While staying at this estate, I was very nearly being an eye-witness to
one of those atrocious acts which can only take place in a slave
country. Owing to a quarrel and a lawsuit, the owner was on the point
of taking all the women and children from the male slaves, and selling
them separately at the public auction at Rio. Interest, and not any
feeling of compassion, prevented this act. Indeed, I do not believe
the inhumanity of separating thirty families, who had lived together
for many years, even occurred to the owner. Yet I will pledge myself,
that in humanity and good feeling he was superior to the common run of
men. It may be said there exists no limit to the blindness of interest
and selfish habit. I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at
the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty. I was
crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In
endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in
doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I
was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, with a
frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall
never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a
great powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow, directed, as he
thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degradation lower
than the slavery of the most helpless animal.
April 18th.--In returning we spent two days at Socego, and I employed
them in collecting insects in the forest. The greater number of trees,
although so lofty, are not more than three or four feet in
circumference. There are, of course, a few of much greater dimensions.
Senhor Manuel was then making a canoe 70 feet in length from a solid
trunk, which had originally been 110 feet long, and of great thickness.
The contrast of palm trees, growing amidst the common branching kinds,
never fails to give the scene an intertropical character. Here the
woods were ornamented by the Cabbage Palm--one of the most beautiful of
its family. With a stem so narrow that it might be clasped with the
two hands, it waves its elegant head at the height of forty or fifty
feet above the ground. The woody creepers, themselves covered by other
creepers, were of great thickness: some which I measured were two feet
in circumference. Many of the older trees presented a very curious
appearance from the tresses of a liana hanging from their boughs, and
resembling bundles of hay. If the eye was turned from the world of
foliage above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme
elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosae. The latter, in some
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