246 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
to the easy mode of life of the Brazilians (and they 
are the majority) become ailing, corpulent, and 
averse to exertion. His establishment reminded 
me more of an English farm than any other I have 
seen in this country. The house stands in a small 
campo (savannah) in which were to be seen horses, 
cows, sheep, and pigs, grazing or reposing under 
the trees. But these trees certainly did not look 
very English. They included three very fine 
tamarind trees of exactly my own age, having been 
planted in the autumn of 1817, but of a growth far 
surpassing my own, their girt being more than I 
could span ; long avenues of orange trees, laden 
with ripe fruit, which would certainly have made 
their owner's fortune could he have had them 
in England ; several large mango trees ; thickets 
of guayabas (a sort of myrtle yielding a pleasant 
fruit the size of a plum). And if these had not 
been sufficient to give the scene a tropical char- 
acter, there were to be seen groups of bananas, 
papaws, and, peeping here and there out of the 
encircling forest, various species of palms. At a 
little distance, on the banks of an igarape, lay a 
cannavial or cane -piece, where Senhor Brandao 
had erected an engenho for the fabrication of 
molasses and aguardiente, his motive power being 
oxen. 
During my stay at Manaquiry the great annual 
feast took place, on the Vesper of St. John. It is a 
curious custom in Brazil (imitated, I believe, from 
an ancient usage of the mother country) to elect a 
governor and governess of the principal festivals of 
the Romish Church, who bear the expenses of the 
feast, being aided by alms given in the name of the 
