unpromising in the highest degree; and the town is in keeping with the
scenery. Eighty or ninety miserable hovels, constructed of small, loose
stones, in the manner of our stone-fences, stand in rows, with some
pretence of regularity. Besides the Governor and his aid, there are here
five white men, or rather Portuguese (for their claim to white blood is
not apparent in their complexions), viz. the Collector, the American
Consular Agent, a shop-keeper, whose goods are all contained in a couple
of trunks, and two private soldiers. We called to see the Governor, and
were politely received; he offered seats, and did the honors of the place
with dignity and affability. His pay is one dollar per diem. He has five
soldiers under his command, two of them Portuguese, and three native
negroes, one of whom has a crooked leg.

The people here are wretchedly poor, subsisting chiefly by fishing, and by
their precarious gains from ships which anchor in the port. The Collector
informed me that there had been sixty whale-ships in the harbor, within
the past year. The profits accruing from thence, however, are very
inadequate to the comfortable support of the inhabitants. The adults are
mostly covered with rags, while many of the children are entirely naked;
the cats and dogs (whose condition may be taken as no bad test of the
degree of bodily comfort in the community) are lean and skeleton-like. As
to religion, I saw nothing to remind me of it, except the ruins of an old
church. There has been no priest since the death of one who was drowned, a
few years ago, near Bird Island, a large rock, at the mouth of the harbor.
At the time of this fatal mishap, the reverend father was on a drunken
frolic, in company with some colored women.

The Cape de Verd Islands derive their name from the nearest point of the
mainland of Africa; they are under the dominion of Portugal, and,
notwithstanding their poverty, furnish a considerable revenue to that