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slaves their Sundays to work on their little fields, and devote the product to their wardrobe. But the negro left to himself, buys nothing but cachaça, and always goes in rags. I therefore under take to buy their crops, and pay for them in such articles as they need. That explains why I am every Sunday a merchant. I have thus the double advantage of assuring myself of their morality, and of looking after their personal neatness. Besides, I let them have every thing at cost, as you may convince yourself by examining the accounts. A feitor keeps the register while I distribute the required articles myself. The goods most in demand are pipes and red foulards. Notwithstanding all the attention of myself and my secretary, there seldom passes a Sunday without my missing some articles, so much does theft seem to be the element of those rogues.'

At length the breakfast hour arrived, It was difficult to find places around the long table arranged in the immense hall, for all the numerous guests who had come to congratulate the senhor. The service, which presented at once the most luxurious comfort and the greatest simplicity, permitted me to study at leisure the culinary resources of the country, and the taste of the inhabitants.

Like all his congeners of the torrid zone, the South-American is temperate in eating. Rice boiled in water, beans cooked with lard and manioc flour compose his food the year round. On holidays he kills a hog, which is stuffed and served up whole. His most habitual food, and that of which he is most fond, consists of a sort of cake which be extemporizes on his plate by covering his beans with a thick layer of manioc flour, and mixing the whole. Bread and wine are alike unknown to him. His knife serves him instead of a fork, and a large glass circulating around quenches the thirst of all the guests as in the days of the heroes of Homer.

Such are the customs still practised in the interior of Brazil; but among the rich planters who have been received at the court of the Emperor, Don Pedro II., or who have travelled in Europe, silver plate is found upon the table, and the best wines of France, Spain, and Portugal are freely circulated. Rice, feijão, and manioc are placed at the foot of the table, as if to satisfy the national custom, while cutlets of fresh pork, quarters of mutton, splendid fish, luscious fowl, excellent bread and cheese, and all the legumes of Europe are served up. Two black cooks, who have served their apprenticeship in the French hotels of the large towns upon the coast, take their turn each week, the better to resist the heat of the furnaces, which becomes insupportable under the tropical sun. A crowd of little negreos, especially remarkable for their untidiness, dance like imps around the furnaces, scouring the warming-pans, stirring the fire, strangling the fowls, puring the legumes, and stopping from time to time to extract a bicho or a carrapato (acarus anericanus) from their naked feet; then again taking up the food without washing either hands or knives, for time presses, and the chief does not wish to be late. I must nevertheless confess that the black cooks appeared to me quite as skilful as the white ones; yet beneath these fiery skins, and in this hot and moist climate, meats and vegetables are much inferior to those of Europe. The rapid development of plants renders them ligneous, and therefore very tough. If eaten before they are sufficiently matured, they are watery and insipid. It is the same with animals, which, nourished by herbage that is juiceless, so to speak, furnish a meat fat and without savor. The only exception is the flesh of the pig and the lamb. The same may also be said of fruit. That which constitutes the delicacy of the peaches, prunes, figs, raisins, etc., of Provence, and the two neighboring Peninsulas, is the slight predominance of an acid savor in a west pulp. A dry