Exploring and Travelling Three Thousand Miles Through Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Maranhao; With an Appendix Containing Statistics and Observations (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ... would obviate so much friction and require less exertion. 4 Pronounce Oo-roo-koo-yar. An Ancient Negro. 205 ling amongst trees, and prettily situated in a valley near a stream; there is just sufficient woodlands in the hollows of the hills and by the margins of the waters to break the sameness of the rolling grass, down-like elevations, that constitute the main features of the land. The house was a low long adobe building, roofed with tiles and divided into a number of rooms with doors opening to the front, like a series of cells. In one of these compartments O had made himself comfortable; the floor of his room was of mother-earth, and the walls were only plastered with yellow brown clay, but it was all neat and pleasantly tidy. He was soon seen coming along the road, a stalwart fair ruddycomplexioned Englishman. Alluding to the ancient negro I had accompanied on the road, O----told me he must really be a wonderfully old man, for the two huge gammeleira-trees in the front of the house, with trunks three feet in diameter, were planted as saplings by the old man when he had grey hair, that a healthy negro seldom acquires before sixty or seventy years of age; moreover, his grandson, a youth nearly seventy years old, said that when he was a boy his grandfather appeared to him to be then much the same in appearance. The ancient was yet so vigorous that he had several times asked O to take him into the service of picada work. He said he had never had a day's sickness in the whole course of his long life, and yet he smoked the strong native tobacco and occasionally drank cachara--when he could get it. August iSth.--We started early, to benefit by the delightfully clear and cool air of these high grounds that is so free from the dense morning...