vered with carapatos." I then perceived them, and felt still more their bites. Instantly throwing off part of my clothes, but with the remainder upon me, I ran into the water, and there began to take them off. The carapato, or tick, is a small flat insect of a dark brown colour, about the size of four pins heads placed together, it fastens upon the skin, and will in time eat its way into it. It is dangerous to pull it out quickly, when already fixed; for if the head remains, inflammation is not unfrequently the consequence. The point of a heated fork or penknife applied to the insect, when it is too far advanced into the skin to be taken out with the hand, will succeed in loosening it. There is another species of tick of much larger size, and of a lead colour; this is principally troublesome to horses and horned cattle, that are allowed to run loose in lands which have been only partially cleared. I have seen horses that have had such vast numbers upon them, as to have been weakened by the loss of blood which they have occasioned.' The face of the country is so partially cleared,' that in an extensive landscape, seen from the city of Paraiba, through which his route was directed, he says, the cultivated specks were so small as to be scarcely perceptible:' the general expanse was nearly a continuity of evergreen woods.' But this he expressly distinguishes as the best kind of Brazilian scenery;' wider spaces of the vast tract denominated Sertam, the Desert, presenting the dreary view of a sterile waste; with just here and there, perhaps in the vicinity of a marsh, a spot which has permitted the kinder operations of nature. In the wet season these marshes are pools of very brackish water. Salt was often visible in the muddy places, and was offensively perceptible to the taste in some of the very few springs that were found. After being parched with thirst for a whole day and night, the delight with which the travellers came to the long desired well, was liable to pass off in some such manner as the following:

The next morning, about nine o'clock, we reached a well, to our great joy, but fortunately for us, the water was so bad that we could not drink much; it was as usual dirty and brackish, but of the first draught I shall never forget the delight;-when I tried a second, I could not take it, the taste was so very nauseous.'

The horses suffered so severely, that several times there was some cause to fear they might sink, and leave their loads and their riders immoveable in the desert. The destitution of water was also necessarily that of grass; and they had sometimes to labour through several successive long stages, sustained by only a small quantity of maize from their own loads, and this it required some management to make them eat. In consequence of a very great and extraordinary failure of rain. in the preceding winter, if it might be so named, this dreary

region was inhospitable in an unusual degree at the time of our author's adventure. The cattle estates,' some large and some small, formed in the more productive spots, were found in great distress; many of the cattle were poor and perishing, and the occupiers in dread of famine. Their residences, instead of meeting our notions of a farm establishment, were wretched cottages, some of them raised for only a temporary abode, and several were found deserted and in ruin. These insulated families, however, were in general friendly to the travellers, and ready to furnish what little accommodations were in their power. But many a day was passed without bringing the party to one of these lodgments against the evening, and the night encampment was made in the open air, without any shelter except a few trees or bushes, or, in a few instances, the side of a rock, from the wind which would sometimes scatter away the fires made of sticks and brushwood. In several of the places, a nightly visit was made by mosquitos, which were invincible by any thing but the thick and pungent smoke of a fire made of the ordure of cattle, which was to be received at the same time by the lungs and eyes of the travellers, in lieu of the myriads of insects. Of serpents or wild beasts there was but little apprehension; though instances had been known of the jaguar, the American tiger, presenting himself at a small nightly encampment of travellers. In the thick woodlands there would be need of great precaution.

The description is given, in a variety of little particulars, of the character, condition, habits, and appearance, of the herdsmen of the desert. In better years some of them bring down droves of cattle for sale at Recife, and one or two other points of the coast. But their families, at least the females, pass their whole lives in this total seclusion from the social and civilized world. And their knowledge of even the very existence of such a world, does not extend, with any force of curiosity, beyond the chief towns of the captaincies. The inquiries for news related chiefly to matters at Recife. Englishmen, as heretics, had indeed been heard of; and the name was associated, in the imagination of the men, as well as of the women, with a vague idea of something brutish or monstrous. At one of the stations the travelling attendants having given information to a number of men, who were milking the goats, that an Englishman was in the party, they eagerly came to see the bicho,' that is, 'animal;' and their countenances showed much disappointment,' when the strange beast' that was pointed out to them, was so much like what they had seen before.

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It would appear that they are in a tolerable degree an inoffensive class. As to religion, it may reasonably be wondered and inquired, how they can have any knowledge of the subject at all. Would it ever be surmised there should be in full activity among them, a method of religious ministration analogous to what is as yet a novelty and innovation in England-itinerant preaching?--with the material difference, however, that the itinerants among us do not make money by their journeys, and are not accompanied with a portable altar: we are forced to add to these negatives, episcopal appointment.

'Certain priests obtain a licence from the bishop of Pernambuco, and travel through these regions with a small altar, constructed for the purpose, of a size to be placed on one side of a pack-saddle; and they have with them all their apparatus for saying mass. Thus with a horse conveying the necessary paraphernalia, and a boy to drive it, who likewise assists in saying mass, and another horse, on which the priest himself rides, and carries his own small portmanteau, these men make in the course of the year between 150 and 200/-a large income in Brazil, but hardly earned, if the inconveniences and privations which they must undergo to obtain it are taken into consideration. They stop and erect the altar wherever a sufficient number of persons who are willing to pay for the mass is collected. This will sometimes be said for three or four shillings: but at other times, if a rich man takes a fancy to a priest, or has a fit of extreme devotion upon him, he will give eight or ten mil reis, two or three pounds; and it does happen, that one hundred mil reis are received for saying a mass, but this is very rare;-at times an ox or a horse, or two or three, are given. These men have their use in the world: if this custom did not exist, all form of worship would be completely out of the reach of the inhabitants of many districts, or at any rate they would not be able to attend more than once or twice in the course of the year; for it must be remembered that there is no church within twenty or thirty leagues of some parts.'

No thanks, it seems, to the judicature in this wilderness, if its forlorn inhabitants do not lose all discernment of right and wrong.

The administration of justice in the Sertam is generally spoken of as most wretchedly bad: every crime obtains impunity by the payment of a sum of money. An innocent person is sometimes punished through the interest of a great man, whom he may have offended, and the murderer escapes who has the good fortune to be under the protection of a powerful patron. This proceeds still more from the feudal state of the country than from the corruption of the magistrates, who might often be inclined to do their duty, and yet be aware that their exertions would be of no avail, and would possibly prove fatal to themselves.'

Our author, however, distinguishes several governors, as men of justice and spirit, particularly Amaro Joaquim, who had recently been governor of Paraiba, whom Mr. K. saw at Recife, and who died of a fever on his passage to another captaincy to which he had been removed. There is a pleasant story of one of the acts of his government.

A man of the name of Nogueira, the son of a black or mulatto woman, and one of the first men in the captaincy, had made himself much dreaded by his outrageous proceedings; he had carried from their parents' houses the daughters of some persons of respectability in the captaincy, murdering the friends and relatives who opposed his entrance. The man was at last taken; Amaro Joaquim would have had him executed; but he found this was not to be done, from the interest which the family made for him, and therefore ordered him to be flogged. Nogueira said, that being half a fidalgo (a nobleman) this mode of punishment could not be practised on him. The governor then ordered that he should be flogged on only one side of his body, that his fidalgo side might not suffer, desiring Nogueira to say which was his fidalgo side. He was accordingly punished in this manner, and after remaining some time in prison, was sent to Angola for life.'

There is a considerable length of rather interesting description of the character and habits of the descendants of the aborigines, the Indians, with a great number of whom Mr. K. has conversed. They appear wonderfully inferior in many points to some of the tribes of the northern part of the Continent; but they are beyond comparison less inconvenient and formidable as neighbours. They are not brave, but neither are they ferocious or revengeful. They have little respect for the principles and regulations of property; but they violate them rather in the humble way of piliering than in the bolder style of robbery. They can be treacherous, but it seems rather from capricious fickle lightness of disposition, than from deep design or malignant feeling. They are little capable of affection, or any lively interest for any one's welfare, even that of their immediate relatives; but they seldom wish to do any body any harm. They are unambitious and indolent, but capable of a wonderful perseverance of physical exertion, when they have occasion to travel, or are employed in hunting and fishing. They have the same instinct, or faculty of observation, which enables the northern Indians to take a direct course through the wilderness, to the remotest places, and to descry the traces of men or beasts, where other men would be utterly baffled. They have also the same invincible love of freedom: it is absolutely impossible, Mr. K. says, to reduce them to a systematic slavery:

they do not fight for independence, but they are continually endeavouring to escape from situations in which it is denied them. They have many disgusting habits; and have a voracious appetite, with little nicety of choice. Some of them are believed to practise their ancient pagan rites in secret; but in general they have accepted the sort of christianity that the lords of the country have conferred upon them. Those lords treat them with little equity, and much contempt.

The narrative of the return, with Indian guides, to Pernambuco, is more brief, and contains a number of notices and incidents which are entertaining, without being particularly striking. The rainy season overtook the traveller, and he suffered from an attack of the ague, and considerable inconveniences from temporary torrents and inundations; but these, he says, were far less intimidating grievances than the former dread of perishing for want of water. It was pleasing to observe, in the sudden effect of the rain, the wonderfully sensitive state of a soil, in all appearance utterly

burnt up.

The rapidity of vegetation in Brazil is truly astonishing. Rain in the evening upon good soil will by sun-rise have given a greenish tinge to the earth, which is increased, if the rain continues on the second day, to sprouts of grass of an inch in length, and these on the third day are sufficiently long to be picked up by the halfstarved cattle.'

The ordinary course of seasons brings pretty constant rain from May or June to the end of August; but there are not many days of absolutely incessant rain. From August or September there is not usually any rain till the beginning of the year, when it is expected, for a continuance of only two or three weeks.

A more comprehensive description is given, in this part of the work, of the Sertanejos, as the inhabitants of the Sertam or desert are denominated. Some of these are the proprietors of the cattle-estates on which they reside; but the greater number are Vaqueiros or cow-herds, who manage the estates for rich owners who reside in the towns upon the coast, and are at the same time sugar-planters, denominated Senhores de Engenho. Between the large share of the animal stock and produce assigned by regulation to these resident-managers, and the unavoidable indefiniteness of the whole account of the numbers, the situation is a very advantageous one; but it requires considerable courage, and great bodily strength and activity;' the necessity for which is partly shown in a very amusing description of the half-yearly col

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