been called upon. A man who could act in this manner well deserved the freedom which he had resolved to obtain.'-(pp. 183, 184.)

Having sailed from Maranham for England, Mr. Koster remained no longer in his own country than while the fine season continued, and flying once more from our inclement winters, reached Pernambuco again at the close of the year. Even during so short an absence a visible change had taken place; the heavy and sombre lattice work had in many instances given place to glass windows and iron varandas.-Lisbon women had set the example of walking to mass in broad day light, and English ones of walking for the sake of air and recreation toward the close of day. These examples were followed, and both sexes were adopting a more modern form of dress. Many country-houses had been built, brickmaking was becoming a lucrative business, lands rose in value; a mile of country, which had been covered with brushwood the preceding year, had been cleared for building and for garden ground.

In 1812 Mr. Koster rented a sugar plantation at Jaguaribe, four leagues to the north of Recife. Till he could obtain possession of the Great House, he slung his hammock in the vestry of an unfinished church, to the astonishment of the neighbourhood, who marvelled at his unconcern respecting ghosts. The place, however, was infested by formidable realities, of infernal appearance and alarming propensities-the vampire bats. His companion, a negro boy, rolled himself up at night like a Bologna sausage in a piece of baize and a mat, and was thus cased securely; the master lay in his hammock, and these real harpies frequently perched upon it, without the previous salutation of fee faw fum, but smelling the blood of a living man, and coming for the chance of a toe or a finger.'

During his residence here a motley crew of Indians, mulattos, free negroes and slaves were collected for the season on the lands of the plantation; some of them, free labourers, brought their families; there were mud huts for a few, the others erected hovels of palm leaves. The description which he gives of his dwelling, his feelings, and the situation in which he was now placed, is interesting in no common degree.

'I had now taken, up my abode at the house which was usually inhabited by the owner or tenant; this was a low but long mud cottage, covered with tiles and white-washed within and without; it had bricked floors, but no ceiling. There were two apartments of tolerable dimensions, several small rooms and a kitchen. The chief entrance was from a sort of square, formed by the several buildings belonging to the estate. In front was the chapel; to the left was a large dwelling-house unfinished, and the negro huts, a long row of small habitations, having much the appearance of alms-houses, without the neatness of places of this description in England; to the right was the mill worked by water,

and the warehouse or barn in which the sugar undergoes the process of olaying; and to the view of these buildings may be added the pens for the cattle, the carts, heaps of timber, and a small pond through which the water runs to the mill. At the back of the house was the large open field, the mill dam beyond, and cottages, mandioc lands and trees along the valley, bordered on each side by steep hills covered with thick woods.

'Oftentimes I have sat at night upon the threshold of the door, after all my people had retired to their babitations; they have supposed that I was asleep; then I have heard the whisperings in the negro huts, and have observed some one leave his house, and steal away to visit an acquaintance, residing at some distance; or there has been some feast or merry-making, thus late at night, thus concealed. Neighbouring negroes have been invited, and have crept in during the evening unperceived. It is on these occasions that plans for deceiving the master are contrived; in these sweet unpermitted meetings, the schemes are formed. Then the slave owner who is aware of such secret practices, and reflects, must feel of how little avail are all his regulations, all his good management. Restraint creates the wish to act contrary to given rules. The slave has a natural bias to deceive him who holds him in subjection. A man may love the master whom he may at pleasure leave; but to be tied down, and as a duty enjoined to esteem, fails not, in most instances, to rouse contrary feelings, to awaken a sense of pleasure rather than of pain, in counteracting the wishes, and in rendering nugatory the determinations of him who commands.

At other times far different ideas from these have occupied my mind: I have thought of the strange life I was leading; a remembrance of feudal times in Europe has crossed me, and I could not forbear com. paring with them the present state of the interior of Brazil. The great power of the planter, not only over his slaves, but his authority over the free persons of lower rank; the respect which is required by these Barons from the free inhabitants of their lands; the assistance which they expect from their tenants in case of insult from a neighbouring equal; the dependance of the peasants, and their wish to be under the peculiar protection of a person of wealth who is capable of relieving them from any oppression, and of speaking in their behalf to the

* On Saturdays, only, throughout the country, are cattle slaughtered; and thus weekly many persons of each neighbourhood assemble, as much to converse and bear the news as to purchase their portion of meat. On one of these occasions, a young man of colour was stooping to arrange upon the end of his walking-stick the meat which he had bought, at the moment that a person of considerable power was riding up. The man of importance, when he came near to the young mulatto, struck him with a long cane with which he rode, saying "Why don't you take off your hat when a white man appears ?" The blow was felt severely, and still more severely answered. The man of colour drew his knife, and quickly turning round, ran it hilt deep into the groin of him by whom he had been insulted; and then with the bloody knife in his hand, he ran off, vowing destruction upon any one who touched him. The rich man had only time before he died, to direct that the murderer should not be pursued, owning that his own impetuous tyranny had deservedly produced this catastrophe. The young man returned in a few weeks to his former home, and was not molested by the relatives of him whom he had murdered, nor did the law take cognisance of the deed.'

governor, or to the chief judge; all these circumstances combined, tend to render the similarity very great. I even felt the power which had unintentionally fallen into my hands. I had collected a considerable number of free workmen, and the estate was respected for miles round. Many of these fellows would have committed almost any crime under the impression that my protection would screen them; and if I had not turned some away and threatened others that I would aid the law rather than evade it, should their proceedings be irregular, I know not what evil deeds might not have followed.'pp. 222-225.

Not far from Jaguaribe a new church was building to Our Lady of the O; an appellation strange enough to be worthy of an explanatory note when Mr. Koster shall reprint this book. It is derived, according to one opinion, from the marriage-ring given to the Virgin by the First Person in the Trinity. There is a sermon of Vieyra's in honour of N. Senhora do O; he preached it in his youth, and he printed it in his old age, after an interval of four and forty years: it was approved by the censors of the press, and licensed by the provincial of his Order, and by the inquisition; but the man must be far gone in the school of Voltaire who could insult the decency of a British public, by following him through his explanations of the name. The probable origin of the name is sufficiently ludicrous. The feast of Our Lady under this invocation is celebrated on the 18th of December, and called the Expectation of the Virgin, being intended to commemorate the joy with which on that day she had looked forward to the Nativity. The patriarchs in limbo were at the same time expecting the birth of their deliverer with equal joy; Oh! is among the interjections of joy as well as of sorrow; and in imitation of these joyful aspirations in earth and in limbo, it was customary for every one, in the quire after the vesper prayer, to sing O O, in what key he pleased. Cayrasco, who has written a poetical Flos Sanctorum, when he comes to this day, makes all the Virtues join hand, and form a perfect round O in its honour. This Lady enjoys such celebrity in Pernambuco, that when her church was to be built, the landholders contended who should have the auspicious edifice upon his ground, and the matter was determined by lot. Chance determined as ill as the most injudicious choice could have done, fixing upon the lowest piece of land in the neighbourhood, within three hundred yards of a shore upon which the sea is constantly encroaching, and precisely in the very direction where it encroaches fastest. The same lot however was drawn thrice, a fact which looks as if a little pious subornation had been practised by the owner of the land;-a spring gushed forth when the foundations were dug, which of course possesses miraculous virtues, and salt which is not less sovereign for inward and outward maladies oozes from the wall against which the

high altarstands. The patients come from a distance of 150 leagues to seek for relief from this lady, her salt and her spring; and faith has wrought miracles enough to convince the people that those who receive no benefit must impute the fault to their own deficiency in belief or in good deeds, not to any lack of power in N. Senhora do O. The lady gives no gratuitous assistance: they who profit by this thriving trade will not thank Mr. Koster for informing his Pernambucan readers on the authority of Professor Kidd, that salt is in like manner found upon the walls of the Ashmole Laboratory at Oxford, a place where Nossa Senhora has had nothing to do since the days of bloody Queen Mary.

The Mandingo negroes are believed by the Brazilians to excel in sorcery; they are expert jugglers; they charm snakes from their holes, and are said to possess that power of rendering other persons unsusceptible of the snake-poison which, to the disgrace of Europe, still remains a secret to European science. They are believed also to communicate a virtue to certain green beads which will render the bearer invulnerable. In the last generation there were a set of men called Valentoens, the meaning of which term may be conveyed by Bravo, or Ruffian, who wore these beads. These fellows were men of all casts, who without having heard of knight errantry, imitated in low life some of the worst parts of the chivalrous manners. They would take their stand at a cross-road and compel all passers-by either to fight them, or to dismount and lead their horses, bareheaded, till they were out of sight. Their whole business was to seek quarrels, and keep all other persons in awe, for which purpose they frequented festivals and fairs, and were ready to revenge others as well as themselves. They had dogs of extraordinary size and activity who were as brave as themselves, and whom they had taught to drink rum. It is some proof of improvement that there are few of these men left; but it is not above fifteen years since one of them did credit to the gallows at Bahia.

Mr. Koster had turbulent neighbours at Jaguaribe, frequent quarrels took place between the slaves, and as this sort of warfare was neither agreeable nor safe, he thought it prudent to remove. Accordingly he hired a plantation in the Island of Itamaraca. This island is separated from the main land by a channel, which at its narrowest part is about half a mile wide, in its widest a league; it is about eight leagues north of Recife, twelve miles in length, and eight in breadth, a place of great importance in the Pernam bucan war, the Dutch having at one time deliberated whether it might not be expedient to establish the seat of government there. As there was no residence for him upon the estate, Mr. Koster, who was not very scrupulous about his quarters, took up his lodgings for a time in a large stone building, which in the better days of the settle

ment, had served for a town-hall above, and prison below, but was now almost in ruins. It stood in the square of the Town of Conception, a place which, being ill situated, would be totally deserted if the parish church did not stand there. After a while Mr. Koster obtained a cottage, and became so completely naturalized, that the honour was forced upon him, in conjunction with a neighbour, of providing and paying for the entertainments on the ninth and last night of Our Lady of Conception's novenas. Nossa Senhora had no reason to complain of the choice: a black tailor, who liked dancing and singing better than his needle, was called in; musicians were obtained from the band of the Olinda regiment, and fire-works, gunpowder and the colours of several ships from Recife. The colours were raised upon long staffs along the area of the town; and guns fired at sun-rise: these guns are made for such occasions; they are small short iron tubes with a touch-hole of disproportionate dimensions; and they are placed upright upon the ground. In the evening about twenty bonfires were kindled in the square, the houses were illuminated with lamps made in the rinds of half oranges, and many large crosses in different parts of the square were lighted up in the same manner. The church was crowded; the musicians of the island played within and the Olinda band without; the guns fired at intervals, rockets were let off, and the whole scene of confusion was such as they only can imagine who have witnessed a Roman Catholic festival. We remember a scene not less curious in honour of this very Nossa Senhora da Conceiçam in Portugal; some angels on horseback were not the least conspicuous person. ages, but the remarkable part of the exhibition was a battle between two lions, who fought not after the ordinary manner of their kind, but in a novel and ingenious fashion; for first they spat fire at each other, and then they made fire at each other, and lastly they turned tail and bombarded each other with fire, to the infinite delight of the spectators, angels and heretics included, and to the praise and glory of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçam.

When the church service was over, an improvisatore, or glozador as he is called in Portuguese, held forth first in praise of the vicar, then of Our Lady, upon whom all magnificent epithets were heaped, and then upon all the good people of Itamaraca, among whom Henrique da Costa, as Mr. Koster's name was easily rendered, came in for his share; especial praise being bestowed upon his signal piety in having prepared so splendid an entertainment. In fact he had prepared so much that the grandest exhibition was necessarily delayed till the following evening. This was a dramatic exhibition by a set of performers from the main land, who are called the fandangos. The account of this rude species of drama is so curious that it must be given at length in the author's own words,