ecarious. Here it is not uncommon to give a slave his freedom, when he
is too old or too infirm to work; that is, to turn him out of doors to
beg or starve. A few days ago, as a party of gentlemen were returning
from a _pic nic_, they found a poor negro woman lying in a dying state,
by the side of the road. The English gentlemen applied to their
Portuguese companions to speak to her, and comfort her, as thinking she
would understand them better; but they said, "Oh, 'tis only a black: let
us ride on," and so they did without further notice. The poor creature,
who was a dismissed slave, was carried to the English hospital, where
she died in two days. Her diseases were age and hunger.[71] The slaves I
saw here working in the distillery, appear thin, and I should say
over-worked; but, I am told, that it is only in the distilling months
that they appear so, and that at other seasons they are as fat and
cheerful as those in the city, which is saying a great deal. They have a
little church and burying-ground here, and as they see their little lot
the lot of all, are more contented than I thought a slave could be.

[Note 70: _Itapa_ is the Indian name: the Portuguese termination,
_Rica_, indicates the fertility of the island. On this island Francesco
Pereira Coutinho, the first donatory, was killed by the savages. He had
founded his city near the watering place called Villa Velha, by what is
now the fort of Gamboa, and not far from the habitation of the
adventurer Caramuru. The first Christian settlement formed here was in
1561, when the Jesuits founded an Aldea, and collected and humanised
some of the natives.]

[Note 71: "The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves, in
an island of the Tyber, there to starve, seems to have been pretty
common in Rome; and whoever recovered, after being so exposed, had his
liberty given him, by an edict of the Emperor Claudius; where it was
likewise forbid to _kill any slave, merely for old age or
sickness_."--"We may imagine what others would practise, when it was the
professed maxim of the elder Cato, to sell his superannuated slaves for
any price, rather than maintain a useless burden."--_Discourses of the
Populousness of Ancient Nations_.]

Sugar is the principal product of Itaparica; but the greater part of the
poultry, vegetables, and fruit, consumed in Bahia, are also from the
island, and lime is made here in considerable quantities from the
madrepores and corals found on the b