Chapter XIX (1)

SANTOS, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL--RICHARD'S SECOND CONSULATE.

"My native land's the land of Palms,
The Sabiá sings there.
In this drear land no song-birds' notes
With our sweet birds compare.

"More radiant stars bestrew our skies,
More flowers bedeck our fields,
A fuller life teems in our woods,
More love our Home-life yields.

"My wakeful thoughts--alone--at night
Full of sweet memories are,
Of mine own land,--the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.

"My land has sweetest fruits and flowers,
Such sweets I find not here.
Alone--at night--in wakeful hours
More pleasures find I there,
Mine own dear land,--the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.

"God, in His mercy, grant I may
To that dear land return,
Ere the sweet flowers and fruits decay,
Which here, alas! I mourn;
That once again, before I die,
I may the Palm-Trees see,
And hear again the Sabiá
Sing its sweet melody."
----DANIEL FOX (_translated from the Brazilian
of the poet Antonio Gonçalves Dias_).

During this stay at home we had represented to Lord Russell how miserable our lives were, being always separated by the climate of Fernando Po, and he very kindly transferred us to Santos, in the Brazils, where I _could_ go. So Richard agreed that I should go out with him to Portugal for a trip; that he should go on to Rio de Janeiro; that I should return to London to wind up our affairs, and then join him at Santos; and we set sail in May. I now began to learn Portuguese. We had very bad weather, and on the fourth day we arrived at Lisbon, and went to the Braganza Hotel.

[Sidenote: _We explore Portugal._]

Here was a totally new experience for me. Our bedroom was a large white-washed place; there were three holes in the wall, one at the bedside bristling with horns, and these were cockroaches some three inches long. The drawing-room was gorgeous with yellow satin, and the magnificent yellow curtains were sprinkled with these crawling things; the consequence was that I used to stand on a chair and scream. This annoyed Richard very much. "A nice sort of traveller and companion _you are_ going to make," he said. "I suppose you think you look very pretty and interesting, standing on that chair and howling at those innocent creatures." This hurt me so much that, without descending from the chair, I stopped screaming and, made a meditation, like St. Simon Stylites on his pillar, and it was, "that if I was going to live in a country always in contact with these and worse things, though I had a perfect horror of anything black and crawling, it would never do to go on like that." So I got down, fetched a basin of water and a slipper, and in two hours, by the watch, I had knocked ninety-seven of them into it. It cured me. From that day I had no more fear of vermin and reptiles, which is just as well in a country where nature is over-luxuriant. A little while after we changed our rooms, we were succeeded by the late Lord and Lady Lytton, and, to my infinite delight, I heard the same screams coming from the same rooms a little while after. "There!" I said in triumph, "you see, I am not the _only_ woman who does not like cockroaches."

Here he insisted on taking me to a bull-fight, because he said I ought to see everything _once_. But there is a great difference between a Spanish and a Portuguese bull-fight. In Portugal the bull's horns are knobbed; he does not gore horses nor dogs--he tosses men softly, and if I do not mind that, it is because the men go in for it willingly, are paid for it, and are bred to it as a profession from father to son for endless generations. The only torment the bull has to endure is the darts thrown into the fat part of his neck. If he fights well, they are taken out afterwards and his wounds dressed with oil, and he is turned out loose to fight another day. If he won't fight, he is killed for beef; so you get all the science and the play without the disgusting cruelty. At first I crouched down with my hands over my face, but I gradually peeped through first one finger and then another, until I saw the whole of it; but it awed me so much that I was almost afraid to come out of our box, for fear we should meet a bull on the stairs.

We then went to Cintra, and to Mafra. Richard found an old mosque in Cintra, and we saw Mr. Cooke's beautiful house.[1] For people who have not been to Lisbon, I may say that Belem Church is, I think, quite the most beautiful thing in the world. It is one of the noted dreams in marble. From Lisbon we went on to Corregado, to Serçal and Caldas, to see Alcobaço, where there is a most beautiful monastery. In the days of rebellion and persecution, the days of Don Miguel, somewhere in the early thirties, the monks had to clear out, and my father took one of them, whose name was Antonio Barboza de Lima, to be our tutor and chaplain, when we were children (and he is now buried at Mortlake); so Richard and I took an extra interest in the details. We then went to Batalha, where there is another beautiful monastery, to Pombal, to Leiria, and to Coimbra. This seat of learning is one of the prettiest, dirtiest, and slowest places imaginable, and we soon made our way to Oporto, and went to Braga to see the Whit-Sunday _fête_, from thence to Malozinhos. This northern part of Portugal is ever so much more beautiful than Lisbon. The more you get into Douro, and the nearer you are to Spain, the larger and handsomer become the people.

However, our time was short, and, after a delightful two months' Portuguese exploration, we had to get back to Lisbon, where we saw another bull-fight, and Richard embarked for Brazil. I promised him to go back by the very next steamer that sailed. As I used to keep my word _very literally_, a few hours after his departure, a very tiny steamer came in, much worse than the West African boats; but I thought myself obliged to go, and we started at 9.20 in the evening, in spite of north-easterly gales, and had a bad time of it in the Bay of Biscay, she being only 428 tons. The route was from London to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Mazagan, Mogador, Canary Islands, coast of Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. On board, besides myself, having made the same mistake, was Dona Maria Rita Tenorio y Moscoso, who afterwards married the Portuguese Minister in London, Count Lavradio. We were in a tremendous fog off Beachy Head, went aground somewhere near Erith in the fog, and were very glad to land on the eighth day, having roughed it prodigiously. I note nothing important except some very interesting experiments at Mr. William Crookes's, both chemically and spiritualistically.

[Sidenote: _I rejoin him at Rio de Janeiro._]

By end of August, _i.e._ in a month, my work was accomplished, and I may as well now say, that whenever we were going to leave England for any length of time, he used mostly to like to start _at once_ in light marching order, go forward and prospect the place, and leave me behind to settle up our affairs, pay and pack, bringing up the heavy baggage in the rear. It saved time, as double work got done in the space; so, having completed all, I embarked from Southampton in one of the Royal mails. Heavy squalls and thunder and lightning began next day, and at Lisbon the thermometer was 80° in the cabin. We passed Santa Cruz, off Teneriffe, having a good view of the Peak. We got to St. Vincent in ten days, quite the most wretched hole in the world--only barren rocks, and the heat was like a dead wall. We had very charming people on board, mostly all foreigners, except Mr. and Mrs. Wodehouse, and Mr. Conyngham. Neptune came on board on the night of the 24th, we crossed the Line on the 25th, and the ceremonies of "crossing the Line" were gone through, the tubbing and shaving, the greasy pole and running in sacks, and a hair was drawn across the field-glasses, through which you were requested to look at the "Line." The perhaps most striking thing to a new-comer going out, is losing the Great Bear and the Northern Star, and all that one is accustomed to, and exchanging them for the Southern Cross and others.

We arrived at Pernambuco on the 27th, and there I found all the letters that I had written to my husband since we parted, accumulated in the post-office, consequently I did not know what he would think had become of me. Here we had a very rough sea and boiling surf. I passed the evening miserably, thinking about the letters; though everything was looking very beautiful, and the band was playing tunes and everybody waltzing, I sat by the wheel and had a good "boo-hoo" in the moonlight. On the 30th we reached Bahía, and went ashore and lunched with Mrs. Baines, and visited Mr. Charles Williams. The women wanted to sell me small black babies in the market for two shillings. We sailed the same day, and had heavy weather. I rose at five, just before we went into the harbour at Rio. It is about the most glorious sight that a human being can behold, at sunrise and at sunset, the mountains being of most fantastic shapes, and the colours that of an opal. Richard said it beats all the scenery he had ever seen in his life--even the Bosphorus. He came on board at half-past eight in the morning, and we had a joyful meeting, and I handed him all the letters which, by some strange mischance, had accumulated at Pernambuco during our month's separation.

We stayed at the Estrangeiros Hotel, where there was quiet, fresh air, beautiful scenery, and several disadvantages, including cockroaches and mosquitoes. We enjoyed a great deal of hospitality, both Naval and Diplomatic, and had several excursions and picnics. All nations have a "Flagship" and other ships in the harbour; there is a great deal of gaiety and _esprit de corps_ amongst the Diplomatic and Consular service. Amongst others here was Mr. Gerald Perry, our Minister, Sir Edward and Lady Thornton, Chevalier Bunsen, the son of the great Bunsen, with whom we used to have learned discussions very often in the evening on "Geist" and other scientific subjects, and German metaphysics generally. Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Admiral Elliot, the Admiral of the Station, was a very kind friend to me, on this my first _début_ into this kind of life. We had our first dinner-party at our hotel, and after all the formal people had gone, Richard and the young ones proposed a moonlight walk. We went down to the Botanical Gardens, and tried to get in, but the gates were locked--tall iron gates--and nothing would do but that, as we could not get in, we should scramble over them. It was quite contrary to law, but we had a nice walk about the gardens. There was either no watch-dog, or the guard being unaccustomed to such daring, was not on the look-out; but there were too many snakes about, and particularly the coral snake, of which nobody has any idea in England, because its colours fade as soon as it is put in spirits; so we all came back and climbed over the gate again, and got back without any danger.

But we had come out of hot rooms, and it was dewy and damp, so next day I had my first fever. It consisted of sickness and vomiting, colic, dizziness, faintness, shivering, heat and cold, delirium, thirst, disgust of food. The treatment was calomel, castor oil, hot baths, blankets, emetics, ice, starvation, and thirty grains of quinine. It did not last long, but my being delirious alarmed Richard very much, and he mesmerized me.

In Rio one generally takes a native steamer, which is not very comfortable, to go to Santos, one hundred and twenty miles south of Rio. As soon as I was able to move, Captain Napier took us on board H.M.S. _Triton_ for Santos. It was very rough. The captain had given up his quarters to me; the stern ports were not closed, and at night a tremendous sea came in, and swept our cots. It continued very squally, and we anchored at Ilha Grande; next day the men practised gunnery and small-arms, and Captain Napier made me practise with a revolver. It was fifty-eight miles from Rio to Ilha Grande, a pretty mountainous island, which surrounds a lovely bay, with a few huts on it. We then proceeded seventy-eight miles further to St. Sebastian, which is a grand copy of the Straits of Messina (Scylla and Charybdis), and spoils your after-view of what people who have seen nothing bigger, think so wonderful. You steam through an arm of the sea, appearing like a gigantic river, surrounded by mountains (whose verdure casts a green shade upon the water), dotted with houses, small towns, and gardens. The chief town is St. Sebastian, which is very populous. The water is calm; there is a delicious sea-breeze. When Richard went ashore they saluted him with the usual number of guns, and Brazilian local "swells" came off to visit us.

SANTOS, BRAZIL, HIS SECOND CONSULATE.

[Sidenote: _Arrival at Santos and São Paulo._]

We awoke next morning, the 9th of October, 1865, off the Large. About eleven we were at the mouth, whence one steams about nine miles up a serpentine river, and at one o'clock anchored opposite Santos. We saluted, and the Consular corps came off to see us. We stayed on board that night, and we left the ship at half-past seven next day, loitering about Santos.

Santos was only a mangrove swamp, and in most respects exactly like the West Coast of Africa, the road slushy and deep. Tree-ferns, African mangrove, brown water full of tannin, patches of green light and green dark, in rare clearings here and there houses and fields near town, much water, and good rice. The sand runs up to the mangrove jungle; there is good fishing, and deer in the forests. The heavy sea sometimes washes into the gardens, spoils the flowers, and throws up whale-bones in all directions. At the time of our arrival, the railway from Santos to São Paulo, about eighty miles into the interior, was only just beginning, and a large staff of Englishmen were engaged upon it. Mr. J. J. Aubertin, now, since his freedom, poet, author, and traveller, was then superintendent of it. Richard had been here, and inspected the place before my arrival, although he had met me at Rio, and he had arranged, as there were _two_ places _equally requiring the presence of a Consul_ (São Paulo on the top of the Serra, and Santos on the coast), that we should live at both places, riding up and down as occasion required, thus keeping our health; and Mr. Glennie, the Vice-Consul--who had gone to Santos as a boy, had been there over forty years, had married there, was perfectly devoted to it, and the only hardship he would have known would have been to live out of it--could remain there. His one ambition of life was to be Consul of Santos, and when we left, some years after, and his nomination was just going out to him, he died--as Richard used to say, "so like Provy."

We therefore, that same day, went in trollies to Mugis, where we lunched. Richard and Captain Napier had started on foot, and soon after Mr. Aubertin and thirteen others joined us. We were twenty-one people. Dr. and Mrs. Hood lived at the foot of the Serra, and they gave us a big tea-dinner. Mrs. Hood, the widow, with her now large grown-up family, strange to say, is now my near neighbour in Mortlake. Next day, what with mules, walking, riding, and occasional trollies, we got at the top of the Serra. There was a huge chasm over which the rail would have to pass on a bridge, with an almost bottomless drop. There were only planks across it; but, as I was on in front, supposing that was what we had got to cross, I walked right across it, about some two hundred yards. When I got to the other side, I turned round to speak, but nobody answered me, and facing round I saw the whole company standing on the other side, not daring to breathe, and my husband looking ghastly; so I turned round and was going to walk back again, when they motioned me off by signs, and all began to file round another way on _terra firma_. It was fortunate that I had such a good head, and did not know my danger.

The train line up the Serra is a very steep incline, one in nine, and is managed by a chain with a stationary engine at the top, a train being hooked on at each end of the rope. On one side was a mountain wall, and the other side a bottomless abyss, but the whole thing was quite beautiful through virgin forest. At this time it was not far advanced enough, and we rode up on mules. At the top a locomotive was kept to take us into São Paulo, which reminded us of Bergamo, in Italy, where we all dined at the little French inn. The next day we took a trip to what was then the end of the line, twelve miles beyond São Paulo, but at this time these trips were part mules, part trollies, part walking ones. We came back to dinner; there were speeches, and we wished the "Tritons" good-bye. Richard went down with them to set up his Consulate, and I remained to look for a house, and set up our _first real home_. After twelve or thirteen days, I went down to Santos by the diligence, by bad roads, but with a lovely panorama. The diligence takes one as far as Cubatao, where a little steamer plies for a couple of hours, first up a fine stream, between banks of tangled magnificence in the vegetation line, then an arm of the sea, or rather lagoons. The journey occupies seven carriage and two boat hours.

The worst of Santos, besides the steaming heat enclosed within and at the bottom of the hills, arising from the mangrove swamps, was the sand-flies and the mosquitoes. Richard was quite impervious to all other vermin, but the sand-flies used to make him come out all over bumps. For the rest, he used to say that he liked to have me near him--it was just like having "catch 'em alive" for flies, as everything came and bit me, and I was not fit to be seen, and spared him.

The fact is, I had fresh English blood, and it was rather a treat to them. The nicest thing was to drive out to the Barra. Captain Richard Hare, R.N., then came in, and we made a large party to stay there. The Barra was our fashionable bathing-place; the sea rolled right in to the strip of sand between it and the mangrove swamps, on the edge of which were (at that time) a few huts, with windows and doors opening on to the sand. In some there were no windows; they only closed by a wooden shutter.

After staying there for some time with Richard, I went up to São Paulo again, because I was getting feverish; it was wet and windy, and it took me eleven hours and a half. On going up, I engaged a very curious little fellow in our service, who deserves a few lines. Chico was thirty-five years of age; he was about four feet high, but perfectly well proportioned, as black as a coal, brimming full of intelligence, and could put his hand to anything. He had just been emancipated. He remained with us the whole time we were in Brazil, and became my right-hand man--more of him anon.

At last I found an old convent, No. 72, Rua do Carmo, which opened on the street in its front, and ran a long way back behind on an eminence, which commanded a view of almost boundless horizon into the country, and was exceedingly healthy. I immediately took it, cleaned it, painted and whitewashed it, and furnished it, and engaged slaves, paying their masters so much, and so much to them, as if they were free men. They were all Catholics, and I made a little chapel for them.

The slaves in Brazil, as a rule, formed, as it were, part of the family, and in ninety-five houses out of a hundred they were kindly treated and happy, but the remaining five out of the hundred were brutal; but, however, in _all_ cases, the poor creatures were told, or, if not told, were allowed to believe, that they had no souls, and nothing to look forward to. I, on the contrary, taught them, and had regular lecture and catechism for them, that not only had they souls, but that, although they were condemned by class and colour and custom to be slaves upon earth, just as it was in the Bible, that once dead, they, and we, would stand equal before God. The priest used to come to my little Oratory, where I had the Bishop's leave to have Mass and the Sacraments, and we all received Communion together. They were very happy, the house went upon oiled wheels, and I never had occasion to dismiss a servant the whole time I was there. The differences were chiefly amongst themselves. Richard having settled his Consulate at Santos, and I having prepared our home in São Paulo, he came up and joined me, and for the first time since our marriage we were absolutely settled in a home of our own.

[Sidenote: _Life in Brazil._]

Up the country in Brazil, people always get one or two things in their first few years. You either break out all over boils, so that you cannot put a pin's point between them, and if you have a weak place, they come there in clusters, and you can neither sit nor stand, kneel or lie, and you are an object of misery for some months; but if you have strength, and can pull through it, you bloom out with stronger health than ever after that. This happened to me. I had to be slung up. A friend gave me a barrel of porter, and it was alternately "faint" and a "glass of porter," which revived me for a few minutes, and then more faint and more porter, _ad infinitum_. By the time the barrel of porter was finished, I was convalescent, and when any new ones attempted to break out, a friend gave me two things to try--and I tell it for the sake of those who may follow me; it was to draw a ring of caustic round one, and a ring of laudanum round the other. The caustic ones did not answer, but the ring of laudanum made them disappear, and I got splendid health, which lasted at least seventeen years. Now, people who do not get the boils are bound to get one or more of the complicated diseases of the country, and that is just what happened to Richard. We had no doctors up there, that I am aware of.

On the 17th of January, 1866, we had an awful storm, worse than any known for twenty-five years; there was an awful blackness, the lightning was red, the wind drove in the windows, the hail was jagged pieces of ice one inch in diameter, sharp and long, and made round holes like a bullet, there was a network of flashes, rain from all quarters--a regular cyclone. It drove through the room fronting north, which was like a ship's cabin in a gale. We saw the cathedral struck, the cross knocked off, tiles blown away; the hotel room was like a shower-bath, with a continuous stream of rain. Several houses were struck, some of the doors split, and the streets quite flooded; people were frightened, and lighted candles, and brought out the Madonna. There were sharp rattlings like earthquake; it blew a clock against the walls away; the people all met as after a revolution in Paris. The windows were everywhere broken, and the water looked black. It was quite local, and did not touch the shipping. In the town four were killed and five wounded. The next day was very hot.

Santos is six thousand miles away from Europe, and we only got letters once a month.

Richard's study was the most important feature in the house. It was a long room, running out on an eminence forty feet long, with a good terrace at the end of it, on which we had a telescope, and every convenience for astronomy and observations; and perhaps the other most striking part of the house was a large room, which occupied the whole centre of the house, and opened on the stairs. This was dining-room, receiving-room, and everything. Directly below that was a similar place, that was more like stables than room. It was my refuge for the needy and homeless after dark; they were fed and housed, and turned out in early morning.

On the 27th of July he notes in his journal: "Dream that a bad tooth fell out, followed by five or six big drops of blood; noted the day, and found that my poor friend Steinhaüser had died of heart disease quite suddenly in Switzerland that day." On the 14th of August, 1866, the first through-train went from Santos to Jundiahy. There was a _fête_ in consequence, and the company had the bad taste only to omit the Consul and his wife from the invitations to all the English. On the 22nd of August Richard went to stop with the priests of the seminary (Capuchins), which he often did, in their _chacara_, or country-house, where he studied astronomy with Fray João, and metaphysics, physics, and algebra, with Père Germain. Here he was engaged in writing "Vikram and the Vampire," and he got a concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, in São Paulo. On the 21st of December we went down to Rio for our Christmas, which we spent at Petropolis. On the 12th of November some one put a stone on the railway to throw the train off, and on the 19th it was said that a part of the rails was pulled up.

In Santos and São Paulo we remained from 1865 to 1869, and I may say that his career here was equally active and useful, both on the coast and in the interior. We thoroughly explored our own province, São Paulo, which is larger than France. (I do not bore you with two pages of Brazilian names of places, because very few would know where they were, unless they had lived there and had worked in wild places, which is not likely.) We spent a good time at the gold mines and diamond diggings of Minas Gerães. He canoed down the river of San Francisco, fifteen hundred miles. He went to the Argentine Republic of the Páta-Paranà; he went to Paraguay for the purpose of reporting the state of the Paraguayan War to the Foreign Office. He crossed the Pampas and the Andes to Chili and Peru, amongst the dangerous Indians, whilst on sick leave for an illness which brought him almost to death's door. He visited the Pacific coast to inspect the scenes of the earthquake at Arica, returning by the Straits of Magellan, Buenos Ayres, and Rio de Janeiro.

Letters from Richard to _Fraser's Magazine_ appeared in three numbers, headed, "From London to Rio de Janeiro." He likewise wrote three books--"The Highlands of Brazil," 2 vols., which I edited and brought out in 1869; "Vikram and the Vampire," one vol. of Hindú tales brought out in 1870; "Paraguay," 1 vol., brought out in 1870. He interested himself immensely in the coffee and cotton produce, Mr. Aubertin being at that time the "father of cotton" in Brazil, but his chief interest lay in the mining and mineral productions of the country. As I have said, he obtained the concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, and Sir Edward Thornton was very angry with him--took it in the sense of Consuls trading, and reported him home. Fortunately, we had the large mind of Lord Stanley (Lord Derby) at the head of the Foreign Office, and he, knowing how caged and misplaced Richard was at such a Consulate, thought he might at least be allowed that little bit of amusement, and sent back a despatch that he did not think that being interested in mineral production could be exactly classed under the head of trading.

Amongst other things, Richard discovered something remarkable. On one of our Expeditions we were stopping at a shanty close to a river, and seeing something glistening, he walked up the bed of the river, which was not deep, and scooped up some of the sand and put it in a jar. On washing it we found that it looked very like rubies. We sent it home to Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., the great chemical savant, and he wrote back, "If you get any more, bigger than this, throw up the Consulate and stick to the rubies." Now, Richard told me that this was only the dust washed down, and that the great stones must lie further up the head of the river. The shanty belonged to an old woman with a right for a good stretch up the river, and she would have joyfully sold it for £50. When I implored Richard almost on my knees to buy it, he would not, saying it would be quite wrong to defraud that poor woman out of her place, when she did not know that rubies were there; that if she _did_ know, she would ask him an exorbitant sum; and, what was more, that no one could live there for three days without getting Brazilian fever, so that we should end by being like the dog in the fable, with the bit of cheese and the shadow in the water, and drop the reality for a shadow.

Life in Brazil, if in Rio, was very gay; life at São Paulo was very like a farmhouse life, with cordiality and sociability with the other farmhouses, and some of the good Brazilian society was very charming. The Brazilians are to the Portuguese what the Americans are to us. The Portuguese is heavy; the Brazilian is light, active, nervous, _spirituel_. Their parties are much enlivened by music and dance. They have several native dances, which are danced at the balls--one especial one, which is called the _carangueijo_, which is very active, very amusing, and very significant. The gentlemen and ladies dance it as furiously as the common people, as the Hungarians do the _czardas_. The Music consists of the _modinha_, which answers to our ballad, and is generally mournful; the _lundú_, which is mostly comic, and almost always in the minor key; and the _recitativo_, which consists of playing a flowing melodious accompaniment, and in a voice pitched and attuned to that, reciting a story of love or war or anything, often improvised at the moment. The negroes have their balls in the Plaza, or Square, and they will dance furiously for three consecutive days and nights to the same tune. It is amusing to watch for about an hour out of a window. The negro girls come out _décolletée_ in pink or blue cotton--those are the swells--the others dress like natives.

What is so beautiful is Nature, the luxuriance of vegetable and animal life. Everything is so large--the palms, the cacti, and all the things which here are treasured as plants and bushes, are there fine trees. I have seen arums of which one leaf would be six feet long and five broad, behind which a big man could easily hide himself. The virgin forests are unspeakably beautiful, with their wild tangle of creeper and parasite. Orchids, of which (during the rage that lasted in England for them) one single one would have sold for £60, here grow wild--one only had to go out with a knife and grub them up from the trees or rocks; we sent boxes home to our friends. The fir of the country is the araucaria; the gum copaiba is eighty feet high. Flights of gaudy-coloured parrots and all sorts of beautiful coloured birds are on the trees; butterflies, some of which measure ten inches from one wing-tip to the other, when spread, float about the air like large sheets of paper--scarlet, peacock blue, emerald green, cream, white--in fact, every colour; and coming in and out of your room, are little humming-birds the size of a large bee, looking like an emerald or a ruby flitting about, and if you have the sense not to offer to touch them, and put a little wet sugar in a saucer, they will stay there for days; but if you try to catch them, they break their hearts and die. The tints of Brazil are always the tints of the opal in fine weather. The heat is awful, like the damp heat of a conservatory; I flourished in it.

_En revanche_, Brazil has no history save three hundred years, which relates its discovery and its gradual transfer from Indian natives to the first Portuguese settlers. The Jesuits erected all the buildings on the best sites, made roads, and cultivated; but the Indians are not exterminated--they are only driven inwards--and about ten days from our home our nearest Indians were the Botacudos. You may see them in the Crystal Palace with their under-lip distended by a bit of wood. The nearest to us were friendly ones, and they would come down to São Paulo on rare occasions. They walk in Indian file, and when they passed our house, or any other friendly house, they threw their arms out towards the house--as if the whole file were pulled by a string--till they had gone by it; and that is their mode of friendly salute. When the railway was opened, they came down out of curiosity to see it. They looked upon the engine as a sort of malignant beetle, but at last they got less frightened, and all clambered upon it; but when it was time to start, and the driver gave the preliminary whistle, they sprang off like mad, and ran for their lives, nor could they be persuaded to mount again.

Another drawback was the reptiles and vermin. There is a large mosquito that fastens its prongs into your hand. I have seen a man let it suck, and then cut half its tail off, and it has gone on sucking and the blood running through--the mosquito being not in the least aware of its loss. Then there is a little grey, almost invisible, mosquito that makes no noise. In Trieste they call them _papataci_ (papa-hold-your-tongue). There is the jigger, that gets into your flesh, generally under your toe-nail or under the sole of your foot, and the first time you are aware that there is anything the matter is by your limping, and you then discover that there is a something about the size of a pea in your foot. You send for a negress, who picks at your foot for a few minutes with a common pin--they won't use a needle or any other instrument, because if they did the bag would break, and the eggs would get into your blood--and presently, with a little hurting, she triumphantly holds it up at the end of the pin, puts on a soothing ointment, and you are all right at once. A man thought he should like to take a jigger home to show an English doctor, but it was six weeks from home, and his foot was cut off before he got there.

Another nuisance is the _carapato_. It is everywhere, but chiefly inhabits the coffee plantations. There are three sorts, which only vary in size and colour. It is a cross between a tick and a small crab; the biggest would be the size of a little finger-nail. If you ride through a coffee plantation you come out covered with them. I have more than once taken off my riding habit and found my jacket nailed to the skin from the outside; to pull them is to tear your flesh and produce a festering wound. You have to get into a hot bath, in which you put one or two bottles of _cachaça_, the spirit of the country, and that clears off most of them; and if any obstinate ones remain, you have to light a cigarette, and apply the hot end to their tails till they wriggle their own head and shoulders out from under your skin. Cockroaches you don't count, but you must always look in your sleeves, and dress, and boots, for large horned beetles or spiders or other horrors.

Poor W. H. Bates (the naturalist of the Royal Geographical Society), who was a great friend of ours, was laughed at because he spoke of spiders as big as a toy-terrier; but it is perfectly true--there _are_ such spiders, though they are not seen in towns, only out in the forest, and they are the size of a good-sized crab. The body is hairy, and when they are angry they kick up and throw their hairs on you, which are poisonous. I was going to hit one, and a native drew me back and made me run away, for, he said, "it can spring at you, and it is instantaneous death." Richard and I did not go so far as to believe this, unless your blood is in a very bad state, but we did believe in its making people ill for several days. A priest was once going to say Mass, and he took his vestment down from the wall where it was hung up, and put it on, when he suddenly felt something hard in the centre of his back. He called to the servers and asked them to remove his vestment gently, without touching his back, telling them there was something inside. They did so, and it was one of these big spiders; when it was removed he fainted.

The people eat a large black ant, an inch and a half long. They bite off the fat body, which has to them a pleasant acid, and throw the head and legs away. Another use they make of them is to dress them up like dolls and sell them. The _copim_, or white ants, build nests like milestones. The people here believe in a sort of house-that-Jack-built as regards animal feeding. They believe that toads eat ants, that snakes eat toads, that owls eat snakes, also the geese, and that is why they are cheap.

Snakes are everywhere--in your garden, in your basement, in your rafters; and there is every description of them, from the boa-constrictor in the wilder parts, to the smallest. It is a common thing to hear the rattlesnake in the grass, and to scamper quickly. Those who kill them cut out the rattle and give it you for good luck. I have one now. At night, when you walk out you go with a lantern at the end of a stick, for the snake called _jararaquassú_ lies curled up at night on the road, looking exactly like a heap of dust, and you would certainly put your foot on it; it bites your ankle, and they say that you live about ten minutes.

These things, which sound so wonderful in England, become so common to us who live and travel in Brazil, out of towns and off beaten tracks, that we get quite accustomed to them, as everyday parts of our lives, as you do to showers in April and dying flies in September; so that I should not know now that they had ever happened if I had not written them down at the time. No one who means to write, should ever trust to memory, because scene after scene fades like a dissolving view and is never caught again, whilst others rise to replace them.

The storms were another thing to be somewhat dreaded. For our three summer months, which are December, January, and February (whilst the Thames is frozen over in London), we, maybe, have 115° in the shade, and you see a semicircle of clouds beating up. As our house was on a kind of promontory running out, not to sea, but to grassy plain, we used to have to make "all taut" as if we were on board a ship, because when it did come it was like a cyclone, lasting two or three hours, and then clearing off, leaving everything bright and beautiful, the earth and air barely refreshed; but while it lasted the thunder and lightning were close to you. I have frequently thought that if there was one more clap my head would split--it deafened one. The windows were generally broken, there were balls of fire flying through the air--blue, red, yellow; and on one occasion, on a pitch-black night, perceiving a light from an opposite angle in my husband's room, I thought the house was on fire. The door was locked for the night. I ran down the corridor, unlocked the door, and, going in, found that the lightning had broken a window and had set on fire one of my husband's large rolling atlases on canvas, which hung from the walls. I ran back and called him, and it made him very uncomfortable. He thought that one of these lightning balls of fire must have done it, but there was no aerolite or anything to show. There was no fireplace in the room, not even a box of matches.

At nine p.m. on the 20th of October, a meteor fell with a loud sound, and lit up the City of São Paulo. Martinico Prado and some others were standing near it, and he fell insensible. It fell on the hill near São Bemte; blue flame was seen in our house at the same moment. It was intensely cold, but bright, beautiful weather.

We bought horses--one that had something of the mustang in it, called Hawa, which always carried me, and Penha, a smaller one from Campos for Richard. When we drove, it was in an American buckboard, seat for two, with huge wheels, and a little place to hold a box, with a pair of wild mules that used to pull one's arm off. When Richard did not ride with me, Chico used to take the second horse.

Chico and I never had but one quarrel, and I will give it as an illustration. When I first arrived, Richard used always to laugh at me, because I was so miserable at the way the cruel people treat the blacks--just in the same way that I, and so many others, feel about the treatment of animals--and he kept saying, "Oh, wait a bit, till you have lived with negroes a little; you philanthropic people always have to give in." Well, about six weeks after I got Chico, I heard a tremendous noise, and shrieks of agony proceeding from the kitchen, and rushing in the direction I found Chico roasting my favourite cat at the fire. I made one spring at his wool, and brought him to the ground. Richard, who had also rushed out at the noise, saw me, and clapped his hands, saying, "Brava! brava! I knew it would happen, but I did not think it would be quite so soon." I could only blubber out, "Oh, Jemmy, the little beast has roasted my cat." He then punished him himself, and Chico was a good boy evermore. In begging for forgiveness, he told us that their fathers and mothers always instructed them, that when Christ was thirsty, if He asked a little dog for water, the dog would go and fetch it for Him, but if He asked a cat for water, that it gave Him something in a cup, which I cannot mention in polite society; and that all the little negroes were taught to be cruel to cats, and that he _had_ done atrocious things to cats, but he would never do so any more.

A very amusing thing was that this little monkey used to imitate his master in everything. If Richard bought a suit of clothes, he used immediately to take it to the tailor and get it exactly copied in small, and his evening suit especially. To go to a ball he was the _exact_ copy of his master--white shirt, white tie, little dress suit, little _gibus_, and all. We used to make him come and show himself to us when he was dressed, to amuse us. Then, unlike his master, he started a toilette-table with mirror, perfumes, and scents, and his pillow was all edged with deep lace. Each of the best families had one of these intelligent negroes; they used to give supper-parties, and then stand up and make speeches, just like us. Mr. Aubertin's used to talk about the railway shares, and the value of cotton, and the coffee produce; another, belonging to a reverend gentleman, used to stand up and speak of the "benighted state of the souls of the black man and the brother;" but our Chico used to declaim on "the Negro's place in Nature," as he had heard Richard do in his lectures, and talk of the progress that they had made from the original ape (Darwinism), and how they might eventually hope to rise into a white man.

Portuguese studies got on very well, and the more I knew of it, the more I enjoyed myself; but it made me quite forget the Spanish I had learnt during my stay at Teneriffe, and whilst Richard occupied Fernando Po. Richard had always known Portuguese from his Goanese _Padre_ in India. You cannot speak Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian at the same time; they are so alike, and yet so different. Portuguese is the most Latin, and the most difficult of the lot, and has much more literature to reward you with than Spanish; but Spanish is the grandest and the most beautiful, albeit with less literature. Still it once happened to me to be in company with a priest, an Italian, and a Spaniard, and we agreed to talk for an hour in each of the four languages. The priest took Latin, the Italian and the Spaniard each their own, and I Portuguese, and we could understand and answer each other, but we could not speak the other three languages. Italians come out to Brazil and can only speak Italian, not a word of Portuguese; they then come to a crisis, when they can speak neither; they then convalesce in Portuguese, speak it perfectly and remain with it--they forget their Italian. I speak of colonists.

We had two very charming picnic-places. One was the Tropic of Capricorn, just five miles from São Paulo; your insurances suffer all the difference, whether you are on this side or that. A boy who was about to pass his examination for the army, who supported a poor widow mother, and consequently was extremely anxious about passing, and with no interest, was destined to be plucked; so the arrogant and ignorant examiner asked the timid, humble boy, "How far is it from the city of São Paulo to the tropical line of Capricorn." The boy, radiant answered, "Between four and five miles, sir." "Go down, sir, you are plucked; it is twenty miles." It was the last question. The boy grew red and white, and turned despairingly to go; suddenly he remembered his mother, turned round, and said nervously, "Please, sir, of course you ought to know better than me, but I lived there five years, sir, and I had to walk it twice a week, to go home from school to mother's house on the Line, from Saturday to Monday." Chorus of laughter at the examiner, and the poor boy passed. (I have already quoted this in my "A.E.I.") Another charming place to picnic, in the mountains, was Nossa Senhora do O.

We occasionally had big dinners, when all the English of Santos and São Paulo assembled to do honour to some railway swell going home. We had for a time some fortnightly balls, at a good-sized hall at the corner of the Plaza, called the Concordia, and we had one curious case of sporadic yellow fever from there. Mrs. Ralston, the young wife of a very nice man (indeed a charming couple), came out of the ball-room with me at five o'clock one morning. I had only to run across fifty yards to my house; they had about twenty minutes to walk home, and she was well wrapped up with shawls. She suddenly drooped her head on her husband's shoulder, saying she felt very queer, and he had to support her home. Almost directly he had laid her on her own bed, she turned round and said, "Oh, is this death?" and died. Next morning, my maid ran in and without any preface said, "Mrs. Ralston's dead." "Oh, nonsense," I said; "I saw her seven hours ago;" and, thinking perhaps it was possible she might be ill, and require some woman-neighbour, I hastily threw on my things, and ran down to her house. The street door opened on to the principal sitting-room, and was unlocked, and to my horror the house was deserted and still, and something was lying covered up on the sofa. I drew back the sheet, and there was my young friend, dead. I knelt down and said a few prayers, and then, feeling rather faint, I stooped to kiss her forehead before covering her up again. The husband and child and servants had all been removed to another house; as I stooped to kiss her a dreadful effluvia knocked me back again, and I perceived that she was covered with large black spots. I fled and ran home again, and told Richard. He looked very grave, and rang the bell, and ordered the horses to the door. He fetched me a large glass of brandy, and made me drink it, with some bread. He said, "It does not matter; I have got to have a long ride to-day on business, and you have got to go with me." We rode about ten miles at a great pace, till I was in a good perspiration. When I got back he gave me a teaspoonful of Warburg drops. He kept me employed all day, and at night he took me to the little theatre, and then he told me that he had done that to save my life, without which I probably should have caught it, if I had not perspired, and partly from sympathy.

One thing I always regret in writing, is that I could recite so many amusing and interesting things that would immensely please a very large portion of English people; but England is so very queer, and I am become convinced it is not the same England that I used to know, that I do not like to venture them. They are not in the least risky, only amusing and adventurous, but being very honest and straightforward, would be sure to tread upon somebody's corns; blame or sneers would be sure to crop up from some quarter or another, and make me regret it. Richard was very fond of quoting the following lines to me over our writing:--

"They eat and drink and scheme and plod;
They go to church on Sunday,
And many are afraid of God,
And more of Mrs. Grundy."

We had one very curious character at São Paulo. It was the Marchesa de Santos. She was a beauty and a favourite in the time of the present Emperor's father, and led a very brilliant and stormy life. She got finally banished by his Empress (they say) to Santos, with a pension for life, and she lived in a small house a few doors from me. I used to see a great deal of her. She was quite _grande dame_, most sympathetic, most entertaining, full of stories of Rio and the Court, and the Imperial people, and the doings of that time. She had been obliged to adopt up-country habits, and the last time I saw her, she received me _en intime_ in her own kitchen, where she sat on the floor, smoking, not a cigarette, but a pipe. She had beautiful black eyes, full of sympathy, and intelligence, and knowledge. She was a great bit of interest to me in that out-of-the-way place.

The Seminary was the most palatial building in that part, and was just beyond the town. It was inhabited by Capuchins, French and Italians from Savoy and Piédmont. One of the monks was a tall, magnificent, and very powerful man, an ex-cavalry officer, Count Somebody, whose name I forget, then Fray G----.