On the same evening, after a journey of two leagues and a half we reached Villa de Crato; the road all the way was level and sandy, the country on the south side was well wooded with large trees, while the north, which is much flatter, was principally planted with sugar-cane, and several houses were seen at very short intervals, each with a mill and a boiling-house attached to it, for the purpose of converting the juice of the cane into Rapadura. The Carnahuba is here replaced by another kind of palm called Macahuba (Acrocomia sclerocarpa, Mart.), which rises to about the same height, but has pinnated leaves, and a stem which, instead of being the same thickness throughout, swells out considerably above the middle, and is exactly the same species as one very common about Pernambuco; along with this grows another species much resembling the cocoa-nut in its height and foliage, but with a much thicker stem; the nuts which are about the size of apples, are produced in large clusters; it is a species of Attalea, and is here called Palmeira. It is impossible to express the delight I experienced on entering this comparatively rich and smiling district, after a ride of more than three hundred miles through a country which at that season was little better than a desert; the evening was one of the most beautiful I ever remember to have seen, the sun was setting in great splendour behind the Serra de Araripe, a long range of hills about a league to the westward of the Villa, but the freshness of this region seemed to deprive its rays of that burning heat which shortly before sunset is so oppressive to the traveller in the lower country. The beauty of the night, the cool and reviving feeling of the atmosphere, and the richness of the landscape, so different from what I had lately seen, all tended to produce a buoyancy of spirit such as only the lover of nature can experience, and which I vainly wished might prove enduring, as I felt not only at ease with myself, but “at peace with all below.”
It was dark before we entered the Villa, but I soon found the house of a respectable shopkeeper, Senhor Francisco Dios Azede e Mello, to whom I brought letters of recommendation. I was requested to enter the sitting room, where I found myself in the midst of more than a dozen ladies, all squatting on the floor on mats, and among them was the lady of the house, who, as usual, put many questions to me respecting myself and my country; I discovered that these visitors had come to condole the lady on the loss of her husband’s father, who had died on the previous day. Although within the more respectable houses in the Sertão, as the interior is called, chairs are to be seen in their principal room, they are seldom made use of, as the hammock (rede) is the favourite seat of the women, who are seldom out of it except at meal-time; in it, as upon the mat, they sit upright with their legs folded beneath them, and their principal occupation during the day is smoking, eating sweet-meats, and drinking cold water; it is generally slung so as to reach within about a foot and a half of the ground, when it answers all the purposes of a sofa, and often more than one person may be observed seated on the same hammock; at night it is commonly preferred to a bed, for which purpose, on account of its being much cooler, it is very generally used, and for which I can vouch from my own experience, as for three years I seldom slept out of one. They are generally made of a sort of strong cotton cloth manufactured by the inhabitants, and are either white, or white and blue, this colour being given by a dye which they prepare from a kind of wild indigo plant that grows abundantly in the neighbourhood; they are always made broader than long, which allows a person to lie in them diagonally, and hence more horizontally than if they were narrower; they have the advantage, however, of requiring no bedding, further than a thin blanket for a covering in the cool season, or a sheet in hot weather. Before I left Icó, one of the Pintos wrote to Senhor Mello asking him to procure a house for me on my arrival in Crato, but the only one he could obtain was a little dwelling attached to a shop, neither being in very good condition: however, it answered my purpose very well for the time, but I was obliged to look out for another residence in about six weeks, when it was required to be pulled down, in order that a new one might be erected in its stead; with some trouble I found two rooms which I hired at the rate of about five shillings a month, and where I remained till I left the place. My only furniture consisted of two chairs which Senhor Mello had the kindness to send me, an old packing-box that served as a table, and of course my hammock was my bed. The day after my arrival at Crato a report was spread through the town that I was a travelling merchant who had arrived there with goods for sale, and in the course of the day I had numerous visits from ladies who wished to look over my merchandize, and who were not a little astonished when I told them I had none; this was not the only time I was mistaken for a merchant, indeed after leaving Crato the same mistake occurred at almost every house and village I arrived at, which is not surprising, as the number of people who travel in the interior from house to house, and from town to town, either selling European goods, or exchanging them for horses or cattle, is very great.
The Villa de Crato is situated thirty-two leagues to the S.W. of Icó, and nearly in the same parallel as Pernambuco, from which it is distant in a direct line about three hundred miles; it is a small and sufficiently miserable town, being one third the size of Icó. It is very irregularly built, and the houses, with only one exception, are of a single story; it contains two churches and a jail, but one of the former has never been finished, and has remained so long in this state, that it has all the appearance of one that has fallen into decay. The jail is likewise in so ruined a state as scarcely to deserve the name of a prison, although there are generally a few criminals confined in it; it was guarded by two soldiers who performed their duty so easily, that in passing I seldom saw them otherwise occupied than either in playing cards or sleeping in the shade of the building; a serjeant who was confined during my stay in this place for disobedience to his officer, was known almost every night to get out by one of the windows, which have only wooden bars, when after sleeping in his own house, he returned to spend the day in prison. The whole population amounts probably to about two thousand, the greater part of whom are either Indians or their mixed descendants; the more respectable portion of the inhabitants are Brazilians, who for the most part are shopkeepers; but how the poorer races gain a livelihood I am at a loss to determine. The inhabitants of this part of the province, who are generally known by the Indian appellation of Caryrís, are celebrated throughout Brazil for their lawless character; it formerly used to be, and still is, though not to the same extent, a place of refuge to murderers and vagabonds of all sorts from other parts of the country, and although it contains a justice of the peace, a Juiz de Direito, and other officials of the law, they possess but little power, and even if that little be exercised, they run great risk of falling under the knife of the assassin; several murderers were pointed out to me, who walked about quite openly. The principal danger to which they are exposed, is from the friends of the person they have murdered, who follow them to a great distance, and lose no opportunity of seeking their revenge. The state of morality generally among the inhabitants of Crato is at a very low ebb, card playing is the principal occupation during the day, when in fine weather groups of all classes, from those called the great people (gente grande) to the lowest, may be observed seated on the pavement on the shaded side of the street deeply employed in gambling; the more respectable generally play for dollars, the poorer either for copper money, or more commonly make use of spotted beans in lieu of counters; quarrels on these occasions are of course very common, which are not unfrequently settled with the knife. Scarcely any of the better class live with their wives: a few years after their marriage, they generally turn them out of the house to live separately, and replace them by young women who are willing to supply their place without being bound by the ties of matrimony. In this manner these people have two houses to keep up: among others who are living in this condition I may mention the Juiz de Direito, the Juiz dos Orfãos, and most of the larger shopkeepers; such a state of immorality is not to be wondered at, when the conduct of the clergy is taken into consideration, the vicar (vigario), who was then an old man between seventy and eighty years of age, is the father of six natural children, one of whom was educated as a priest, afterwards became president of the province, and was then a senator of the Empire, although still retaining his clerical title. During my stay in Crato he arrived there on a visit to his father, bringing with him his mistress, who was his own cousin, and eight children out of ten he had by her, having at the same time five other children by another woman, who died in child-bed of the sixth. Besides the vigario there were three other priests in the town, all of whom have families by women with whom they live openly, one of them being the wife of another person.
I lived about five months among these people, but in no other part of Brazil, even during a much shorter residence, did I live on less terms of intimacy with them or make fewer friends; besides Senhor Mello, the only individual whose house I visited frequently, was another son of the old vicar, Capitão João Gonzalvez, who was the proprietor of a sugar (Rapadura) plantation, about two leagues below the town. I first made his acquaintance from his having consulted me about his wife, who was labouring under chronic ophthalmia; he was a man of an amiable and excellent disposition, and I still look back with pleasure on the hours spent in his house. The eyes of the lady improved much under my treatment, and as she was very communicative and good-natured, we had many long conversations about the manners and customs of our respective countries. The family consisted of two daughters, one of whom was married, and lived at a place I afterwards visited about sixteen leagues distant, the younger one, a fine girl about sixteen years of age, was very shy in making her appearance, so that I did not see her during my first two or three visits; but as her mother afterwards told me, her curiosity to see and speak with an Englishman, at length completely got the better of her reserve, so that afterwards she always appeared when I was there. She was then about to be married to a younger brother of her sister’s husband, having been betrothed to him for many years: it is indeed seldom that the daughters of respectable families are allowed the power of choosing a husband for themselves, the parents always taking care to make the arrangements in such cases.
At this plantation I had often an opportunity of seeing the manner in which Rapadura is made; the expression and boiling of the juice are performed at the same time; the mill is of very clumsy construction, consisting of a frame-work containing three vertical wooden rollers through which the cane is passed to express the juice, which is collected in a receiver below, where it runs into a trough that had been hollowed out of a large tree. The cane requires to be passed three times through the mill before the whole of the juice is expressed: from this trough a portion of the juice is conveyed from time to time into small brass boiling pans, of which there were nine, all placed close beside each other over small openings in the top of an arched furnace, and during the different stages of the operation, as the evaporation proceeds, the juice is poured from one pan into the other, till in the last it acquires the desired consistency; it is then transferred into a large tub, hollowed out of solid wood, called a Gamella, and allowed to cool for some time, when it is finally run out into wooden moulds about the size and shape of our common bricks, although some are made about half this size; after being removed from the moulds, they are allowed to harden for some days, when they are fit for the market; the larger size sell at Crato for about a penny each, in Icó for three halfpence, and in Aracaty for twopence each.
Sugar cane, mandiocca, rice and tobacco are the principal articles cultivated in Crato. The ordinary tropical fruit trees grow in and around the town, such as the orange, the lime, the lemon, the banana, the mango, the papáw, the jack, the bread-fruit, and the cashew; grapes, pine-apples, melons and water-melons are also commonly cultivated; these fruits are sold very cheap, thus, oranges a penny per dozen, pine-apples, large and of a fine flavour, twopence each, and large melons may be had at the same price. The country gradually rises from Crato towards the S.W. till it reaches the base of the Serra de Araripe, an elevated table-land forming a semicircle round the undulatory plain in which the town is situated; this Serra is from one and a half to two leagues distant from Crato, and from the numerous springs that rise from its base, may be attributed the great fertility of this part of the Sertão, the small streams from which are diverted in a thousand directions for the purpose of irrigation. At present but a small portion of this fertile district is cultivated, although it would amply repay such labour; the vicinity being but thinly peopled, and the habits of the natives extremely indolent; with very little trouble they can raise all that is necessary to support life, and seem to care for nothing beyond this. Their dress is of the most simple description, and consequently not expensive; when, however, the population becomes more numerous, and civilization shall have multiplied their wants, this district will assuredly prove a rich and valuable part of the province; the greatest drawback to it is the want of any other than land communication with the coast. The union of the little streams which flow from the Serra de Araripe forms a rivulet that passes close to the town of Crato, and affords an abundant supply of excellent clear water to the inhabitants at all seasons; it offers also some deep pools that serve as bathing places, a luxury in which they are very fond of indulging, especially during the hot season.
During my residence at this place I made many excursions in the neighbourhood, but the Serra de Araripe proved the best field for my researches, I spent several days at different times, in exploring its ravines, sides, and summit, every trip yielding me large supplies of new and rare plants. The greater portion of the wooded districts around Crato consists of deciduous trees and shrubs, forming what are called Catingas, but in low moist localities, and along the base of the Serra, a great many of the trees are evergreen; one of the most common denizens of the Catingas is the Magonia glabrata, St. Hil., which is here truly gregarious, covering large tracts for miles to the exclusion of almost everything else; in general it is a tree from thirty to forty feet high, but at full growth it often attains a much greater stature. Like many of the other inhabitants of the Catingas, its flowers appear before the leaves, they are in large panicles, of a greenish yellow colour, and of very sweet scent. It is called Tingi by the natives, who apply it to many useful purposes; an infusion of the bark of the root is employed to poison fish, and that of the stem to cure old ulcers. The fruit is a large dry triangular capsule filled with broad flat seeds, from the kernels of which a kind of soap is manufactured; the manner in which they make it is this. After having taken off the brown membrane which covers the seeds, they are put into a tub of water to steep for some time, when the cotyledons begin to swell and soften, the thin skin which still covers them is easily taken off, and they are then put into a pot along with a small portion of tallow; by boiling and stirring them they soon form a homogeneous mass, which, when cool, is said to answer very well for washing clothes. Another tree which grows in similar situations, is a species of Caryocar, that presents a fine appearance when covered with its large corymbs of yellow flowers; the fruit, which was not ripe during my stay, is said to be excellent when cooked, and its hard wood is of great use as timber in the construction of mills. The Visgeira, already mentioned, and the Timbahuba, are also two large trees of the neighbourhood; the latter belongs to the Mimosa tribe, producing large round heads of yellowish flowers, and a broad legume curved round so as to resemble a horse-shoe. A kind of small deer that much frequents the woods is very fond of this fruit, and is often watched for at night at the season when the fruit falls, being discovered by the rattling noise which the seeds make within the pod when trodden upon. The Jatobá, a species of Hymenæa, is another large tree of common occurrence, as also the Augelim, a large and beautiful species of the genus Andira; two Bignonias of considerable size are also common in the distant woods, one with purple, the other with yellowish flowers, but owing to the durability and hardness of their timber, which is much sought after by the natives for the construction of mills and carts, they are not allowed to attain any great size near the town of Crato. Besides these there are many other trees of smaller size, among which may be mentioned the Pao de Jangada (Apeiba Tibourbou), and one of frequent occurrence, and conspicuous from its large prickly capsules; on the coast its wood affords the material for the raft-boats before described, so commonly in use there. A species of Byrsonema, a Callisthene, a Gomphia, and a Vitex, are all remarkably beautiful when in blossom. When planks are required in most, indeed I may say in all parts of the Sertão, there is a sad waste of timber, for to obtain one an entire tree is chopped on both sides until it is reduced to the exact size required.
A number of wild fruits are found in the Catingas, among these are the Mangába, already spoken of as very common about Pernambuco, the Guava, the Araça, and also, but only on the top of the Serra, a nearly allied species called Marangaba; it is the Psidium pigmeum of Arrudo, a shrub from one to two feet high, the fruit of which is about the size of a gooseberry, and is greatly sought after on account of its delicious flavour, which resembles that of the strawberry. The woods in the immediate neighbourhood of the town produce a fruit called Pusá, which belongs to a new species of Mouriria (M. Pusá, Gardn.); it is about the size of a small plum, of a black colour, and resembles very much in taste the fruit of the Jaboticaba (Eugenia cauliflora, DC.) of the south of Brazil; when in season it is brought to the town and carried through the streets for sale by the Indians. The Cashew is also very common, but the eatable portion of the fruit is smaller and not so well tasted as that which grows along the coast.
One day, near the Serra de Araripe, I passed an encampment of Gipsies consisting of about a dozen men, women, and children; these people are not uncommon in the interior of Brazil, for I either met with them, or heard of them in almost every town I visited; they are generally disliked by the common people, but are encouraged by the more wealthy, as was the case on the present occasion, for they were encamped beneath some large trees near the house of a major in the National Guards, who is the proprietor of a large cane plantation at the foot of the Serra; although of a darker colour, they have quite the same features as the Gipsies of Great Britain, many both of the young men and women being very handsome; they seldom come near the large towns of the coast, preferring more thinly inhabited, and consequently more lawless districts; they wander from farm to farm, and from village to village, buying, selling, and exchanging horses and various articles of jewellery; like those of Europe they are often accused of stealing horses, fowls, or whatever they can lay their hands upon; the old women tell fortunes, in which they are much encouraged by the young ladies of the places they visit. Although they speak Portuguese like the other inhabitants of the country, among themselves they always make use of their own language, always intermarry, are said to pay no attention to the religious observances of the country, nor to use any form of worship of their own; they are called Ciganos by the Brazilians. Just about the time that the Gipsies made their appearance near Crato, one of my horses was missed from its pasturage, and it was strongly suspected they had carried it off, but in this instance at least they were wrongly accused, for I have good reason to believe that the person who made free with it, was a Fazendeiro who was very anxious to purchase it from me only a day or two before it was stolen, just as he was on the eve of returning from Crato to his Engenho many leagues to the westward. As it had my own brand upon one of its hind legs, and as it was well known about the neighbourhood that it had disappeared, I was assured by the justice of the peace that it would ultimately be found, and he was right, for about six weeks afterwards, it was found in a wood about three leagues from the town, but instead of being an animal in fine condition, it was now little better than skin and bone. The person who took it was one Josè Pereira de Hollanda, a man whose character was not held in much estimation, and by whom it had been used to hunt down cattle on his estate.
During my stay in Crato the festival of our Lady of Conception was celebrated; great rejoicings were kept up for nine days previously, the expenses of which were defrayed by the different individuals appointed to conduct it; during the whole period of the Novena, as it is called, the few soldiers stationed in the town kept up an almost continued fire, both day and night; so that with this, and the processions, illuminations, and discharges of fireworks, and of small cannon in front of the church, the Villa was one continued scene of uproar. As the last night was said to be the finest of all, I went about seven o’clock to the church, before which a number of flags were flying on poles, and two large bonfires blazing; on the terrace before the sacred edifice, an immense crowd had assembled, and about half a dozen soldiers were from time to time discharging their muskets; at a little distance, a band of musicians were playing, consisting of two fifers and two drummers, but the music they produced was of the most wretched description; there was also a display of fireworks quite in keeping with the music. The church inside was brilliantly illuminated and almost full, but I was surprised to see that nearly the whole of the congregation consisted of females; they were all dressed in white, or at least with a white kind of mantilla over the head and shoulders. On the following day a little before dusk, a large procession, consisting entirely of men, passed through the various streets, figures of the Virgin and her Son being carried in great pomp; the three priests of the Villa, together with the Visitador, or deputy of the Bishop, who was then on his usual triennial tour through the villages and towns of the province, walked under a scarlet canopy. The whole affair was wound up on the succeeding afternoon (Sunday) by exhibitions on the tight-rope, and a dance of masqueraders, in front of the church.