the horses
and mules you require."

This was on the day of my arrival in Goyaz. Twelve days after that date
he appeared with a famished, skeleton-like horse--only one--for which he
made me pay nearly double what I had myself paid for other excellent
animals.

I took care after that experience to beware of the "revered and honest
men of Goyaz." Those who behaved honestly were generally those who were
described as thieves. Everything is reversed in Brazil, and I should have
known better.

Let us have a look around the city. Mules and horses were grazing in the
principal square on a severe slope; the streets were paved in a fashion
calculated to dislocate your feet or possibly break them if you happened
to be walking out after dark. There was not the slightest semblance of
drainage in any part of the town. The people flung out into the streets
all that could be flung out, and also a good deal that should not be
flung. The dirt was excessive all over the place when the rain did not
come to the rescue and wash it all off.

The boast of the town was its brilliant illumination--one hundred
petroleum lights all told, lighted up until ten p.m. when there was no
moon. When there was, or should have been, a moon, as on stormy nights,
the municipality economized on the paraffin and the lamps were not
lighted. I do not know anything more torturing than returning home every
night after my dinner at the palace, walking on the slippery, worn slabs
of stone of the pavements, at all angles--some were even vertical--in the
middle of the road. You stumbled, slipped, twisted your feet, jamming
them in the wide interstices between the slabs. I never could understand
why the municipality troubled to have lights at all. They gave no light
when they were lighted--not enough to see by them--and they were
absolutely of no use to the natives themselves. By eight o'clock p.m. all
the people were asleep and barricaded within their homes.

Yet--can you believe it?--in this mediaeval city you would be talked about
considerably and would give much offence if you went out of your house in
clothes such as you would wear in England in the country. On Sundays and
during all Easter week--when I was there--all the men went out in their
frock-coats, top hats of grotesquely antiquated shapes, extra high
starched collars, and, above all, patent leather shoes--with the sun
scorching overhead. The women were amusing enough in their finery--which
had been pe