DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT CONVENT AT AJUDA IN RIO JANERIO.
At the end of the chapel is a large quadrangle, entered by a massive gateway, surrounded by three stories of grated windows. Here female negro pedlars come with their goods, and expose them in the court-yard below. The nuns, from their grated windows above, see what they like, and, letting down a cord, the article is fastened to it; it is then [p133] drawn up and examined, and, if approved of, the price is let down. Some that I saw in the act of buying and selling in this way, were very merry, joking and laughing with the blacks below, and did not seem at all indisposed to do the same with my companion. In three of the lower windows, on a level with the court-yard, are revolving cupboards, like half-barrels, and at the back of each is a plate of tin, perforated like the top of a nutmeg-grater. The nuns of this convent are celebrated for making sweet confectionary, which people purchase. There is a bell which the purchaser applies to, and a nun peeps through the perforated tin; she then lays the dish on a shelf of the revolving cupboard, and turns it inside out; the dish is taken, the price laid in its place, and it is turned in. While we stood there, the invisible lady-warder asked for a pinch of snuff; the box was laid down in the same way, and turned in and out.