singing, indeed, was excellent; far better than in many churches at
home. After the conclusion of the mass the master shook hands with
everybody, exchanged good wishes with his slaves, and dismissed them.
While they were dawdling about, gossiping in the verandah, I had a
closer look at the babies, which had all been brought to church. They
seemed of every shade of colour, the complexions of some being quite
fair, but the youngest, a dear little woolly-headed thing, was black
as jet, and only three weeks old. The children all seemed to be on
very good terms with their master and his overseers, and not a bit
afraid of them. They are fed most liberally, and looked fat and
healthy. For breakfast they have coffee and bread; for dinner, fresh
pork alternately with dried beef, and black beans (the staple food of
the poor of this country); and for supper they have coffee, bread, and
mandioca, or tapioca.

Returning to the house, we sat down, a party of thirty, to an
elaborate breakfast, the table being covered with all sorts of
Brazilian delicacies, after which several complimentary speeches were
made, and we all started off to walk round the fazenda. Our first
visit was to the little schoolchildren, thirty-four in number, who
sang very nicely. Then to the hospital, a clean, airy building, in
which there were happily but few patients, and next we inspected the
new machinery, worked by water-power, for cleaning the coffee and
preparing it for market. The harvest lasts from May to August. The
best quality of coffee is picked before it is quite ripe, crushed to
free it from the husk, and then dried in the sun, sometimes in heaps,
and sometimes raked out flat, in order to gain the full benefit of the
heat. It is afterwards gathered up into baskets and carefully picked
over, and this, being very light work, is generally performed by young
married women with babies. There were nineteen tiny piccaninnies, in