20 TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. \June, 
twenty milreis a month rent (equal to £2. 5^.), which is 
very dear for Para, but we could get no other house so 
convenient. Isidora took possession of an old mud- 
walled shed as the domain of his culinary operations ; 
we worked and took our meals in the verandah, and 
seldom used the inner rooms but as sleeping apartments. 
We now found much less difficulty in mustering up 
sufficient Portuguese to explain our various wants. We 
were some time getting into the use of the Portuguese, 
or rather Brazilian, money, which is peculiar and puzzling. 
It consists of paper, silver, and copper. The rey is the 
unit or standard, but the milrey, or thousand reis, is the 
value of the lowest note, and serves as the unit in which 
accounts are kept ; so that the system is a decimal one, 
and very easy, were it not complicated by several other 
coins, which are used in reckoning ; as the vintem, which 
is twenty reis, the patac, three hundred and twenty, and 
the crusado, four hundred, in all of which coins sums of 
money are often reckoned, which is puzzling to a be- 
ginner, because the patac is not an integral part of the 
milrey (three patacs and two vintems making a milrey), 
and the Spanish dollars which are current here are worth 
six patacs. The milrey was originally worth 5^. l\d., 
but now fluctuates from 2^. \d. to 2^. 4^/., or not quite 
half, owing probably to the over-issue of paper and its 
inconvertibility into coin. The metallic currency, being 
then of less nominal than real value, would soon have 
been melted down, so it became necessary to increase its 
value. This was done by restamping it and making it 
pass for double. Thus a vintem restamped is two vin- 
tems ; a patac with 160 on it counts for 320 reis ; a two- 
