ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
The Brazilians of the interior, quite unlike those of the 
big towns in or near the coast, were sullen people, with no 
conversation — or else too much — no interest in any¬ 
thing, no art, no imagination. They were timid and vain 
to an incredible degree, suspicious, avaricious, and easily 
offended, so that the greatest tact had to be used with 
them. They were ignorant of everything even in their 
own immediate neighbourhood. Yet, mind you, with all 
that, extraordinarily kind and ultra-polite of speech. 
They all seemed turned out of the same mould. When 
you had seen one, you had seen them all. There were, 
of course, a few exceptions, Brazilians of recent German, 
French, Italian, or Spanish origin, but these exceptions 
were indeed very rare in the interior. 
Ill-fed, his blood corrupted and impoverished to the 
utmost degree, his health, therefore, never in a normal 
condition, his finances at the lowest ebb, the Brazilian of 
the interior had little indeed to make him happy. His 
home at best was as miserable and dirty as possible. The 
room generally given to an honoured guest, the best in 
the house, was the granary. More than once was my 
camp-bed perched on a mound of Indian corn. And the 
furniture? A wooden bench of the roughest description, 
really an instrument of torture rather than an article of 
comfort; a few wooden pegs in the wall on which to hang 
rifles or other things; an occasional wooden bedstead; 
seldom, very seldom, a stool or a chair, in any case, never 
a comfortable one, such as you invariably find with peas¬ 
ants and old-established colonists of most other countries. 
They cared not for comfort. Their beds, a mass of rags, 
were shared by masters and hens and dogs. Everything 
was in an abandoned state; everything had fallen to rack 
and ruin. All looked as if they were tired of life, too 
indolent to move. They seldom saluted when you met 
them on the trail, nor when you entered their houses; if 
they did, they rapidly touched their dilapidated hats as 
64 
