laden with balmy smells, and the busy hum of insect life making the deep
woods vocal, at first oppress the senses with a feeling of novelty and
strangeness till the mind appears to hover between the realms of truth
and falsehood.

THE TOWN OF BAHIA.

The town of Bahia looks very beautiful from the sea; but on entering you
find it dreadfully filthy. The stench of the lower town is horrible. Even
the President's palace is a dirty and wretched-looking building: his
salary, I understand, is 600 pounds a year. By the last returns the
population of the town was 120,000, 100,000 of whom were blacks. All the
burdens here are carried by slaves as there are no carts and the breed of
horses is small, being perfect ponies.

The exports are cotton and sugar--the cotton chiefly to Liverpool, the
sugar to all European countries but England. Their imports are English
cotton goods and hardware, also various manufactured goods from Germany.
The nuns are famed for the manufacture of artificial feathers and
flowers.

The fruit here is excellent, the oranges are particularly fine.

The merchants in the town are principally English and German. There is no
American house. Several have started but all who made the attempt have
failed.

You cannot penetrate any great distance into the interior as there are no
roads but only little pathways through the woods. The Indians are
frequently seen very near the town.