rhaps the fashion elsewhere fifty or sixty or more years ago.
But they believed they were as well-dressed and quite as up-to-date as
the smartest women of Paris or London. They never let an opportunity pass
of telling you so.

The most striking building in the principal square of Goyaz was the
prison. I visited it in the company of the Chief of Police. The place had
been specially cleaned on the occasion of my visit, and that particular
day it looked quite neat. I was shown very good food which--at least that
day--had been prepared for the prisoners. Nearly all the prisoners were
murderers. "But the biggest criminals of all," said the Chief of Police
to me, "are not inside this prison; they are outside!" The poor devils
inside were mere wretches who had not been able to bribe the judges.

Curiously enough, petty theft was considered a shame in the Province of
Goyaz, and was occasionally severely punished; whereas murderers were
usually set free. I saw a poor negro there who had stolen a handful of
beans and had been sent to five years' penal servitude, while others who
had killed were merely sentenced to a few months' punishment. In any
case, no one in Brazil can be sentenced to more than thirty years'
detention, no matter how terrible the crime he has committed.

The display of police guarding the prison was somewhat excessive. There
were fifty policemen to guard fifty prisoners: policemen standing at each
door, policemen at each corner of the building, while a swarm of them
occupied the front hall. The various common cells were entered by trap
doors in the ceiling, of great height, and by a ladder which was let
down. Thus escape was rendered improbable, the iron bars of the elevated
windows being sounded every morning and night for further safety.

The sanitary arrangements were of the most primitive kind, a mere bucket
in a corner serving the needs of eight or ten men in each chamber.

As there was no lunatic asylum in Goyaz, insane people were sent to
prison and were kept and treated like criminals.

I noticed several interesting cases of insanity: it generally took either
a religious or a criminal form in Brazil. One man, with a ghastly
degenerate face, and his neck encircled by a heavy iron collar, was
chained to the strong bars of a window. His hands and feet were also
chained. The chain at his neck was so short that he could only move a few
inches away from the iron bars. He sat crouched like a vicious dog o