Mo DE JANEIRO. 
39 
Chinese goods can also be purchased here at a reasonable rate. 
There are many American and Enghsh merchants in the city, 
who, it is said, are doing a lucrative business ; the export trade 
being almost entirely monopolized by them. The jewellers and 
lapidaries are principally found in Gold-street, which is the gen- 
eral resort of strangers who wish to procure articles in that line. 
Although the city of Rio is the capital, and commercial em- 
porium of the Brazihan empire, with a population of less than 
two hundred thousand souls, including slaves ; and although it is 
constantly visited by merchants, traders, and travellers, from Asia, 
Europe, and the United States, speckling its harbours with the 
flags of almost every nation ; yet it cannot boast of a hotel, 
coffee-house, inn, tavern, restaurateur, refectory, boarding-house, 
or any decent resort, at which strangers can procure refreshment, 
and a comfortable night's lodging. Comfort, indeed, even in the 
imperial palace, must be entirely out of the question, unless roy- 
alty enjoy some better protection from the attack of mosquitoes 
than the common republican curtains of network can afford ; for 
if, by any accident, a single intruder find his way beneath the 
netting, wo betide the helpless sufferer within ! Its rascally hum 
throughout the night, sometimes within a most threatening vicinity 
of the ear, is even worse than the puncture made in the skin with 
its sharp proboscis ; for the latter will, at the most, but cause an 
irritating titillation, accompanied with a slight degree of swelling 
and some inflammation ; but its tuneful serenade is a perpetual 
menace, that cannot fail to drive sleep from the pillow of one who 
is not drugged with poppies, or worn out with fatigue. These 
insects are troublesome enough in some portions of our own 
country, but here we console ourselves with the hope, that they 
will dearly pay for their temerity on the first appearance of an 
autumnal frost. But between the tropics they are immortal ; or, 
at least, a new generation is constantly springing up to take the 
places of their progenitors ; and, as with the fruits of the same 
climate, their existence is perennial. 
With regard to the character, manners, and habits of the Por- 
tuguese Brazilians, we are not in this place prepared to say much; 
for they seem determined that the eye of foreign curiosity shall 
never penetrate the sanctity of the domestic circle ; and that 
strangers shall know but little of them in the private walks and 
