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pots, represented the service-dishes. The negro, like the Indian, knows no other knife and fork than his fingers.

I was desirous of witnessing a slave repast, and I waited, seated in a rancho, till the hour should arrive. I watched the ranks of workmen, harassed by the incessant shouts and long whip of the feitor—and woe to laggards who, let ting their comrades got ahead of them, fell out of line. Notwithstanding the apparent haste, it was easy to see, by the play of their muscles and the expression of their faces, that they did just enough to keep out of the way of the locador (lash) and to await as patiently as possible the hour of breakfast. Armed with a crooked scythe nailed to a long wooden handle, they cut the cane with an automatical movement, the force of which evidently lay in the whip held by the feitor.

The breakfast-hour at last arrived. About nine o'clock, at a sign from the superintendent, work ceased as if by enchantment along the whole line, and all approached the pots. The rations were ready, and two rows of calabashes disposed along the ground. Each took a calabash full of angú and a smaller one of feijão; and seating himself upon a stone set to devouring his fare without speaking a word, with the same indifference and calm resignation he formerly manifested under the whip of the overseer, and which, acquired in infancy, seems to form the chief characteristic of the black slave. In the evening they receive another ration of corn-soup and haricots, and at nightfall they return to their cabins.

I have often since seen the negroes in the fields, and assured myself that for them the programme of one day is the programme of the whole year and of their whole life. When not harvesting they are planting; and the planting done, they hoe incessantly till harvest-time; for weeds grow rapidly in these warm, moist countries. On Sunday, labor is suspended. The Portuguese is too good a Catholic to make his negroes work on the day of rest; but he allows them to employ that day on their own account, and even gives each of them a piece of land where they raise corn which they sell to mule merchants. The income from this harvest is intended to replenish their wardrobe; but the field negro, not over-fashionable in his attire, generally prefers a bottle of cachaça or a pipe of tobacco to a new shirt, He consequently comes off most frequently in rags, greatly to the despair of the senhor.

Sunday, nevertheless, has its attractions for the slave. Having no anxiety on that day as to the hour of rising, he profits by this to dance through a portion of the preceding night. The orchestra is composed of young negroes, who beat with their hands upon a kind of drum placed between their legs, made of the section of a hollow tree-trunk, the ends of which are covered with dog or sheepskin. Most frequently they sing an accompaniment, to increase the noise. Generally but one dancer is seen in the group. He leaps, runs, and gesticulates; and when he finds himself getting exhausted he rushes to some one of his companions whom he selects to succeed him. The choice commonly falls upon a woman. The latter in her turn enters the ring, abandons herself to all sorts of choreographic improvisations, and when fatigued, chooses, in her turn, some man to take her place. The dance is thus kept up, and complete lassitude of the performers alone puts an end to the scene.

If the negro is a hunter, he buys a gun worth some ten milreis, (five dollars,) and goes out to shoot the agootee, (American hare,) the armadillo, the macaco, (monkey,) or the lizard.