We reached Mr. March’s Fazenda early in the forenoon. His estate embraces an extent of country containing sixty-four square miles. The greater part of it is still covered by virgin forests; that which is cleared, consists of pasture land, and several small farms for the cultivation of Indian corn, French beans, and potatoes. Plentiful crops are yielded of the two former, but the produce of the latter is neither so abundant nor so good as in England. He has also near his house a large garden, under the management of a French gardener, in which nearly all the European fruits and vegetables grow tolerably well. The peach, the olive, the fig, the vine, the apple, the quince, the loquat, the pear, the orange, and the banana, may be seen growing side by side, and all, with the exception of the two latter, bearing abundance of fruit. The orange and the banana also bear, but the cold seldom allows the fruit to come to perfection. The strawberry yields but little fruit, and the gooseberry none at all. The apples are quite equal to any I have tasted in England, but the peaches are very inferior; bushels of them are given to feed the pigs. The figs are delicious, especially a variety which produces small green-coloured fruit. Excellent crops of cauliflower, cabbage, asparagus, artichokes, turnips, carrots, peas, onions, &c., are freely produced, and sent weekly to the city. The most fertile part of the estate is a large valley, situated between the higher chain of the Organ Mountains and a smaller range which runs nearly parallel with it, and many of the smaller valleys, which run up to the peaks themselves, are cultivated; these are all well watered with small streams of cool and limpid water.

At this elevation the climate is very much cooler than it is at Rio, the thermometer in the months of May and June sometimes falling as low as 32° just before daybreak. The lowest at which I observed it myself, was on the 26th of May, when, at 8 o’clock A.M., the mercury indicated 39°. The highest to which it rose during the six months I resided on the mountains, was on the 23rd of February, when the mercury stood at 84° at noon. The hot season is also the season of the rains, and violent thunder storms occur almost daily, during the months of January and February. They come on with great regularity about four o’clock in the afternoon, and when they pass over, leave a delightfully cool evening. Like the mountains near Rio, the whole of the Organ range consists of granite. The alluvial soil is very deep and rich in the valleys, and underneath it there exists the same red-coloured argillaceo-ferrugineous clay which is so common at Rio.

It being Christmas-day on which we arrived, and a great holiday, we found the whole of the slaves belonging to the estate, amounting to about one hundred, dancing in the yard before the house, and all attired in new suits of clothes, which had been sent out to them the day before. In the evening, a party of the best conducted, principally creoles, were admitted into the verandah of the house, where I had a good opportunity of witnessing their dances—some of them not being very delicate. One of the best was a kind of dramatic dance, of which the following is a programme. Near the door of a house belonging to a Padre (priest), a young fellow commences dancing and playing on the viola, a kind of guitar. The Padre hears the noise, and sends out one of his servants to ascertain the cause. He finds the musician dancing to his own strains, and tells him that he is sent by his master to enquire why he is thus disturbed. The musician tells him that he is making no disturbance at all, but only trying a new dance from Bahia, which he saw the other day at Diario. The servant asks if it is a good one: “Oh, very good,” replies the other, “will you not try it?” The servant claps his hands, cries “Let the Padre go sleep!” and immediately joins in the dance. The same thing is repeated till the Padre’s servants, men, women, and children, amounting to about twenty, are dancing in a circle before the house. Last of all the supposed Padre himself makes his appearance in a great rage, dressed in a large Poncho for a gown, a broad-brimmed black straw hat, and a mask with a long beard to it. He demands the cause of the noise, which, he says, prevents him from enjoying his dinner. The musician tells him the same story that was told to his servants, and after much persuasion, gets him to join in the dance also. He dances with as much zeal as any of them, but, watching his opportunity, he takes out a whip which he has concealed under his gown, and, lashing the whole of them out of the apartment, finishes the performance. A stricter discipline is kept up among the slaves on this estate, than on any of the same size I have been on in Brazil, but, at the same time, they are carefully and kindly attended to. There is a hospital for the sick, and Mr. Heath, the manager of the estate, has had great experience in the treatment of those diseases to which negroes are liable.

Although there are not so many kinds of venomous snakes in Brazil as is supposed even by the inhabitants, yet accidents frequently occur from their bites to those slaves who are engaged in the plantations. In the whole course of my travels in Brazil, I did not meet with more than half a dozen kinds, which, from examination, were found to have poison fangs. Some of these are, however, very numerous in individuals. In the province of Rio, and in the southern provinces generally, the Jararáca, (Bothrops Neuwiedii, Spix.) a genus nearly allied to that which the Rattle Snake belongs to, is perhaps the most common. When full grown it is usually about six feet long. It is frequently met with in plantations, and in bushy and grassy places by the sides of woods, but is scarcely ever found in dense forests. That which is most abundant in the central and northern provinces, is a true Rattle Snake (Cascavel), but most probably a distinct species from that of North America. On the day previous to my arrival at Mr. March’s, one of his female slaves, about thirty-two years of age, and the mother of four children, whilst weeding Indian corn on a plantation about eight miles distant from the house, was bitten on the right hand, between the bones of the fore-finger and thumb, by a Jararáca. The accident took place about eight o’clock in the morning, and immediately after she left to return home, but only reached half way, when she was obliged to lie down from excessive pain and exhaustion. At this time she said the feeling of thirst was very great. Some slaves belonging to the estate happening to be near, one of them rode off to inform Mr. Heath. When he arrived, he found the arm much swollen up to the shoulder, beneath which he applied a ligature. From a cottage in the neighbourhood he got a little hartshorn, some of which he applied to the bite, and caused her to swallow about a tea-spoonful in water. Being in a state of high fever, he took about a pound of blood from her, after which she became faintish. She was then removed to the Fazenda, and had two grains of calomel administered to her, and about an hour after a large dose of castor oil.

When I saw her on the following day, she still complained of excruciating pain in the hand and arm, to relieve which a linseed-meal poultice was applied. The pulse being 130, and full, about another pound of blood was taken from the other arm. Next day a number of little vesicles made their appearance on the back of the hand and a little above the wrist, which, when opened, discharged a watery fluid. For the next two days she continued to suffer much pain, to relieve which poultices were constantly applied. More vesicles formed, and the cuticle began to peel off in the vicinity of the bite. On the morning of the 29th, that is, on the fourth day after the accident, when the poultice was removed, she complained of no pain at all in her hand, and on careful examination I found that gangrene had taken place, all below the wrist being dead. From the state of the arm, there was every appearance of the mortification extending. On making an incision into the living portion above the wrist, a considerable quantity of a very fœtid whitish watery fluid discharged itself; and, on pressing the arm between the finger and thumb, a crepitation was felt from the air which had generated beneath the integuments. She was now very weak, the pulse 136, small and feeble, and she appeared to be fast sinking. Amputation being the only means that seemed to offer her a chance of recovery, I decided at once to take off the arm. As the crepitation extended to a few inches above the elbow, and the swelling itself to the shoulder, I determined to take it off as close to the latter as possible. As there was no room for the application of the tourniquet, I got Mr. Heath to apply pressure with a padded key over the artery where it passes under the clavicle, and Mr. March held the arm while I performed the operation. A good deal of blood was lost before I could secure the artery, which had to be done before the bone was sawn through. In a fortnight after, the stump had nearly healed up, and she was walking about the room. Four years afterwards I again saw her, and her general health had not suffered in the least, but she had become extremely irritable and ill-tempered.

Neither the natives nor the inhabitants have any remedy for snake bites, in which they put implicit faith. This I found out from their frequently applying to me for medicine, after their own resources had been completely exhausted. When an accident of this nature happens, the patient, in the interior particularly, is generally put under the charge of a class of people called Curadores, who apply their remedies with many mysterious ceremonies. The first operation of the Curador is to suck the wound, which, if immediately had recourse to, I believe to be the next best thing to excision or cauterization. The patient is then put into a dark room, and care is taken that he is not exposed to currents of air. One of the remedies which they believe to be the most efficacious, is that which is well known in Minas and the other inland provinces, by the name of Black Root (Raiz Preto), and Snake Root (Raiz de Cobra). It is the root of a common shrub, now well known to botanists by the name of Chiococca anguifuga. It has a pungent disagreeable smell, not unlike that of the common Valerian. Decoctions of this are given to drink, and poultices of it are applied to the wound. The Raiz Preto acts as a violent emetic and purgative, and also induces copious perspiration. If it operates freely in this manner, they augur favourably of the patient’s recovery. Besides this plant they use many others. Snakes have generally a disagreeable musky smell, and it is a common opinion among the people, that any plant possessing one similar is sure to be valuable in the cure of their bites.

In the province of Pernambuco, I found that a common method of cure was to give the patient rum to drink, till he was in a perfect state of intoxication; and this they affirm is very frequently a successful remedy. But the most extraordinary method of cure which I have ever heard of, is one which was communicated to me by a farmer (Fazendeiro), who accompanied me to Rio on my return from the mountains. Only three days, he said, before he left his estate, one of his oxen was bitten on the leg by a Jararáca, but having immediately applied his remedy, it became as well as any of the others before he quitted home. This remedy consists of the following well-known Latin acrostic, or, as he termed them, magical words:—

S.A.T.O.R.
A.R.E.P.O.
T.E.N.E.T.
O.P.E.R.A.
R.O.T.A.S.

Each line is to be written separately on a slip of paper, and then rolled into the form of a pill, the whole five to be given as soon as possible after the person or animal has been bitten. He also gave me quite as ridiculous a remedy for the cure of drunkenness. This was to place a piece of bread in the arm-pits of a dying man, and allow it to remain there till he was perfectly dead. The smallest portion of this bread, he affirmed, given, without their knowledge, to those addicted to intemperance, would produce a perfect cure.