magnificent vegetation. The people were simpler, more peaceable
and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and
assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a
reputation, were almost unknown. At the same time the Para people
were much inferior to Southern Brazilians in energy and industry.
Provisions and house rents being cheap and the wants of the
people few--for they were content with food and lodging of a
quality which would be spurned by paupers in England--they spent
the greater part of their time in sensual indulgences and in
amusements which the government and wealthier citizens provided
for them gratis.

The trade, wholesale and retail, was in the hands of the
Portuguese, of whom there were about 2500 in the place. Many
handicrafts were exercised by coloured people, mulattos,
mamelucos, free negroes, and Indians. The better sort of
Brazilians dislike the petty details of shop-keeping, and if they
cannot be wholesale merchants, prefer the life of planters in the
country, however small may be the estate and the gains. The
negroes constituted the class of field-labourers and porters;
Indians were universally the watermen, and formed the crews of
the numberless canoes of all sizes and shapes which traded
between Para and the interior. The educated Brazilians, not many
of whom are of pure Caucasian descent--for the immigration of
Portuguese, for many years, has been almost exclusively of the
male sex--are courteous, lively, and intelligent people. They
were gradually weaning themselves of the ignorant, bigoted
notions which they inherited from their Portuguese ancestors,
especially those entertained with regard to the treatment of
women. Formerly, the Portuguese would not allow their wives to go