, which
in its arrangements is exactly like a large country seat. To the
spacious residence is attached a chapel, with the offices lying all
around; the whole is enclosed by a high wall.

Far and wide stretched the fields and low eminences, covered with
sugar canes: unfortunately, we could not see the mode of preparing
the sugar, as the canes were not yet ripe.

A planter's fortune in the Brazils is calculated by the number of
his slaves. There were eight hundred of them on the plantation we
were viewing--a large property, since each male slave costs from six
to seven hundred milreis (60 to 70 pounds).

Not far from this fazenda, to the right of the high road, lies
another very considerable one, called Papagais; besides these we saw
several smaller plantations, which lent a little animation to the
uniformity of the scene.

St. Anna (sixteen miles distance) is a small place, consisting of
only a few poor houses, a little church, and an apothecary's; the
last is a necessary appendage to every Brazilian village, even
though it only contains twelve or fifteen huts. We here made a
repast of eggs with a bottle of wine, and gave our mules a feed of
mil, for which a cheating landlord, Herr Gebhart, charged us three
milreis (6s. 6d.)

Today we did not proceed further than Mendoza (twelve miles), a
still more insignificant place than St. Anna. A small shop and a
venda were the only houses at the road-side, though in the
background we perceived a manioc-fazenda, to which we paid a visit.
The proprietor was kind enough first to offer us some strong coffee,
without milk (a customary mark of attention in the Brazils), and
then to conduct us over his plantation.

The manioc plant shoots out stalks from four to six feet in height,
with a number of large leaves at their upper extremities. The
valuable portion of the plant is its bulbous root, which often
weighs two or three pounds, and supplies the place of corn all
through the Brazils. It is washed, peeled, and held against the
rough edge of a millstone, turned by a negro, until it is completely
ground away. The whole mass is then gathered into a basket,
plentifully steeped in water, and is afterwards pressed quite dry by
means of a press. Lastly it is scattered upon large iron plates,
and slowly dried by a gentle fire kept up beneath. It now resembles
a very coarse kind of flour; and is eaten in two ways--wet and dry.
In the first case, it is mixed with hot water un