38 



RIO DE JANEIRO. 



hills, but is felt on the harbour on board the 

 ships — gives one the power of contemplating, 

 in comparative coolness, the most enchanting 

 panorama in the world. 



The slave-market no longer exists, since the 

 convention with England for the suppression of 

 that trade; but the negro is still degraded here to 

 the appearance of a more loathsome object than 

 any other animal. They drag bales of goods along 

 the street, harnessed to a sort of low machine on 

 wheels ; or carrying them on poles, they keep 

 time as they tread, and inspire one another to 

 exertion by singing some incoherent monoto- 

 nous song. Add to this their hideous ugliness 

 and vacant countenances, and one is almost 

 tempted to imagine that they are, morally as 

 well as physically, beneath the rest of the 

 human race. They lie about the streets by 

 night and by day, on heaps of dirt, without 



