Travels in Brazil

by Henry Koster

I here take the opportunity of mentioning another common amusement at festivals, which is known under the name of comedias; but this I did not chance to see. A stage of the same kind is erected, and regular farces are performed; but I believe that women do not ever appear upon these stages, though they do upon the stage of the theatre at Recife.

I slept one night at Pillar, and in the morning following accompanied the chaplain to the fort, who was going to say Mass at his chapel, as it was a holiday. The fort is situated upon a projecting sand-bank, and was formerly quite surrounded by water; but the channel for small craft which ran between the fort and the island, is now nearly closed by the accumulation of sand at its mouth[140]. When we dismounted at the gate, our horses were taken into the fort, and were put into the commandant’s stable. The sentinel desired me to take off my spurs, and we then passed through the gate, and along the covered way until we entered the area in the centre, with the chapel and other buildings along two sides of it. The commandant is a captain of the Olinda regiment, an elderly and most formal man, full of etiquette; and all the other officers are of the same standing. I was introduced to the chief, and we then proceeded to the chapel. Forgetful of necessary forms, I had placed myself next to the wall on the right hand side of the chapel; but the commandant would not give up his right, and therefore reminded me to move, that he might take that place. As soon as the Mass was ended we took our leave. Some idea of the state of the works may be formed from the following anecdote. A former chaplain was dismissed from his situation owing to the non-observance on his part of established regulations. The gate was opened for his admission, and that of any other person who might wish to hear Mass on Sundays and holidays; but on one occasion, he unfortunately espied the commandant standing in the area of the fort, through a breach in the walls, upon which, instead of going round to the gate, he rode unceremoniously through the breach in his anxiety to greet the commandant, who was much disconcerted at the occurrence. At the time I was there, the garrison consisted of militia-men; and an idea of the discipline of these may be formed from the following circumstance, which took place only a short time before my visit to the fort. The adjutant, who was between seventy and eighty years of age, threatened to strike or gently touched with his cane one of the men who had refused to hear Mass; the fellow way-laid the old officer one evening, and gave him several blows of which he died. The soldier absconded, and was not again heard of. The guns were in a very bad state, and the usual supply of powder was merely sufficient for the salutes on days of gala; there were indeed some heaps of balls, upon which the rust surpassed the quantity of sound iron.

In the course of this year some of my friends from Recife came to see me; I had been often at Amparo, and at the houses of several other planters; but I do not particularly mention any of these visits, for they did not discover any thing new. I went to Recife three or four times. After the commencement of the rains in 1815, I left Itamaraca with Manoel about four o’clock one afternoon, having been detained thus late by unforeseen occurrences. The weather was fine, and as the moon would rise early, I thought that the evening would be pleasant; but when we were about three leagues from the island, the rain began to pour, and when we reached the plantation of Inhaman, which is half a league farther, we were completely wet through. Immediately beyond this place, the road is on one side bordered by a steep hill, from which the water ran down in such great quantities, that the horses were nearly up to their knees in it; however we gained the great cattle track, and stopped at a liquor shop by the road-side. I bought a considerable quantity of rum, which I threw over my head and shoulders and into my boots, and Manoel did the same; each of us likewise drank a good dose of it. This practice is very general; I had for some time followed it, and although I had been much exposed to the rain in the course of the preceding year, had not suffered from it, not having experienced another attack of ague; but perhaps this is not attributable to precaution, but to being seasoned to the climate.

When we arrived at the village of Paratibi, night had nearly closed in. I met with Antonio, (the man who was way-laid when I resided at Jaguaribe) and he wished me to stay at his cottage, but I preferred going on, now that we were completely wet through. As we were ascending the hill beyond Paratibi, I was in hopes of a fine night, for the moon was clear, but she did not afford us light for many minutes. In the valley of Merueira the rain again came on, with vivid lightning; and in going through the wood beyond the valley, the darkness was so great, as to prevent me from seeing Manoel’s horse, excepting now and then during the flashes of lightning; although the animal upon which he rode was of a grey colour, approaching to white, and mine was sometimes touching his, for he rode in front. When we arrived near to the hill which descends on the side nearest to Recife, I reminded him to keep to the left, for the precipice is dangerous on the right hand side; but he did not understand me or his horse was restive, and was going too much to the right, when he slipped and fell on one side within a few yards of the place which he was to avoid. I dismounted to assist Manoel, but only saw his situation by the flashes of lightning. I asked him after himself, his horse, and his pistol, and to each question received for answer that all was well. I then said to him “Where is the road;” for I had turned round in different ways so frequently in assisting him, that I had no notion of the direction which we ought to take to find the road; and indeed at one moment I had formed the idea of remaining where we were until the break of day. But on again asking Manoel if he was certain respecting the right direction, his answer was in an angry voice, for he was wet and bruised, “I see the road, don’t be afraid Sir.” He led, and I followed him, each leading his horse; we descended side-ways, for the ground was too slippery owing to the rain to allow us to advance in any other manner. My horse struck me with his head several times, and he too every now and then narrowly escaped falling. The width of the road is about six feet; there is on one side a precipice of great height, which has been formed by the torrents in the rainy season; these have caused the ground to fall in, and have now worn it quite away; on the other side, the declivity is less perpendicular, but it is covered with the short stumps of trees, among which there is no possibility of treading safely without a sufficient light. We reached the bottom without accident, and when we entered the village of Beberibi, the rain nearly ceased, and the night likewise was clearer, but the moon had set. We crossed the hill beyond Beberibi very slowly, and arrived at Agua Fria, the residence of one of my friends distant from Recife two leagues, between one and two o’clock in the morning. If the weather had been fine, we should have arrived between eight and nine o’clock in the evening preceding. The instinct (if I may so call it) which is possessed by the Indians, by a great number of the negroes, and indeed by many individuals of mixed casts in finding out the right roads, often surprised me, but never more than on this occasion. I could not see any thing, but Manoel certainly did feel that he was quite sure of being in the right path, else he would not have spoken so positively; he had a considerable stock of courage; but was always cool and collected.

At Agua Fria I passed some of the pleasantest hours of my residence in Brazil. The owner of the place is an English gentleman, to whom I owe many obligations; we were on most intimate terms, indeed I felt as much at home at Agua Fria as at Itamaraca. The spot was in the rudest state when he took possession of it; but although the soil was not propitious, the sitio (settlement) was advancing; he had built a good house, and was erecting out-houses, making fences, and planting useful and ornamental trees. The place had been infested by red ants, but with much labour they had been destroyed, by digging into the ground for the nests. Behind the house there was a lake of considerable extent, which had been formed by the course of a rivulet having been stopped through the accumulation of loose white sand in the part which is now the road; so that the road is higher than the lake on one side, and the land along which the river formerly ran on the other side. When the waters rise in the winter the lake overflows and runs across the road, but during the greatest part of the year the road is dry, or nearly so. If the lake was drained, the settlement of Agua Fria would be worth ten times its present value, for the boundaries of it are the channel of the rivulet. This lake is covered over with reeds, rushes and coarse grass, and the roots of these plants have formed a thick coating over the water, which would not support the weight of a man, but much labour is required to cut through it.

There were numbers of jacarès or alligators[141] in this lake, which rendered it dangerous to work in cutting away the rushes, which it was necessary to do, for the purpose of forming an open space in which the horses could be watered and washed, and indeed the grass was eaten by them when other kinds failed in the dry season. I may here mention some others of the lizard tribe. The camaleam (lacerta Iguana) is often to be met with; also the tijuaçu, which is, I believe, the lacerta teguixin; this is very common. There is likewise the calango, which is smaller than the other two; these three species are all of them eaten by the lower orders of people. The vibra and the lagartixa are two small species of lizard, which are continually to be seen in all situations; in and upon the houses, in the gardens and in the woods; they do good rather than harm, for they eat flies, spiders, &c. and they are to my eyes very pretty creatures; their activity, and at the same time their tameness, made me fond of them.

In my rides to Recife through the Merueira wood I always heard the hoarse croaking of the sapo cururu (rana ventricosa), and also of the sapo boi or ox-toad, both of which made a most disagreeable and dismal noise; they were particularly active on the rainy night which I have above described. The constant noise which the crickets make as soon as the sun sets, fails not to annoy those persons who have recently arrived in the country; and I recollect that on the first evening which I spent in the country on my arrival at Pernambuco, I stopped several times when conversing, as if waiting to let the noise cease before I proceeded; but this wore off (as it does with every one), and latterly I did not hear the noise even when it was spoken of in my presence. However if one of them gets into a house, there is no resting until it be dislodged, owing to the shrillness of its whistle. The body of the insect is about one inch or one inch and a half in length, and the legs are long; the whole of the insect is green. There is another species which is distinguished by the name of gryllo branco, or the white cricket; it has likewise a sharp whistle; may not this be the same insect as the former, in a different state? There is likewise the gryllo de feijam or bean cricket, which is so called from the destruction which it makes in the plantations of the French bean; it is of a dusky brown colour, approaching to black.

I was invited in January 1815 to attend a christening at the sugar plantation of Macaxeira, which is the largest and the most valuable in every respect of the three in the island. The vicar, another priest, a captain of the ordenanças, and myself, set off early on the morning of the day appointed. We rode through the plantation of St. Joam, and spoke to the owner, who was preparing to follow us with all his family. He is a Portugueze who has accumulated a large fortune in Brazil, and has married one of the daughters of the owner of the place to which we were going. This person and his immediate relatives will in the course of a short time probably possess one half of the island of Itamaraca. We were received at Macaxeira by the father and uncles of the child; and afterwards the grandmother, who is a widow lady and the owner of the estate, made her appearance, and by degrees we saw the younger ladies of many of the neighbouring families. As soon as the christening was over, the day was devoted to eating and drinking and playing at cards. When the men had left the table after dinner, the cloth was again laid, and the ladies sat down to dine; but one of the priests declared that this separation was barbarous, and seating himself again, was followed by several other men, and thus they dined a second time. The evening ended rather boisterously, but good humouredly; the wine was poured out into tumblers, and these being as frequently emptied as if they had been smaller, only a few of the guests returned home the same night; but those who remained crept off early and quietly on the following morning.

I accompanied the vicar to Pillar to pass the intrudo at that place. We set off on the Saturday afternoon, and on our arrival found that the whole clan from Macaxeira and St. Joam had taken up their quarters close to the house which we were to inhabit. In the evening a tight rope dancer was to exhibit in the open air, and at the appointed hour he took his station, and went through several of the common feats of activity with considerable neatness. He was paid in a singular manner. Before he began to dance, the clown cried out, “Here goes to the health of the vicar,” then, after the performer had danced for a few minutes, he stopped, and the clown came to our party, and with many jokes and much pretended ignorance of the vicar’s person, he found him out and asked for a donation, as is the custom; this being acceded to, and the vicar having given what he thought proper, the clown returned to the rope-dancer, upon which a shout was set up by those who were round about him, which was intended as an acknowledgment for his generosity. Then the clown mentioned the name of some other person, and so forth. After the dancer had exhibited to the health of several persons, a slack rope was hung between two coco trees and at a great height from the ground: to this the man removed, where he continued dancing until a late hour to the health of every one whose name his clown could think of.

On the following day, after the service of the church was over, the intrudo jokes and tricks began, and before the conclusion of the sport in the evening, each person had been obliged to change his cloaths several times. The ladies joined with heart and soul, and particularly the good old lady of Macaxeira, who was wet through and through, and yet carried on the war. The priests were as riotous as the rest, but their superiority of manner even here was perceivable; their jokes were well timed, and were not accompanied by any brutality of behaviour; there was a seeming deference in their manner, when they were drenching the person upon whom they made an attack, and they took care that what they threw was clean, which with others did not always happen.