FORMER PROSPERITY 
the house the floor was a mass of dirt. Fowls were run¬ 
ning to and fro all over the rooms. They contained a 
rough table of Portuguese origin, a couple of benches so 
dirty that one did not dare to sit on them, some roughly 
made bedsteads, miserable and filthy; but no washstands 
or basins, no articles of necessity were anywhere to be 
observed or found. The mattresses, if one can elevate 
them to the dignity of such a name, since they were mere 
bags, filled with anything that had been found handy, such 
as the leaves and stalks of Indian-corn, wool and dried 
grass, were rolled up in the daytime. Only one bed was 
still made up. On it a cackling hen was busy laying an 
egg. That egg, a very good egg, was triumphantly served 
to me for breakfast. 
The walls of nearly all the farmhouses in the southern 
part of the Province of Goyaz were made of wooden 
lattice work, the square cavities formed by the cross sticks 
being filled in, and the whole plastered over with mud, 
which eventually became hard when dry. Near the 
foundations the walls were strengthened with mud bricks, 
half baked. 
Evidently, as was the case with this particular old 
house, in former days, in the time of the Emperor, when 
Goyaz was more prosperous than it is now, most of the 
houses were whitewashed — a luxury in which, in these 
days of misery, the farmers can no longer indulge. The 
doors and windows were rambling, though the frames 
of them were generally solidly made, but one never 
saw a pane of glass in any window anywhere in the 
country. At night the people barricaded themselves se¬ 
curely in their rooms and let no air in. This was partly 
due to fear of attack. Whenever a building was white¬ 
washed, one invariably saw on it the impression of its 
owner’s spread hand in outline, or else his signature in blue 
paint. The favourite colours in house decoration, where 
any were noticeable, were blue and a dirty cinnabar red. 
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