[64] The gamela, like the banyan, easily takes root in other trees, and its branches meet together in the same manner. It is the tree of which the canoes of Brazil are made, and serves besides for troughs of various kinds.
[65] Air-plant or Tillandsia, of which there are several sorts. The Tillandsia Lingulata is the largest, and agrees with Jaquin's plate; the others are different from those described by him, and are much more beautiful.
[66] Frezier says of Bahia, "Who would believe it? there are shops full of those poor wretches, who are exposed there stark naked and bought like cattle, over whom the buyers have the same power; so that upon slight disgust they may kill them, almost without fear of punishment, or at least treat them as cruelly as they please. I know not how such barbarity can be reconciled to the maxims of religion, which makes them members of the same body with the whites, when they have been baptized, and raises them to the dignity of the sons of God—all sons of the Most High.
"I here make this comparison, because the Portuguese are Christians who make a great outward show of religion."—Voyage to the South Sea.
[67] Part of the funds for supporting this and other hospitals is derived from lotteries. See advertisements in the different Bahia newspapers.
[68] Joaõ de Matos Aguiar, commonly called Joaõ de Matinhos, from his diminutive size, was the founder of this Recolhimento. He bequeathed 800,000 crusadoes for the retired women, 400,000 for the patients, one to each on leaving the hospital, and 400,000, dowry to 38 girls every year, at the period of the foundation, 1716.
[69] It was begun by the Conde da Ponte, and finished by the Conde dos Arcos after the arrival of the king in Brazil. It was opened May 13th, 1812.
[70] Itapa is the Indian name: the Portuguese termination, Rica, indicates the fertility of the island. On this island Francesco Pereira Coutinho, the first donatory, was killed by the savages. He had founded his city near the watering place called Villa Velha, by what is now the fort of Gamboa, and not far from the habitation of the adventurer Caramuru. The first Christian settlement formed here was in 1561, when the Jesuits founded an Aldea, and collected and humanised some of the natives.
[71] "The custom of exposing old, useless, or sick slaves, in an island of the Tyber, there to starve, seems to have been pretty common in Rome; and whoever recovered, after being so exposed, had his liberty given him, by an edict of the Emperor Claudius; where it was likewise forbid to kill any slave, merely for old age or sickness."—"We may imagine what others would practise, when it was the professed maxim of the elder Cato, to sell his superannuated slaves for any price, rather than maintain a useless burden."—Discourses of the Populousness of Ancient Nations.
[72] Colonel Salvador, though born in Portugal, has all his property and connections in Brazil; he served with credit in the peninsula. Mr. Soares, a Brazilian, had been long in England.