The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 1 (of 2) / By His Wife, Isabel Burton

"I have five main objections to Jack's theory about the Nile:—

"1. There is a difference of levels in the upper and in the lower part of the so-called lake. This point is important only when taken in connection with the following:—

"2. The native report that the Mwerango river rises from the hills in the centre of the so-called lake.

"3. The general belief that there is a road through the so-called lake.

"4. The fact that the southern part of the so-called lake floods the country for thirteen miles, whereas the low and marshy northern shore is not inundated.

"5. The phenomena that the so-called lake swells during the dry period of the Nile, and vice versâ.

"It would of course have been far more congenial to my feelings to have met Jack upon the platform, and to have argued out this affair, openly, before the Association of Science. I went down fairly to seek this contest on September 13th, 1864. The first day was devoted to other subjects, and the second day our grand exposition of our separate views was to come off, and the rooms of the Section E were crowded to suffocation.

"All the great people were with the Council, I alone was uninvited; so I remained on the platform with my wife, notes in hand, longing for the fray, but when they filed in twenty minutes later, the melancholy announcement was made of his death. I had seen him between one and three p.m., and at four p.m. he was a corpse! I was so shocked, so pained, I could not speak, and remained so for a long while. His death sealed my lips, but I am not bound to bury my opinions in his grave; and when I at last dared to speak, I addressed a public already horribly prejudiced by the partisans of Jack, who know nothing about chivalry, and have spoken of me in terms which I never used towards my dead friend. In short, all my achievements were ignored and forgotten. Everybody is mentioned with honour, but the Pioneer of discovery in these wild regions is carefully ignored. I am now about to leave Europe for some years, and I cannot allow errors which are generally received, to remain as they are, but I do not stand forth as an enemy of the departed. No man better than I, can appreciate the noble qualities of energy, courage, and perseverance which he so eminently possessed, who knew him for so many years, who travelled with him as a brother, till the unfortunate rivalry respecting the Nile sources arose like a ghost between us, and was fanned to a flame by the enmity and ambition of so-called friends. I do not wish to depreciate the services of Jack, nor Captain Grant—they brought us back a new three hundred and fifty geographical miles; but as to the Nile sources, I consider the problem wholly unsolved. Jack and Captain Grant seemed to forget that the more my expedition did, the better for them, as well as for me. The result of Jack's expedition is a blank space on the maps, covering nearly twenty-nine thousand miles and containing possibly half a dozen waters. Had Jack and Captain Grant really seen—which they did not—three sides of the Nyanza, they would have left unexplored fifty thousand square geographical miles, a space somewhat larger than England and Wales.

"Knowing Jack as I do, I cannot understand why he sent Captain Grant, without valid apparent reason, on July 19th, 1862, to the head-quarters of King Kamrasi of Unyoro, right away from the Lakes, unless Jack was determined alone to do the work, and to have no one to contradict him. The Westminster Review remarks of that: 'Grant will have little to regret, and Burton will be more than revenged should Tanganyika, and not the Nyanza, prove to be the head of the Nile.'

"From Alexandria Jack telegraphed in April, 1863, to the F.O. these big words:—'Inform Sir Roderick Murchison that all is well, that we are in latitude 14° 30' upon the Nile, and that the Nile is settled.' The startling assertion caused a prodigious sensation at the main meeting, May 11th, 1863. Jack was fêted in Egypt by his Highness the Khedive and by his Majesty of Piedmont, and was presented with a medal bearing the gratifying inscription, 'Honor est a Nilo.' At Southampton he was received by the civic authorities and sundry supporters, including Colonel Rigby of Zanzibar, who, for purely private reasons, had supported Jack against me. On June 22nd, 1863, Jack received an ovation in the shape of a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, when the windows were broken in by the eager crowd. By-and-by people began to cool their enthusiasm. Despite all that Jack had done to me, I was the first to give flattering opinions of the exploration, until the personal account Jack gave, told me how little had been done. It was something to have passed over three hundred and fifty untrodden miles, but it would take a great deal more than that to settle the Nile problem. Jack tried to crush all expressions of thought. A welcome to Jack was put forth in 1863 by Blackwood's Magazine, a periodical from which, for reasons best known to myself, I never expected, nor wanted to receive justice. The author of 'The Welcome,' who sought advertisement, wrote: 'We were the first to satisfy ourselves with Captain Speke's geographical views.'

"In January, 1864, Jack's book appeared, 'The Discovery of the Sources of the Nile.' It sold like wildfire at first, and then suddenly dropped, like the stick of the firework. Then Messrs. Blackwood brought out 'What led to the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile,' and people were saying that 'non-discovery would be the fitting term;' and the second stick fell from the rocket. I understood then the danger to which I had exposed myself by not travelling alone, when I perceived that a lake, seen only for twenty miles, at the southern edge, was prolonged by mere guesswork to two hundred and forty miles to the north—enough to stultify the whole Expedition. Had we met at Bath, the discussion which must have resulted would have brought forth a searching scrutiny upon both our Expeditions, and mine would have been found to have been a genuine article; as it is, I am obliged to remain dumb upon many points upon which, if Jack had been alive, I should certainly have spoken. After so long a silence upon the subject, I am justified in drawing public attention as to what was effected by my Expedition, in which I was not only unaided, but I may say hindered. I went into the country ignorant of it, its language, trade, manners, and customs, preceded only by a French naval officer, who was murdered almost directly he landed. My friend Hamerton, the Consul at Zanzibar, was dying. Without money, or support, or influence, lacking in the necessaries of life, I led the most disorderly caravan that ever man could gather together, into the heart of Eastern Africa, and discovered the Tanganyika and the Nyanza Lakes. I brought home sufficient information to smooth the path of all who chose to follow me. They had but to read 'The Lake Regions of Central Africa' (2 vols., 1860), and the whole of Vol. XXXIII. of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (Clowes and Sons, 1860), to know all about it. Dr. Beke called mine emphatically 'a memorable expedition;' but, except for a few esteemed friends, my work has been ignored and forgotten. My labours rendered the road easy for Jack and Captain Grant. I opened the line to Englishmen, and they had but to follow me.

"I bring no charge against Jack of asserting what he does not believe. In his Taunton speech he declared that, 'as the real discoverer, he had in 1857 hit the Nile on the head, and in 1863 drove it down to the Mediterranean,' and he believed these words as firmly and as unreasoningly as he did in his Victoria Nyanza Lake or his 'Mountains of the Moon.' His peculiar habit of long brooding over thoughts and memories, secreting them until some sudden impulse brought them forth, may explain this great improbability. He could not grasp a fact; hence his partial eclipse of the moon on the 5th and 6th of January, 1863, which did not occur. A 'luxurious village' was a mass of dirty huts, a 'king of kings' is a petty chief, a 'splendid port' is a display of savagery. The French of those parts are barbarians, with little more knowledge than their neighbours.

"Captain Grant also has never acknowledged the vast benefits which the second Expedition derived from mine. I therefore mean to produce a small volume, called 'The Nile Basin,'[2] in which I shall distinctly deny that any 'misleading, by my instructions from the Royal Geographical Society as to the position of the White Nile,' left me unconscious of the vast importance of ascertaining the Rusizi river's direction. The fact is Jack was deaf and almost blind, I was paralytic, we were both helpless, and I may add penniless; we did our best to reach it, and we failed.

"I must also again allude to Jack's 'Mountains of the Moon.' He published a sketch-map in Blackwood's Magazine, September and October, 1859, which showed a huge range estimated to rise six or eight thousand feet high. At first the segment of a circle, it gradually shaped itself into a colt's foot, and effectually cut off all access from the Tanganyika to the Nile; then he owns in his book, p. 263, to having built up these mountains on solely geographical reasonings, deriving from the same source the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambesi. Now, Captain Grant afterwards said that the mountains were the work of the engraver, and that Jack was amused by them; but if he had looked into the map-room of the Royal Geographical Society, he would have found Jack's own map, showing the lunar horseshoe in all its hideousness. Now, in the map done by Stanford, the Mountains of the Moon are placed in the northern extremity of the Lake Tanganyika; but in his own map, published in his journal, he altered their position, and inserted them round the western north-sides of the more northern Lake Rusizi, which was manifestly a widening of the river; and again he said, p. 324, 'It was a pity I did not change the course I gave to the Maraungu river, i.e. making it an effluent, and not an influent; I forgot my lesson, and omitted to do so;' and when he inquires of the natives whether this river runs into or out of the lake, he says, 'Because they all say it runs into the lake, I am quite convinced that it runs out of the lake,' which, to say the least of it, is an extraordinary train of reasoning.

"Mr. Macqueen, an old and scientific geographer, was told by an Arab who had been to Unyamwezi, 'It is well known by all the people there, that the river which goes through Egypt takes its source and origin from the Lake Tanganyika.' Dr. Beke, an old and scientific traveller, quotes De Barros: 'The Nile has its origin in a great lake, the Tanganyika, and after traversing many miles northwards, it enters a very large lake which lies under the equator.' This would, I believe, be the Bahr el Ghazal, or the Luta Nzigé. With regard to the levels, the Tanganyika is allowed but 1844 feet, but during our exploration the state of our vision would, I am sure, explain a greater difference than the fraction of a degree. At Conduci, a harbour on the East African coast, a common wooden bath instrument boiled at 2˙14° Fahr.: this would give a difference of about 1000 feet. The Nyanza was made 3550 feet high by my expedition, that of Jack raised it to 3745 feet.

"Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., author of the 'Geographical Survey of Africa,' wrote a very able review on Jack's expedition with Captain Grant, and I shall reprint it in the 'Nile Basin' from the Morning Advertiser. In it he speaks in unmeasured terms about the cruelty of the manner in which he crushed Consul Petherick with his ill-temper, vanity, and jealousy, having used him in his own service all he could. Petherick wrote: 'To add insult to injury, flesh and blood cannot bear it, and, whilst not wishing to depreciate the labours of others, I am determined to maintain my own;' and Mrs. Petherick wrote an account of Jack's dining with them. They had a tremendously large ham, which they had brought from England, cooked. They were to wait with boats, well armed and provisioned, until Jack should appear at Gondokoro. They waited long beyond their time, they spent their money, they lost their health, they sacrificed their own trade, and Jack, having helped himself to what he wanted, treated them de haut en bas. Mrs. Petherick writes: 'We always meant to open this ham when we met Speke. During dinner I endeavoured to prevail on Speke to accept our aid, but he drawlingly replied, "I do not wish to recognize the 'succour-dodge.'"' She adds, 'The rest of the conversation I am not well enough to repeat. I grow heartsick thinking of it after all our toil. Never mind, his heartlessness will recoil upon him yet. I soon left the table, and would never dine with them again.'

"But when Jack got home, and was in the full fling of his triumph, his unfounded charges influenced the Government, who had employed Petherick to convey assistance and advice to Jack, whose flippant conduct caused this man and his wife to be thrown overboard without pity, his private fortune wasted, his character as a merchant and a public servant blasted, being also deprived of his Consulship. Mr. Macqueen, in his paper, said that Speke left England on a great and noble enterprise. He was patronised and supported by the British Government, by the Royal Geographical Society, and the good wish and sanguine hopes of the public. He says it is incredible that any man, but especially a man who had gone a thousand miles to see the position of the outlet of the Nile supposed to be in that spot, should have remained five months within eight miles of it, without hearing or seeing something certain about the great object of his search, or have found some means to see it. He says, 'All that he brought back was the sacrifice and ruin of zealous associates, first Burton, then Petherick, Grant treated as a cipher, and a mass of intelligence, if such it can be called, so muddled and confused that we do not believe he understands it himself. We regret the miserable termination which the second great African exploration has had; we lament the time that has been lost, and the money that has been spent; but the only person to blame for its poor results is Captain Speke himself.'"

The following five maps, brought up to 1867, are inserted with the kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society, whose property they are.

CHAPTER XIX.

SANTOS, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL—RICHARD'S SECOND CONSULATE.

"My native land's the land of Palms,
The Sabiá sings there.
In this drear land no song-birds' notes
With our sweet birds compare.

"More radiant stars bestrew our skies,
More flowers bedeck our fields,
A fuller life teems in our woods,
More love our Home-life yields.

"My wakeful thoughts—alone—at night
Full of sweet memories are,
Of mine own land,—the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.

"My land has sweetest fruits and flowers,
Such sweets I find not here.
Alone—at night—in wakeful hours
More pleasures find I there,
Mine own dear land,—the land of Palms,
Where sings the Sabiá.

"God, in His mercy, grant I may
To that dear land return,
Ere the sweet flowers and fruits decay,
Which here, alas! I mourn;
That once again, before I die,
I may the Palm-Trees see,
And hear again the Sabiá
Sing its sweet melody."
——Daniel Fox (translated from the Brazilian
of the poet Antonio Gonçalves Dias).

During this stay at home we had represented to Lord Russell how miserable our lives were, being always separated by the climate of Fernando Po, and he very kindly transferred us to Santos, in the Brazils, where I could go. So Richard agreed that I should go out with him to Portugal for a trip; that he should go on to Rio de Janeiro; that I should return to London to wind up our affairs, and then join him at Santos; and we set sail in May. I now began to learn Portuguese. We had very bad weather, and on the fourth day we arrived at Lisbon, and went to the Braganza Hotel.

We then went to Cintra, and to Mafra. Richard found an old mosque in Cintra, and we saw Mr. Cooke's beautiful house.[1] For people who have not been to Lisbon, I may say that Belem Church is, I think, quite the most beautiful thing in the world. It is one of the noted dreams in marble. From Lisbon we went on to Corregado, to Serçal and Caldas, to see Alcobaço, where there is a most beautiful monastery. In the days of rebellion and persecution, the days of Don Miguel, somewhere in the early thirties, the monks had to clear out, and my father took one of them, whose name was Antonio Barboza de Lima, to be our tutor and chaplain, when we were children (and he is now buried at Mortlake); so Richard and I took an extra interest in the details. We then went to Batalha, where there is another beautiful monastery, to Pombal, to Leiria, and to Coimbra. This seat of learning is one of the prettiest, dirtiest, and slowest places imaginable, and we soon made our way to Oporto, and went to Braga to see the Whit-Sunday fête, from thence to Malozinhos. This northern part of Portugal is ever so much more beautiful than Lisbon. The more you get into Douro, and the nearer you are to Spain, the larger and handsomer become the people.

However, our time was short, and, after a delightful two months' Portuguese exploration, we had to get back to Lisbon, where we saw another bull-fight, and Richard embarked for Brazil. I promised him to go back by the very next steamer that sailed. As I used to keep my word very literally, a few hours after his departure, a very tiny steamer came in, much worse than the West African boats; but I thought myself obliged to go, and we started at 9.20 in the evening, in spite of north-easterly gales, and had a bad time of it in the Bay of Biscay, she being only 428 tons. The route was from London to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Mazagan, Mogador, Canary Islands, coast of Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. On board, besides myself, having made the same mistake, was Dona Maria Rita Tenorio y Moscoso, who afterwards married the Portuguese Minister in London, Count Lavradio. We were in a tremendous fog off Beachy Head, went aground somewhere near Erith in the fog, and were very glad to land on the eighth day, having roughed it prodigiously. I note nothing important except some very interesting experiments at Mr. William Crookes's, both chemically and spiritualistically.

By end of August, i.e. in a month, my work was accomplished, and I may as well now say, that whenever we were going to leave England for any length of time, he used mostly to like to start at once in light marching order, go forward and prospect the place, and leave me behind to settle up our affairs, pay and pack, bringing up the heavy baggage in the rear. It saved time, as double work got done in the space; so, having completed all, I embarked from Southampton in one of the Royal mails. Heavy squalls and thunder and lightning began next day, and at Lisbon the thermometer was 80° in the cabin. We passed Santa Cruz, off Teneriffe, having a good view of the Peak. We got to St. Vincent in ten days, quite the most wretched hole in the world—only barren rocks, and the heat was like a dead wall. We had very charming people on board, mostly all foreigners, except Mr. and Mrs. Wodehouse, and Mr. Conyngham. Neptune came on board on the night of the 24th, we crossed the Line on the 25th, and the ceremonies of "crossing the Line" were gone through, the tubbing and shaving, the greasy pole and running in sacks, and a hair was drawn across the field-glasses, through which you were requested to look at the "Line." The perhaps most striking thing to a new-comer going out, is losing the Great Bear and the Northern Star, and all that one is accustomed to, and exchanging them for the Southern Cross and others.

We arrived at Pernambuco on the 27th, and there I found all the letters that I had written to my husband since we parted, accumulated in the post-office, consequently I did not know what he would think had become of me. Here we had a very rough sea and boiling surf. I passed the evening miserably, thinking about the letters; though everything was looking very beautiful, and the band was playing tunes and everybody waltzing, I sat by the wheel and had a good "boo-hoo" in the moonlight. On the 30th we reached Bahía, and went ashore and lunched with Mrs. Baines, and visited Mr. Charles Williams. The women wanted to sell me small black babies in the market for two shillings. We sailed the same day, and had heavy weather. I rose at five, just before we went into the harbour at Rio. It is about the most glorious sight that a human being can behold, at sunrise and at sunset, the mountains being of most fantastic shapes, and the colours that of an opal. Richard said it beats all the scenery he had ever seen in his life—even the Bosphorus. He came on board at half-past eight in the morning, and we had a joyful meeting, and I handed him all the letters which, by some strange mischance, had accumulated at Pernambuco during our month's separation.

We stayed at the Estrangeiros Hotel, where there was quiet, fresh air, beautiful scenery, and several disadvantages, including cockroaches and mosquitoes. We enjoyed a great deal of hospitality, both Naval and Diplomatic, and had several excursions and picnics. All nations have a "Flagship" and other ships in the harbour; there is a great deal of gaiety and esprit de corps amongst the Diplomatic and Consular service. Amongst others here was Mr. Gerald Perry, our Minister, Sir Edward and Lady Thornton, Chevalier Bunsen, the son of the great Bunsen, with whom we used to have learned discussions very often in the evening on "Geist" and other scientific subjects, and German metaphysics generally. Mrs. Elliot, the wife of Admiral Elliot, the Admiral of the Station, was a very kind friend to me, on this my first début into this kind of life. We had our first dinner-party at our hotel, and after all the formal people had gone, Richard and the young ones proposed a moonlight walk. We went down to the Botanical Gardens, and tried to get in, but the gates were locked—tall iron gates—and nothing would do but that, as we could not get in, we should scramble over them. It was quite contrary to law, but we had a nice walk about the gardens. There was either no watch-dog, or the guard being unaccustomed to such daring, was not on the look-out; but there were too many snakes about, and particularly the coral snake, of which nobody has any idea in England, because its colours fade as soon as it is put in spirits; so we all came back and climbed over the gate again, and got back without any danger.

But we had come out of hot rooms, and it was dewy and damp, so next day I had my first fever. It consisted of sickness and vomiting, colic, dizziness, faintness, shivering, heat and cold, delirium, thirst, disgust of food. The treatment was calomel, castor oil, hot baths, blankets, emetics, ice, starvation, and thirty grains of quinine. It did not last long, but my being delirious alarmed Richard very much, and he mesmerized me.

In Rio one generally takes a native steamer, which is not very comfortable, to go to Santos, one hundred and twenty miles south of Rio. As soon as I was able to move, Captain Napier took us on board H.M.S. Triton for Santos. It was very rough. The captain had given up his quarters to me; the stern ports were not closed, and at night a tremendous sea came in, and swept our cots. It continued very squally, and we anchored at Ilha Grande; next day the men practised gunnery and small-arms, and Captain Napier made me practise with a revolver. It was fifty-eight miles from Rio to Ilha Grande, a pretty mountainous island, which surrounds a lovely bay, with a few huts on it. We then proceeded seventy-eight miles further to St. Sebastian, which is a grand copy of the Straits of Messina (Scylla and Charybdis), and spoils your after-view of what people who have seen nothing bigger, think so wonderful. You steam through an arm of the sea, appearing like a gigantic river, surrounded by mountains (whose verdure casts a green shade upon the water), dotted with houses, small towns, and gardens. The chief town is St. Sebastian, which is very populous. The water is calm; there is a delicious sea-breeze. When Richard went ashore they saluted him with the usual number of guns, and Brazilian local "swells" came off to visit us.

Santos, Brazil, his Second Consulate.

We therefore, that same day, went in trollies to Mugis, where we lunched. Richard and Captain Napier had started on foot, and soon after Mr. Aubertin and thirteen others joined us. We were twenty-one people. Dr. and Mrs. Hood lived at the foot of the Serra, and they gave us a big tea-dinner. Mrs. Hood, the widow, with her now large grown-up family, strange to say, is now my near neighbour in Mortlake. Next day, what with mules, walking, riding, and occasional trollies, we got at the top of the Serra. There was a huge chasm over which the rail would have to pass on a bridge, with an almost bottomless drop. There were only planks across it; but, as I was on in front, supposing that was what we had got to cross, I walked right across it, about some two hundred yards. When I got to the other side, I turned round to speak, but nobody answered me, and facing round I saw the whole company standing on the other side, not daring to breathe, and my husband looking ghastly; so I turned round and was going to walk back again, when they motioned me off by signs, and all began to file round another way on terra firma. It was fortunate that I had such a good head, and did not know my danger.

The train line up the Serra is a very steep incline, one in nine, and is managed by a chain with a stationary engine at the top, a train being hooked on at each end of the rope. On one side was a mountain wall, and the other side a bottomless abyss, but the whole thing was quite beautiful through virgin forest. At this time it was not far advanced enough, and we rode up on mules. At the top a locomotive was kept to take us into São Paulo, which reminded us of Bergamo, in Italy, where we all dined at the little French inn. The next day we took a trip to what was then the end of the line, twelve miles beyond São Paulo, but at this time these trips were part mules, part trollies, part walking ones. We came back to dinner; there were speeches, and we wished the "Tritons" good-bye. Richard went down with them to set up his Consulate, and I remained to look for a house, and set up our first real home. After twelve or thirteen days, I went down to Santos by the diligence, by bad roads, but with a lovely panorama. The diligence takes one as far as Cubatao, where a little steamer plies for a couple of hours, first up a fine stream, between banks of tangled magnificence in the vegetation line, then an arm of the sea, or rather lagoons. The journey occupies seven carriage and two boat hours.

The worst of Santos, besides the steaming heat enclosed within and at the bottom of the hills, arising from the mangrove swamps, was the sand-flies and the mosquitoes. Richard was quite impervious to all other vermin, but the sand-flies used to make him come out all over bumps. For the rest, he used to say that he liked to have me near him—it was just like having "catch 'em alive" for flies, as everything came and bit me, and I was not fit to be seen, and spared him.

The fact is, I had fresh English blood, and it was rather a treat to them. The nicest thing was to drive out to the Barra. Captain Richard Hare, R.N., then came in, and we made a large party to stay there. The Barra was our fashionable bathing-place; the sea rolled right in to the strip of sand between it and the mangrove swamps, on the edge of which were (at that time) a few huts, with windows and doors opening on to the sand. In some there were no windows; they only closed by a wooden shutter.

After staying there for some time with Richard, I went up to São Paulo again, because I was getting feverish; it was wet and windy, and it took me eleven hours and a half. On going up, I engaged a very curious little fellow in our service, who deserves a few lines. Chico was thirty-five years of age; he was about four feet high, but perfectly well proportioned, as black as a coal, brimming full of intelligence, and could put his hand to anything. He had just been emancipated. He remained with us the whole time we were in Brazil, and became my right-hand man—more of him anon.

At last I found an old convent, No. 72, Rua do Carmo, which opened on the street in its front, and ran a long way back behind on an eminence, which commanded a view of almost boundless horizon into the country, and was exceedingly healthy. I immediately took it, cleaned it, painted and whitewashed it, and furnished it, and engaged slaves, paying their masters so much, and so much to them, as if they were free men. They were all Catholics, and I made a little chapel for them.

The slaves in Brazil, as a rule, formed, as it were, part of the family, and in ninety-five houses out of a hundred they were kindly treated and happy, but the remaining five out of the hundred were brutal; but, however, in all cases, the poor creatures were told, or, if not told, were allowed to believe, that they had no souls, and nothing to look forward to. I, on the contrary, taught them, and had regular lecture and catechism for them, that not only had they souls, but that, although they were condemned by class and colour and custom to be slaves upon earth, just as it was in the Bible, that once dead, they, and we, would stand equal before God. The priest used to come to my little Oratory, where I had the Bishop's leave to have Mass and the Sacraments, and we all received Communion together. They were very happy, the house went upon oiled wheels, and I never had occasion to dismiss a servant the whole time I was there. The differences were chiefly amongst themselves. Richard having settled his Consulate at Santos, and I having prepared our home in São Paulo, he came up and joined me, and for the first time since our marriage we were absolutely settled in a home of our own.

Richard's study was the most important feature in the house. It was a long room, running out on an eminence forty feet long, with a good terrace at the end of it, on which we had a telescope, and every convenience for astronomy and observations; and perhaps the other most striking part of the house was a large room, which occupied the whole centre of the house, and opened on the stairs. This was dining-room, receiving-room, and everything. Directly below that was a similar place, that was more like stables than room. It was my refuge for the needy and homeless after dark; they were fed and housed, and turned out in early morning.

On the 27th of July he notes in his journal: "Dream that a bad tooth fell out, followed by five or six big drops of blood; noted the day, and found that my poor friend Steinhaüser had died of heart disease quite suddenly in Switzerland that day." On the 14th of August, 1866, the first through-train went from Santos to Jundiahy. There was a fête in consequence, and the company had the bad taste only to omit the Consul and his wife from the invitations to all the English. On the 22nd of August Richard went to stop with the priests of the seminary (Capuchins), which he often did, in their chacara, or country-house, where he studied astronomy with Fray João, and metaphysics, physics, and algebra, with Père Germain. Here he was engaged in writing "Vikram and the Vampire," and he got a concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, in São Paulo. On the 21st of December we went down to Rio for our Christmas, which we spent at Petropolis. On the 12th of November some one put a stone on the railway to throw the train off, and on the 19th it was said that a part of the rails was pulled up.

In Santos and São Paulo we remained from 1865 to 1869, and I may say that his career here was equally active and useful, both on the coast and in the interior. We thoroughly explored our own province, São Paulo, which is larger than France. (I do not bore you with two pages of Brazilian names of places, because very few would know where they were, unless they had lived there and had worked in wild places, which is not likely.) We spent a good time at the gold mines and diamond diggings of Minas Gerães. He canoed down the river of San Francisco, fifteen hundred miles. He went to the Argentine Republic of the Páta-Paranà; he went to Paraguay for the purpose of reporting the state of the Paraguayan War to the Foreign Office. He crossed the Pampas and the Andes to Chili and Peru, amongst the dangerous Indians, whilst on sick leave for an illness which brought him almost to death's door. He visited the Pacific coast to inspect the scenes of the earthquake at Arica, returning by the Straits of Magellan, Buenos Ayres, and Rio de Janeiro.

Letters from Richard to Fraser's Magazine appeared in three numbers, headed, "From London to Rio de Janeiro." He likewise wrote three books—"The Highlands of Brazil," 2 vols., which I edited and brought out in 1869; "Vikram and the Vampire," one vol. of Hindú tales brought out in 1870; "Paraguay," 1 vol., brought out in 1870. He interested himself immensely in the coffee and cotton produce, Mr. Aubertin being at that time the "father of cotton" in Brazil, but his chief interest lay in the mining and mineral productions of the country. As I have said, he obtained the concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, and Sir Edward Thornton was very angry with him—took it in the sense of Consuls trading, and reported him home. Fortunately, we had the large mind of Lord Stanley (Lord Derby) at the head of the Foreign Office, and he, knowing how caged and misplaced Richard was at such a Consulate, thought he might at least be allowed that little bit of amusement, and sent back a despatch that he did not think that being interested in mineral production could be exactly classed under the head of trading.

Amongst other things, Richard discovered something remarkable. On one of our Expeditions we were stopping at a shanty close to a river, and seeing something glistening, he walked up the bed of the river, which was not deep, and scooped up some of the sand and put it in a jar. On washing it we found that it looked very like rubies. We sent it home to Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., the great chemical savant, and he wrote back, "If you get any more, bigger than this, throw up the Consulate and stick to the rubies." Now, Richard told me that this was only the dust washed down, and that the great stones must lie further up the head of the river. The shanty belonged to an old woman with a right for a good stretch up the river, and she would have joyfully sold it for £50. When I implored Richard almost on my knees to buy it, he would not, saying it would be quite wrong to defraud that poor woman out of her place, when she did not know that rubies were there; that if she did know, she would ask him an exorbitant sum; and, what was more, that no one could live there for three days without getting Brazilian fever, so that we should end by being like the dog in the fable, with the bit of cheese and the shadow in the water, and drop the reality for a shadow.

Life in Brazil, if in Rio, was very gay; life at São Paulo was very like a farmhouse life, with cordiality and sociability with the other farmhouses, and some of the good Brazilian society was very charming. The Brazilians are to the Portuguese what the Americans are to us. The Portuguese is heavy; the Brazilian is light, active, nervous, spirituel. Their parties are much enlivened by music and dance. They have several native dances, which are danced at the balls—one especial one, which is called the carangueijo, which is very active, very amusing, and very significant. The gentlemen and ladies dance it as furiously as the common people, as the Hungarians do the czardas. The Music consists of the modinha, which answers to our ballad, and is generally mournful; the lundú, which is mostly comic, and almost always in the minor key; and the recitativo, which consists of playing a flowing melodious accompaniment, and in a voice pitched and attuned to that, reciting a story of love or war or anything, often improvised at the moment. The negroes have their balls in the Plaza, or Square, and they will dance furiously for three consecutive days and nights to the same tune. It is amusing to watch for about an hour out of a window. The negro girls come out décolletée in pink or blue cotton—those are the swells—the others dress like natives.

What is so beautiful is Nature, the luxuriance of vegetable and animal life. Everything is so large—the palms, the cacti, and all the things which here are treasured as plants and bushes, are there fine trees. I have seen arums of which one leaf would be six feet long and five broad, behind which a big man could easily hide himself. The virgin forests are unspeakably beautiful, with their wild tangle of creeper and parasite. Orchids, of which (during the rage that lasted in England for them) one single one would have sold for £60, here grow wild—one only had to go out with a knife and grub them up from the trees or rocks; we sent boxes home to our friends. The fir of the country is the araucaria; the gum copaiba is eighty feet high. Flights of gaudy-coloured parrots and all sorts of beautiful coloured birds are on the trees; butterflies, some of which measure ten inches from one wing-tip to the other, when spread, float about the air like large sheets of paper—scarlet, peacock blue, emerald green, cream, white—in fact, every colour; and coming in and out of your room, are little humming-birds the size of a large bee, looking like an emerald or a ruby flitting about, and if you have the sense not to offer to touch them, and put a little wet sugar in a saucer, they will stay there for days; but if you try to catch them, they break their hearts and die. The tints of Brazil are always the tints of the opal in fine weather. The heat is awful, like the damp heat of a conservatory; I flourished in it.

En revanche, Brazil has no history save three hundred years, which relates its discovery and its gradual transfer from Indian natives to the first Portuguese settlers. The Jesuits erected all the buildings on the best sites, made roads, and cultivated; but the Indians are not exterminated—they are only driven inwards—and about ten days from our home our nearest Indians were the Botacudos. You may see them in the Crystal Palace with their under-lip distended by a bit of wood. The nearest to us were friendly ones, and they would come down to São Paulo on rare occasions. They walk in Indian file, and when they passed our house, or any other friendly house, they threw their arms out towards the house—as if the whole file were pulled by a string—till they had gone by it; and that is their mode of friendly salute. When the railway was opened, they came down out of curiosity to see it. They looked upon the engine as a sort of malignant beetle, but at last they got less frightened, and all clambered upon it; but when it was time to start, and the driver gave the preliminary whistle, they sprang off like mad, and ran for their lives, nor could they be persuaded to mount again.

Another drawback was the reptiles and vermin. There is a large mosquito that fastens its prongs into your hand. I have seen a man let it suck, and then cut half its tail off, and it has gone on sucking and the blood running through—the mosquito being not in the least aware of its loss. Then there is a little grey, almost invisible, mosquito that makes no noise. In Trieste they call them papataci (papa-hold-your-tongue). There is the jigger, that gets into your flesh, generally under your toe-nail or under the sole of your foot, and the first time you are aware that there is anything the matter is by your limping, and you then discover that there is a something about the size of a pea in your foot. You send for a negress, who picks at your foot for a few minutes with a common pin—they won't use a needle or any other instrument, because if they did the bag would break, and the eggs would get into your blood—and presently, with a little hurting, she triumphantly holds it up at the end of the pin, puts on a soothing ointment, and you are all right at once. A man thought he should like to take a jigger home to show an English doctor, but it was six weeks from home, and his foot was cut off before he got there.

Another nuisance is the carapato. It is everywhere, but chiefly inhabits the coffee plantations. There are three sorts, which only vary in size and colour. It is a cross between a tick and a small crab; the biggest would be the size of a little finger-nail. If you ride through a coffee plantation you come out covered with them. I have more than once taken off my riding habit and found my jacket nailed to the skin from the outside; to pull them is to tear your flesh and produce a festering wound. You have to get into a hot bath, in which you put one or two bottles of cachaça, the spirit of the country, and that clears off most of them; and if any obstinate ones remain, you have to light a cigarette, and apply the hot end to their tails till they wriggle their own head and shoulders out from under your skin. Cockroaches you don't count, but you must always look in your sleeves, and dress, and boots, for large horned beetles or spiders or other horrors.

Poor W. H. Bates (the naturalist of the Royal Geographical Society), who was a great friend of ours, was laughed at because he spoke of spiders as big as a toy-terrier; but it is perfectly true—there are such spiders, though they are not seen in towns, only out in the forest, and they are the size of a good-sized crab. The body is hairy, and when they are angry they kick up and throw their hairs on you, which are poisonous. I was going to hit one, and a native drew me back and made me run away, for, he said, "it can spring at you, and it is instantaneous death." Richard and I did not go so far as to believe this, unless your blood is in a very bad state, but we did believe in its making people ill for several days. A priest was once going to say Mass, and he took his vestment down from the wall where it was hung up, and put it on, when he suddenly felt something hard in the centre of his back. He called to the servers and asked them to remove his vestment gently, without touching his back, telling them there was something inside. They did so, and it was one of these big spiders; when it was removed he fainted.

The people eat a large black ant, an inch and a half long. They bite off the fat body, which has to them a pleasant acid, and throw the head and legs away. Another use they make of them is to dress them up like dolls and sell them. The copim, or white ants, build nests like milestones. The people here believe in a sort of house-that-Jack-built as regards animal feeding. They believe that toads eat ants, that snakes eat toads, that owls eat snakes, also the geese, and that is why they are cheap.

Snakes are everywhere—in your garden, in your basement, in your rafters; and there is every description of them, from the boa-constrictor in the wilder parts, to the smallest. It is a common thing to hear the rattlesnake in the grass, and to scamper quickly. Those who kill them cut out the rattle and give it you for good luck. I have one now. At night, when you walk out you go with a lantern at the end of a stick, for the snake called jararaquassú lies curled up at night on the road, looking exactly like a heap of dust, and you would certainly put your foot on it; it bites your ankle, and they say that you live about ten minutes.

These things, which sound so wonderful in England, become so common to us who live and travel in Brazil, out of towns and off beaten tracks, that we get quite accustomed to them, as everyday parts of our lives, as you do to showers in April and dying flies in September; so that I should not know now that they had ever happened if I had not written them down at the time. No one who means to write, should ever trust to memory, because scene after scene fades like a dissolving view and is never caught again, whilst others rise to replace them.

The storms were another thing to be somewhat dreaded. For our three summer months, which are December, January, and February (whilst the Thames is frozen over in London), we, maybe, have 115° in the shade, and you see a semicircle of clouds beating up. As our house was on a kind of promontory running out, not to sea, but to grassy plain, we used to have to make "all taut" as if we were on board a ship, because when it did come it was like a cyclone, lasting two or three hours, and then clearing off, leaving everything bright and beautiful, the earth and air barely refreshed; but while it lasted the thunder and lightning were close to you. I have frequently thought that if there was one more clap my head would split—it deafened one. The windows were generally broken, there were balls of fire flying through the air—blue, red, yellow; and on one occasion, on a pitch-black night, perceiving a light from an opposite angle in my husband's room, I thought the house was on fire. The door was locked for the night. I ran down the corridor, unlocked the door, and, going in, found that the lightning had broken a window and had set on fire one of my husband's large rolling atlases on canvas, which hung from the walls. I ran back and called him, and it made him very uncomfortable. He thought that one of these lightning balls of fire must have done it, but there was no aerolite or anything to show. There was no fireplace in the room, not even a box of matches.

At nine p.m. on the 20th of October, a meteor fell with a loud sound, and lit up the City of São Paulo. Martinico Prado and some others were standing near it, and he fell insensible. It fell on the hill near São Bemte; blue flame was seen in our house at the same moment. It was intensely cold, but bright, beautiful weather.

We bought horses—one that had something of the mustang in it, called Hawa, which always carried me, and Penha, a smaller one from Campos for Richard. When we drove, it was in an American buckboard, seat for two, with huge wheels, and a little place to hold a box, with a pair of wild mules that used to pull one's arm off. When Richard did not ride with me, Chico used to take the second horse.

Chico and I never had but one quarrel, and I will give it as an illustration. When I first arrived, Richard used always to laugh at me, because I was so miserable at the way the cruel people treat the blacks—just in the same way that I, and so many others, feel about the treatment of animals—and he kept saying, "Oh, wait a bit, till you have lived with negroes a little; you philanthropic people always have to give in." Well, about six weeks after I got Chico, I heard a tremendous noise, and shrieks of agony proceeding from the kitchen, and rushing in the direction I found Chico roasting my favourite cat at the fire. I made one spring at his wool, and brought him to the ground. Richard, who had also rushed out at the noise, saw me, and clapped his hands, saying, "Brava! brava! I knew it would happen, but I did not think it would be quite so soon." I could only blubber out, "Oh, Jemmy, the little beast has roasted my cat." He then punished him himself, and Chico was a good boy evermore. In begging for forgiveness, he told us that their fathers and mothers always instructed them, that when Christ was thirsty, if He asked a little dog for water, the dog would go and fetch it for Him, but if He asked a cat for water, that it gave Him something in a cup, which I cannot mention in polite society; and that all the little negroes were taught to be cruel to cats, and that he had done atrocious things to cats, but he would never do so any more.

A very amusing thing was that this little monkey used to imitate his master in everything. If Richard bought a suit of clothes, he used immediately to take it to the tailor and get it exactly copied in small, and his evening suit especially. To go to a ball he was the exact copy of his master—white shirt, white tie, little dress suit, little gibus, and all. We used to make him come and show himself to us when he was dressed, to amuse us. Then, unlike his master, he started a toilette-table with mirror, perfumes, and scents, and his pillow was all edged with deep lace. Each of the best families had one of these intelligent negroes; they used to give supper-parties, and then stand up and make speeches, just like us. Mr. Aubertin's used to talk about the railway shares, and the value of cotton, and the coffee produce; another, belonging to a reverend gentleman, used to stand up and speak of the "benighted state of the souls of the black man and the brother;" but our Chico used to declaim on "the Negro's place in Nature," as he had heard Richard do in his lectures, and talk of the progress that they had made from the original ape (Darwinism), and how they might eventually hope to rise into a white man.

Portuguese studies got on very well, and the more I knew of it, the more I enjoyed myself; but it made me quite forget the Spanish I had learnt during my stay at Teneriffe, and whilst Richard occupied Fernando Po. Richard had always known Portuguese from his Goanese Padre in India. You cannot speak Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian at the same time; they are so alike, and yet so different. Portuguese is the most Latin, and the most difficult of the lot, and has much more literature to reward you with than Spanish; but Spanish is the grandest and the most beautiful, albeit with less literature. Still it once happened to me to be in company with a priest, an Italian, and a Spaniard, and we agreed to talk for an hour in each of the four languages. The priest took Latin, the Italian and the Spaniard each their own, and I Portuguese, and we could understand and answer each other, but we could not speak the other three languages. Italians come out to Brazil and can only speak Italian, not a word of Portuguese; they then come to a crisis, when they can speak neither; they then convalesce in Portuguese, speak it perfectly and remain with it—they forget their Italian. I speak of colonists.

We had two very charming picnic-places. One was the Tropic of Capricorn, just five miles from São Paulo; your insurances suffer all the difference, whether you are on this side or that. A boy who was about to pass his examination for the army, who supported a poor widow mother, and consequently was extremely anxious about passing, and with no interest, was destined to be plucked; so the arrogant and ignorant examiner asked the timid, humble boy, "How far is it from the city of São Paulo to the tropical line of Capricorn." The boy, radiant answered, "Between four and five miles, sir." "Go down, sir, you are plucked; it is twenty miles." It was the last question. The boy grew red and white, and turned despairingly to go; suddenly he remembered his mother, turned round, and said nervously, "Please, sir, of course you ought to know better than me, but I lived there five years, sir, and I had to walk it twice a week, to go home from school to mother's house on the Line, from Saturday to Monday." Chorus of laughter at the examiner, and the poor boy passed. (I have already quoted this in my "A.E.I.") Another charming place to picnic, in the mountains, was Nossa Senhora do O.

We occasionally had big dinners, when all the English of Santos and São Paulo assembled to do honour to some railway swell going home. We had for a time some fortnightly balls, at a good-sized hall at the corner of the Plaza, called the Concordia, and we had one curious case of sporadic yellow fever from there. Mrs. Ralston, the young wife of a very nice man (indeed a charming couple), came out of the ball-room with me at five o'clock one morning. I had only to run across fifty yards to my house; they had about twenty minutes to walk home, and she was well wrapped up with shawls. She suddenly drooped her head on her husband's shoulder, saying she felt very queer, and he had to support her home. Almost directly he had laid her on her own bed, she turned round and said, "Oh, is this death?" and died. Next morning, my maid ran in and without any preface said, "Mrs. Ralston's dead." "Oh, nonsense," I said; "I saw her seven hours ago;" and, thinking perhaps it was possible she might be ill, and require some woman-neighbour, I hastily threw on my things, and ran down to her house. The street door opened on to the principal sitting-room, and was unlocked, and to my horror the house was deserted and still, and something was lying covered up on the sofa. I drew back the sheet, and there was my young friend, dead. I knelt down and said a few prayers, and then, feeling rather faint, I stooped to kiss her forehead before covering her up again. The husband and child and servants had all been removed to another house; as I stooped to kiss her a dreadful effluvia knocked me back again, and I perceived that she was covered with large black spots. I fled and ran home again, and told Richard. He looked very grave, and rang the bell, and ordered the horses to the door. He fetched me a large glass of brandy, and made me drink it, with some bread. He said, "It does not matter; I have got to have a long ride to-day on business, and you have got to go with me." We rode about ten miles at a great pace, till I was in a good perspiration. When I got back he gave me a teaspoonful of Warburg drops. He kept me employed all day, and at night he took me to the little theatre, and then he told me that he had done that to save my life, without which I probably should have caught it, if I had not perspired, and partly from sympathy.

One thing I always regret in writing, is that I could recite so many amusing and interesting things that would immensely please a very large portion of English people; but England is so very queer, and I am become convinced it is not the same England that I used to know, that I do not like to venture them. They are not in the least risky, only amusing and adventurous, but being very honest and straightforward, would be sure to tread upon somebody's corns; blame or sneers would be sure to crop up from some quarter or another, and make me regret it. Richard was very fond of quoting the following lines to me over our writing:—

"They eat and drink and scheme and plod;
They go to church on Sunday,
And many are afraid of God,
And more of Mrs. Grundy."

We had one very curious character at São Paulo. It was the Marchesa de Santos. She was a beauty and a favourite in the time of the present Emperor's father, and led a very brilliant and stormy life. She got finally banished by his Empress (they say) to Santos, with a pension for life, and she lived in a small house a few doors from me. I used to see a great deal of her. She was quite grande dame, most sympathetic, most entertaining, full of stories of Rio and the Court, and the Imperial people, and the doings of that time. She had been obliged to adopt up-country habits, and the last time I saw her, she received me en intime in her own kitchen, where she sat on the floor, smoking, not a cigarette, but a pipe. She had beautiful black eyes, full of sympathy, and intelligence, and knowledge. She was a great bit of interest to me in that out-of-the-way place.

The Seminary was the most palatial building in that part, and was just beyond the town. It was inhabited by Capuchins, French and Italians from Savoy and Piédmont. One of the monks was a tall, magnificent, and very powerful man, an ex-cavalry officer, Count Somebody, whose name I forget, then Fray G——.

Before he arrived, there was a bully in the town, rather of a free-thinking class, so he used to go and swagger up and down before the Seminary and call out, "Come out, you miserable petticoated monks! come out and have a free fight! For God or the devil!" When Fray G—— arrived, he heard of this, and it so happened he had had an English friend, when he was with his regiment, who had taught him the use of his fists. He found that his brother monks were dreadfully distressed at this unseemly challenge, so he said, "The next time he comes, don't open the gate, but let the porter call me." So the next time the bully appeared, it was so arranged that the gate was opened by Fray G—— (the usual crowd had collected in the road to see the fun), who looked at him laughingly and said, "Surely, brother, we will fight you for God or the devil, if you please. Let us get well into the open, and the public will see fair play." So saying, the friar tucked up his sleeves and gown, and told his adversary to "come on," which he did, and he was immediately knocked into a cocked hat. "Come, get up," said the friar. "No lying there and whimpering; the devil won't win that way." The man stood three rounds, at the end of which he whimpered and holloaed for mercy, and amidst the jeers and bravos of a large crowd, the "village cock" retired, a mass of jelly and pulp, to his own dunghill, and was never seen more within half a mile of the Seminary. Richard rejoiced in it, and used to say, "What is that bull-priest doing in that galère?" Richard used to stay a great deal with them, for they were the best-educated men in the province, and knew everything. He said he could always learn something from them.

During the time of the Paraguayan War provisions were very scarce. If muleteers came down to the town, they and their mules were seized for the war. They tried sending their women down with the mules, but then the mules and provisions were seized; the consequence was that the towns were more or less in a state of famine. Chico and I used to sally forth, with paniers and ropes to our saddles, and forage about, and I found that by riding about ten miles out, I came to large flocks of geese and other poultry, and I also ascertained that as the geese were supposed to feed upon snakes, nobody ate them; they were chiefly kept for ornament, and so were cheap. So the first day I came back with both our horses laden with geese, and as I passed through the town the squawking was immense; and most of the Grundy, respectable English tried to avoid me, which made me take an especial pleasure in riding up to them and inquiring after their wives and families, and entering into a conversation, which I, perhaps, should not have otherwise done. When I got up to our house, Richard, hearing the noise, came out on to the balcony, and seeing what was the matter, he threw back his head and laughed, and shook his fist, and he said, "Oh, you delightful blackguard, how like you!" I turned the geese into our poultry-yard and fed them well, and from that, I issued forth to all the country round about, twice a week, and brought in various stocks of other provisions.

Mr. Aubertin, who was the Head of the railway, and whose chacara was about a quarter of an hour from us, had opportunities of getting up drinks and having a very tidy cellar, so I used to send down a neighbourly note—"Dear Mr. Aubertin, bring up the drink—I have got the food; dinner seven o'clock." Thus we contrived between us, to feed very well during the whole of the war, while provisions were scarce. Once we managed to give a ball; it was very amusing, and it was kept up till sunrise. We had a delightful American there, who was very witty, and used to keep us all alive, though in after years, for some unknown reason, he blew his brains out. I still recall some of his bon mots. I once asked him whether he did not think that a gentleman of our acquaintance was very conceited this morning. "Conceited, ma'am?" he said. "Why, God Almighty's waistcoat would not fit him." On another occasion, there was a rather pronounced flirtation going on, and I asked him if he did not think it would be a case. "A case, ma'am? Why, she nestles up to him like a chicken to a hot brick." He was constantly saying these things that one never forgot.

I think I may say in our own favour, that in this, as well as in all our subsequent Consulates, we never allowed any scandal to be told to us, or uncharitable talk, and we always forbid discussions on religion and politics, which served us in good stead in all our career. Indeed, in this particular place, there was a little bit of scandal, and we had seventeen calls on one Monday morning, but every one went away without daring to deliver themselves of their intended tale. "What is the meaning of this?" said Richard to me. I said, "It means that there is some scandal afloat, and nobody dares tell it to us." But a few days afterwards we saw it in the papers. One day a gentleman called upon us, and a few minutes later a lady came, of whom he was rather fond. After a while the lady got up and went down the street, and about five minutes after the jealous husband arrived on the scene, and saw the gentleman sitting there—his supposed rival. Without saying "How do you do?" he turned on me and said, "Have you seen my wife?" "Yes," I said; "I saw her go down the street a few minutes ago." The lover had turned very pale. Richard looked hard at me over the top of his newspaper, and the man had hardly got down the stairs in pursuit of his wife, when my Irish maid poked her face through the door and said. "Well, after that, ye'd swear a hole through a tin p-hot." Now, what on earth would have been the use of making a row and a scandal, and setting on the husband to ill-treat his wife? He did not say, "Has my wife been here?"—he said, "Have you seen her?" Rousseau says, "Mensonge plein d'honnêteté, de fidelité, de generosité, tandis que la verité n'eut été qu'une perfidie;" and without some feeling of this kind—not a lie, but a harmless throwing one's self into the breach to save another's reputation, not one's own, nor from base fear—the milk of human kindness would turn into cream of tartar.

I do not think that a list of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil at the time of its discovery (one hundred discovered by Cabral in 1500) would amuse my readers, or fit in with my subject, but they were mostly destroyed or driven inwards in three hundred and sixty-seven years.

There is an intervening race called the Caboclas; they are the progeny of the Indians and Portuguese settlers. They are a very handsome race, much addicted to superstition and fortune-telling, and the only thing I can remember was learning from them to tell fortunes by the cards, which I afterwards perfected amongst the Mogháribehs in Syria; but it is a practice which, though it interested my husband enormously, and I constantly told them for him, I have long since given up as wicked. For those who tell them ill, it is foolery; for those who tell them well, it is better let alone.

I am not going to give a description of Brazil, because by so doing I should take away from the subject of the book, which is solely Richard Burton, and if I mention incidents, or myself, it is only because I or they are woven up with his life, and cannot well be separated from it, each one showing how he behaved, or what he did or thought on any particular occasion.