 

 from their actions, strangers unacquainted with the 

 customs of the country, would be apt to form unfa- 

 vorable inferences from their smiles and beckoning^. 

 The throwing flowers at persons passing along, is 

 known to be an innocent display of gaiety, to which 

 custom attaches nothing improper. It is also very 

 probable, that this frivolity is not very common among 

 the better class of people; and that strangers, from ob- 

 serving these things in a few instances, of persons of a 

 different cast, have been led to form a mistaken idea 

 of the rest. The accounts given by Frezier and oth- 

 ers, who consider the Brazilian women as totally 

 devoid of that delicacy which characterises the sex in 

 other countries, and as continually engaged in the 

 most shameful intrigues, cannot but be exaggerated. 

 At the same time, it is natural to suppose, that when 

 thus immured from society, and deprived of daily and 

 free intercourse with the world, those very effects 

 would be produced, against which this cruel jealousy 

 is intended to guard. There is but one day in the 

 year, on which they are permitted to walk freely 



