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The cidade, or the town, does not exhibit to us in so clear a light as the fazenda and the rancho, Brazilian society in the past—in that struggle between civilization and barbarism, of which the interior of the empire is the principal theatre. In the town contrasts multiply; European activity, almost everywhere visible, is seen sometimes overcome by and sometimes overcoming local influences. The people among whom we are about to conduct the reader are not entirely unknown to him. In the cidade of Brazil new wants have given rise to manners not very different from those of the Old World. Political passions also prevail here, and sometimes manifest themselves in pronunciamientos. To the rustic distractions of the plantation succeed business, patriotic festivities, processions of irmandades or brotherhoods; and to the unhealthy miasmas of the clearing the terrible visitations of yellow fever. It is especially in the three large metropolitan cities of the coast, Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio Janeiro, which form as it were the three great ocean marts, that may be studied the secrets of that Portuguese civilization forcibly planted in a new country, and which goes on modifying itself more and more before the irresistible current of progress.

In order to form an idea of the contrast that exists in the equatorial regions between the interior of towns and the picturesque aspect they present to the traveller at a distance, one must visit Pernambuco. On landing near the city, I was charmed by the splendid landscape. Scarcely had the watch called out that land was visible, when we saw in the horizon a dark, undefined line. Gradually the coast became distinct; to the dark masses succeeded bluish tints, and soon charming villas, ensconced in clusters of palm-trees along the verdant terraces bordering on the sea, revealed to us the approaches to a large city. Negroes of athletic form, wearing nothing but pantaloons, came out to get the passengers in small boats filled with bananas and pine-apples for those that remain on board. The sea is often rough in these regions, and one who wishes to go ashore is not at all reassured at witnessing the careless way in which the boatmen toss the passengers into their light craft, and face the waves, which at every moment threaten to throw them upon the rocks that line the entrance to the harbor. At first the passenger is lowered in a chair by the aid of ropes and pulleys, to the level of the boats; there he remains for several moments suspended over the water, till a wave tosses a boat to his side. A stout negro instantly seizes him in his brawny arms, deposits him in the boat, and rows swiftly away toward the granitie wall, against which the waves are breaking. He sports with the billows with wonderful skill, suddenly glides into an opening, formed as it were by a miracle in the gigantic causeway that protects the city, and you enter the bay. After re- signing yourself to the chair, the negroes, the skiff, the sea, and the rocks, at the end of half an hour you arrive safe and sound at the inevitable custom-house.

Scarcely are you landed when you hasten into the city with all the feverish eagerness of a man, who wishes to