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It would have taken much less time to cut the tree; but it would have been necessary to use the axe, and in making the path the large trees are left. They content themselves with cutting the bushes, and this requires only the faca, or large knife which the negroes always wear in their belt. If a man has flour to get, he mounts his mule, takes a small sack, and makes half a dozen journeys. He could have brought it all upon the mule's back in a single trip, but in that case he would have been obliged to walk.'

The people of some of the Brazilian provinces differ greatly, it is perceived, from those who have adopted the motto: 'Time is money.' It is difficult for a European, accustomed to human activity, to witness such inertness without experiencing an unpleasant sense of oppression. There are many things essential to civilized life which are here entirely unknown.

Being once on my way to a fazenda a few leagues from Rio Janeiro, on the road to Minas, the most travelled highway of Brazil, and fearing the coming on of a storm, I several times inquired of my guide as to the road over which we were to continue our journey.

'Right along on the hill, senhor,' he invariably replied, pointing to the ridge before us.

Desirous of more precise information, I addressed myself to the people we met, on the way.

'How many leagues from here is it to Senhor X———'s fazenda?' I inquired of a mulatto on his way to the fields,

'Dous legoas, senhor.' (Two leagues, sir.)

At the expiration of half an hour, I repeated the same question to a tropeiro.

'Tres legoas, senhor.' (Three leagues, sir.)

This reply was so unexpected that I repeated the question to the keeper of a venda, which we reached a few minutes later, thinking I should now certainly be set right.

'Tres legoas e meia, senhor,' (three leagues and a half, sir,) answered the inn-keeper.

Perceiving that I was going farther away from my destination instead of approaching it, I feared my guide was mistaken, and begged my interlocutor to tell me which was the right road. Receiving a formal assurance that I was going in the proper direction, I continued my journey, vainly trying to explain to myself the meaning of these contradictions. I saw only one way to solve the difficulty, and that was to inquire perseveringly of every body I met. The new answers to my inquiries were still more singular than the first.

'Cuatro legoas, senhor,' (four leagues, sir,) said a peddler.

'Não sei, senhor,' (I don't know, sir,) was the reply I received from nearly all the blacks.

'Dous cuartos e meia,' (two quarters and a half.) answered a tropeiro.

'You mean a league?' said I.

'Si, senhor.' (Yes, sir.)

'Why, then, do you say two quarters and a half?'

'He costume.' (It is the custom.)

Seeing a mulatto woman standing in the door of her cabin, I was curious to get her opinion also.

'Tres legous, senor.'

'Oh! it isn't three leagues,' objected her husband, coming out of the cabin.

'São pequenas, mas sāo tres,' (the three leagues are short ones, if you like, but there are three nevertheless,) answered the woman in a tone of confidence that admitted of no reply.

This answer at last gave me a key to the enigma, namely, the total ignorance in the country of the real value of the league, every one estimating it according to his own ideas.

A thing worthy of remark is, that among a people where, by the terms of the constitution, titles of nobility are not hereditary, there is not a beggar who is not of noble descent. Frequently a single