polkas, and mazurkas are danced with great vigour and much skill.
The refreshments are muddy coffee and a few sweetmeats. Dancing
is kept up for hours, and all is conducted with much decorum and
propriety. A party of this kind meets about once a week, the
principal inhabitants taking it by turns, and all who please come
in without much ceremony.

It is astonishing how little these people have altered in three
hundred years, although in that time they have changed their
language and lost all knowledge of their own nationality. They
are still in manners and appearance almost pure Portuguese, very
similar to those with whom I had become acquainted on the banks
of the Amazon. They live very poorly as regards their house and
furniture, but preserve a semi-European dress, and have almost
all full suits of black for Sundays. They are nominally
Protestants, but Sunday evening is their grand day for music and
dancing. The men are often good hunters; and two or three times a
week, deer or wild pigs are brought to the village, which, with
fish and fowls, enables them to live well. They are almost the
only people in the Archipelago who eat the great fruit-eating
bats called by us "flying foxes." These ugly creatures are
considered a great delicacy, and are much sought after. At about
the beginning of the year they come in large flocks to eat fruit,
and congregate during the day on some small islands in the bay,
hanging by thousands on the trees, especially on dead ones. They
can then be easily caught or knocked down with sticks, and are
brought home by basketsfull. They require to be carefully
prepared, as the skin and fur has a rank end powerful foxy odour;
but they are generally cooked with abundance of spices and
condiments, and are really very good eating, something like hare.