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plicity. Many fazendas are famous for the heartiness of their reception, Among them may be mentioned that of the Baron d'Uba, known throughout Europe ever since the sojourn made there by the French traveller, Auguste St. Hilaire, half a century ago, and which has never ceased to be the privileged halting-place of the savans and artists who visit the provinces of Minas or Rio Janeiro.

As there is no good thing in this world which does not, by its very excess, engender an abuse, the hospitality of the fazenda has given birth to the mascate. The mascate is nothing else than a peddler, and he generally comes to Brazil from France, But he has nothing in common with those poor wretches who are still encountered on the inaccessible summits of the Alps and Pyrenees, with a pack upon their shoulders, and selling red handkerchiefs to the peasant-girls in exchange for a few pounds of rags. He understands things better; he gives himself less trouble, and takes banknotes in exchange for his wares. He leaves Havre with an hundred pieces of gold in his pocket, disembarks with a compatriot, who gives him his lesson, buys a mule for himself and another for his pack, hires a guide to whom he pays a milreis (fifty cents) per day, and traverses the fazendas, offering jewelry, calicoes, perfumery, etc., according to his specialty. This employment, which a few years ago insured a rapid fortune, has fallen off in consequence of the monstrous abuses which were practised. I have known mascates to realize one hundred contas de reis (fifty thousand dollars) in a single campaign, and return to France the same year with an income of twelve thousand francs, (upwards of two thousand dollars.) It was the golden age of peddlers; but abuses were carried too far, and the Brazilians have at length opened their eyes.

One of these adept peddlers one day made me the following estimate: a ring mounted with brilliants costs one hundred francs at the manufactory ; the exporter who sends it places it at two hundred; the expense of commission, box and transport, brings it up to one hundred milreis, (two hundred and fifty francs, or fifty dollars;) the duty, estimated at eighty per cent, makes its cost nearly two hundred milreis; the store from which we obtain the ring makes one hundred per cent, and it therefore costs us four hundred milreis. Certainly we, who have all the trouble, cannot make less than an hundred per cent, and we are obliged to sell the jewel to the senhoras of the interior for eight hundred milreis, As they generally buy on credit, their husbands give us a bill of exchange for a conto of reis, (five hundred dollars,) in order that we may not lose the interest.

The Brazilians long since knew that they were paying many times the true value of their wives' jewelry, and they have at last stopped patronizing the mascates. The Jews of Alsace and the Rhine provinces are those who most excel in this species of trade. The Parisian prefers to sell perfumery and other small merchandise. The Italians bring small plaster saints to ornament the chapels, or hand-organs. Sometimes the mascate becomes bankrupt by having his pack-mule carried away by the current in crossing a river, or by losing it among the precipices on the road. Some of them make journeys of eight hundred leagues, or to the extreme limits of civilized settlements. Few of these escape the fatigues of the route, the arrows of the Botocudos, the teeth of the tiger, or the tortures of hunger. I have frequently, during my travels, met them without mules, shoes, or clothing, and consoling themselves in their poverty by contemplating a box of small grains of quartz, which the natives of pretended diamond-bearing districts had given them as diamonds, in exchange for their merchandise, Those who return to life and civilization, having no longer any