s
attracting the passing clouds, secure an everlasting variety to the eye.

We found, that owing to our neglect in not sending beforehand to
announce our visit, neither the master of the house nor his housekeeper
were at home: however, Mr. N. being an old friend, went into the poultry
yard, and ordered thence an excellent supper; and while it was
preparing, we went to look at the pottery, which is only for the
coarsest red ware. The wheel used here is the clumsiest and rudest I
ever saw, and the potter is obliged to sit sideways by it. The clay,
both for the pottery and the bricks, is dug on the spot; it is coarse
and red: it is tempered by the trampling of mules; but all that we use
spades and shovels for is done by the bare hands of the negroes: the
furnaces for baking the bricks and jars are partly scooped out of the
hill, and faced with brick. Leaving the pottery, we climbed the hill
that marks the first approach to N.S. da Luz; and on the way up its
steep and rugged side, our dogs disturbed a flock of sheep, as
picturesque and as ragged as Paul Potter himself could have desired:
they had been lying round the root of a huge old acacia, decorated with
innumerable parasite plants, some of which cling like ivy to the trunk,
and others climbing to the topmost boughs, fall thence in grey silky
garlands, or, like the tillandsia, adorn them with hundreds of pink and
white flowers; among these, many an ant and bee had fixed his nest, and
every thing was teeming with life and beauty.

The moon was up long before we returned from our ramble, and long before
our host arrived. Had the Neapolitan ambassador, who told George the
Third that the moon of his country was worth the sun of England, ever
been in Brazil, I could almost forgive the hyperbole. The clear mild
light playing on such scenery, and the cool refreshing breeze of
evening, after a day of all but intolerable heat, render the night
indeed the season of pleasure in this climate: nor were the rude songs
of the negroes, as they loaded the boats to be ready to sail down the
harbour with the morning's land-breeze, unpleasing.

As we were looking over the bay, a larger boat appeared: it neared the
shore; and our host, Mr. Lewis P., who superintends the fazenda, landed,
and kindly received our apology for coming without previous notice. The
visit had long been talked of; but now our time at Rio was likely to be
so short, that had we not come to-day, we might not have come