92 RIO DE JANEIRO. 
any occasion to use a medicine for such a purpose as lie 
meant to insinuate, " The ladv abbess/' he exclaimed with a 
loud laugh, " the lady abbess and all the ladies of Rio 
" pronce sunt omnes ac cUdita. Veneri ;" and he concluded 
by observing, in unequivocal terms, that most of them were 
labouring under the ill effects arising from a free and uncon- 
strained indulgence of a licentious and promiscuous inter- 
course with strangers. On the men he. passed a still more 
severe censure. Whether these sarcastical observations of the 
reverend gentleman w^ere or were not true, they were not the 
less indecorous and imbecoming in the character of the person 
by whom they were uttered. If not an impious it is at least an 
unmanly proceeding first to extort, under the sacred garb of 
religion, a confession of the failings and faults of those whom 
Ave, mighty lords of the creation! are pleased to call the 
weaker sex, and then to expose them to the ridicule, the ob- 
loquy, and detraction of the world. 
The familiarity which the ladies of Rio are apt to use to 
strangers may not perhaps be quite consistent with our no- 
tions of female modesty, but I am far from being convinced 
of its implying that degree of criminality which has been im- 
puted to it in tlie most valuable voyages of Captain Cooke. 
Tt is herein stated to be a common trick of the ladies of Rio 
to make assignations with strangers, by tossing flowers to 
them as they pass along the streets. That the throwing or 
exchanging of flowers by the ladies of Rio is a very common 
practice cannot be denied ; but I am inclined to believe, 
what, however, I will not take upon me positively to assert, 
that it arises more from a custom ^vhich they imbibe at the 
