Rio de Janeiro (the town St. Sebastian) is the southernmost of the Portuguese, the worst provided of necessaries, but commodious for a settlement, because nigh the mine, and convenient to supervise the slaves, who, as I have been told, do usually allow their master a dollar per diem, and have the overplus of their work (if any) to themselves.
The gold from hence is esteemed the best, (for being of a copperish colour,) and they have a mint to run it into coin, both here and at Bahia; the moidores of either having the initial letters of each place upon them.
Pernambuco (though mention’d last) is the second in dignity, a large and populous Town, and has its rise from the ruins of Olinda, (or the handsome,) a city of a far pleasanter situation, six miles up the river, but not so commodious for traffic and commerce. Just above the town the river divides itself into two branches, not running directly into the sea, but to the southward; and in the nook of the island made by that division, stands the Governor’s house, a square plain building of Prince Maurice’s, with two towers, on which are only this date inscribed, Anno . The avenues to it are every way pleasant, thro’ vistas of tall coconut trees.
Over each branch of the river is a bridge; that leading to the country is all of timber, but the other to the town (of twenty-six or twenty-eight arches) is half of stone, made by the Dutch, who in their time had little shops and gaming houses on each side for recreation.
The pavements also of the town are in some places of broad tiles, the remaining fragments of their conquest. The town has the outer branch of the river behind it, and the harbour before it, jetting into which latter are close keys for the weighing and receiving of customage on merchandise, and for the meeting and conferring of merchants and traders. The houses are strong built, but homely, latticed like those of Lisbon, for the admission of air, without closets, and what is worse, hearths; which makes their cookery consist all in frying and stewing upon stoves; and that they do till the flesh become tender enough to shake it to pieces, and one knife is then thought sufficient to serve a table of half a score.
The greatest inconvenience of Pernambuco is, that there is not one public-house in it; so that strangers are obliged to hire any ordinary one they can get, at a guinea a month: and others who come to transact affairs of importance, must come recommended, if it were only for the sake of privacy.
The market is stocked well enough, beef being at five farthings per l. a sheep or goat at nine shillings, a turkey four shillings, and fowls two shillings, the largest I ever saw, and may be procured much cheaper, by hiring a man to fetch them out of the country. The dearest in its kind is water, which being fetch’d in vessels from Olinda, will not be put on board in the road under two crusados a pipe.
The Portuguese here are darker than those of Europe, not only from a warmer climate, but their many intermarriages with the Negroes, who are numerous there, and some of them of good credit and circumstances. The women (not unlike the mulatto generation everywhere else) are fond of strangers; not only the courtesans, whose interest may be supposed to wind up their affections, but also the married women who think themselves obliged, when you favour them with the secrecy of an appointment; but the unhappiness of pursuing amours, is, that the generality of both sexes are touched with veneral taints, without so much as one surgeon among them, or anybody skilled in physic, to cure or palliate the progressive mischief: the only person pretending that way, is an Irish father, whose knowledge is all comprehended in the virtues of two or three simples, and those, with the salubrity of the air and temperance, is what they depend on, for subduing the worst of malignity; and it may not be unworthy notice, that though few are exempted from the misfortune of a running, eruptions, or the like, yet I could hear of none precipitated into those deplorable circumstances we see common in unskillful mercurial processes.
There are three monasteries, and about six churches, none of them rich or magnificent, unless one dedicated to St. Antonio, the patron of their kingdom, which shines all over with exquisite pieces of paint and gold.
The export of Brazil (besides gold) is chiefly sugars and tobacco; the latter are sent off in rolls of a quintal weight, kept continually moistened with molasses, which, with the soil it springs from, imparts a strong and peculiar scent, more sensible in the snuff made from it, which though under prohibition of importing to Lisbon, sells here at 2 s. per l. as the tobacco does at about 6 millraies a roll. The finest of their sugars sells at 8 s. per roove, and a small ill-tasted rum drawn from the dregs and molasses, at two testoons a gallon.
Besides these, they send off great quantities of Brazil wood, and whale oil, some gums and parrots, the latter are different from the African in colour and bigness, for as they are blue and larger, these are green and smaller; and the females of them ever retain the wild note, and cannot be brought to talk.
In lieu of this produce, the Portuguese, once every year by their fleet from Lisbon, import all manner of European commodities; and whoever is unable or negligent of
