We ended our perambulation of the town, by going to the opera at night. The theatre[69] is placed on the highest part of the city, and the platform before it commands the finest view imaginable. It is a handsome building, and very commodious, both to spectators and actors. Within it is very large and well laid out, but dirty and in great want of fresh painting. The actors are very bad as such, and little better as singers; but the orchestra is very tolerable. The piece was a very ill-acted tragedy, founded on Voltaire's Mahomed. During the representation, the Portuguese ladies and gentlemen seemed determined to forget the stage altogether, and to laugh, eat sweetmeats, and drink coffee, as if at home. When the musicians, however, began to play the overture to the ballet, every eye and voice was directed to the stage, and a loud call for the national hymn followed, and not till it had been played again and again, was the ballet suffered to proceed. During the bustle occasioned by this, a captain in the army was arrested and hurried out of the pit; some say for picking pockets, others for using intemperate language on politics, when the national hymn was called for. Meantime one of the midshipmen of our party had his sword stolen, adroitly enough, from the corner of the box, yet we perceived nobody enter; so that we conclude a gentleman in regimentals in the next box thought it would suit him, and so buckled it on to go home with.
The police here is in a wretched state. The use of the dagger is so frequent, that the secret murders generally average two hundred yearly, between the upper and lower towns. To this evil the darkness and steepness of the streets mainly contribute, by furnishing almost a certainty of escape. The nominal intendente da policia is also the supreme judge in criminal cases. No law, however, has as yet determined the limits or scope, either of his power, or that of the lieutenant-colonel of police, who calls upon a few soldiers from any of the garrisons whenever he has to act, and who appoints military patroles also from among the soldiers on duty. It often happens that persons accused before this formidable officer are seized and imprisoned for years, without ever being brought to a trial; a malicious information, whether true or false, subjects a man's private house to be broken open by the colonel and his gang; and if the master escapes imprisonment it is well, though the house scarcely ever escapes pillage. In cases of riot and quarrels in the street, the colonel generally orders the soldiers to fall on with canes, and beat people into their senses. Such being the state of the police, it is, perhaps, more wonderful that murders are so few, than that they are so many. Where there is little or no public justice, private revenge will take its place.
Sunday, 21st.—We went to the English chapel, and were well pleased with the decent manner in which the service was performed. The Rev. Robert Synge is chaplain, a man of cheerful convivial manners, yet exceedingly attentive both as chaplain, and as guardian of his poorer countrymen. The chapel and clergymen are supported by the contribution fund, as are also the hospital for English sailors and others, and its surgeon, Mr. Dundas: both the hospital and chapel are under the same roof. I was surprised, perhaps unreasonably, to hear Mr. Synge pray for "Don John of Portugal, Sovereign of these realms, by whose gracious permission we are enabled to meet and worship God according to our conscience," or words to that effect. We were not so polite in Rome, I remember, as to pray for His Holiness, though it would have been but reasonable.
Returning from chapel, we saw great part of the troops drawn up in inspecting order, on the little green between Buenos Ayres (the name of the hospital) and Fort Pedro. Every Portuguese is, it seems, by birth a soldier; and nothing exempts a man from military duty, but his holding a place under government. There are six corps of militia in the city of Bahia: 1st, one company of mounted gentlemen, forming the government guard of honour; 2d, one squadron of flying artillery; 3d and 4th, two regiments of whites, almost all tradespeople; 5th, one regiment of mulatoes; and 6th, one of free blacks, amounting altogether to 4000 men, well armed and equipped; but the black regiment is unquestionably the best trained, and most serviceable, as a light infantry corps. The regiments of country militia, as those of Cachoeira, Piraja, &c. are much stronger, and with those of the city, amount to about 15,000 men. The officers are chosen from among the most respectable families, and with the exception of the majors and adjutants, who are of the line, receive no pay.
The troops of the capital are generally reviewed or inspected on Sundays, and sometimes the regular Portuguese are reviewed with them. There is always something gay and inspiriting in martial sounds and martial sights; and the fine weather, gay landscape, and above all, the idea that in a day or two, nay, this very night, these same soldiers might be called into action, did not render the scene less interesting. The native artillery have long garrisoned some of the forts. It appears that the royal troops of Portugal have claimed some superiority, and above all, have demanded their guns and ammunition; and so there is a dispute, in which the royalists and independents take part, and every day hostilities are expected; but both parties seem so willing to be peaceable, that I trust the matter will end without bloodshed.
Monday, 22d.—This evening there was a large party, both Portuguese and English, at the consul's. In the well-dressed women I saw to-night, I had great difficulty in recognising the slatterns of the other morning. The senhoras were all dressed after the French fashion: corset, fichu, garniture, all was proper, and even elegant, and there was a great display of jewels. Our English ladies, though quite of the second rate of even colonial gentility, however, bore away the prize of beauty and grace; for after all, the clothes, however elegant, that are not worn habitually, can only embarrass and cramp the native movements; and, as Mademoiselle Clairon remarks, "she who would act a gentlewoman in public, must be one in private life."
The Portuguese men have all a mean look; none appear to have any education beyond counting-house forms, and their whole time is, I believe, spent between trade and gambling: in the latter, the ladies partake largely after they are married. Before that happy period, when there is no evening dance, they surround the card tables, and with eager eyes follow the game, and long for the time when they too may mingle in it. I scarcely wonder at this propensity. Without education, and consequently without the resources of mind, and in a climate where exercise out of doors is all but impossible, a stimulus must be had; and gambling, from the sage to the savage, has always been resorted to, to quicken the current of life. On the present occasion, we feared the young people would have been disappointed of their dance, because the fiddlers, after waiting some time, went away, as they alleged, because they had not their tea early enough; however, some of the ladies volunteered to play the piano, and the ball lasted till past midnight.
Tuesday, 23d.—I rode with Mr. Dance and Mr. Ricken along the banks of the lake, decidedly the most beautiful scenery in this beautiful country; and then through wild groves, where all the splendours of Brazilian animal and vegetable life were displayed. The gaudy plumage of the birds, the brilliant hues of the insects, the size, and shape, and colour, and fragrance, of the flowers and shrubs, seen mostly for the first time, enchanted us, and rendered our little journey to the great pepper gardens, whither we were going, delightful. Every hedge is at this season gay with coffee blossom, but it is too early in the year for the pepper or the cotton to be in beauty. It is not many years since Francisco da Cunha and Menezes sent the pepper plant from Goa for these gardens, which were afterwards enlarged by him, when he became governor of Bahia. Plants were sent from hence to Pernambuco, which have succeeded in the botanical garden.
From the pepper gardens we rode on to a convent at the farther extremity of the town, and overlooking both the bays, above and below the peninsula of Bon fin, or N.S. da Monserrat. It is called the Soledad, and the nuns are famous for their delicate sweetmeats, and for the manufacture of artificial flowers, formed of the feathers of the many-coloured birds of their country. I admired the white water-lily most, though the pomegranate flower, the carnation, and the rose are imitated with the greatest exactness. The price of all these things is exorbitant; but the convents having lost much of their property since the revolution, the nuns are fain to make up by the produce of this petty industry, for the privations imposed on them by the reduction of their rents.
Wednesday, October 24th.—Mr. Pennell, his daughter, and a few other friends, joined us in an expedition to Itaparica[70], a large island that forms the western side of the Bay of All Saints. A shoal runs off from it a long way to sea, and there are reefs of coral rocks on different parts of its coast. The distance from the city to the nearest landing place on the island is five miles and a half, which our boats' crews rowed in less than two hours. We put in between two ledges of rock, to a little jetty, belonging to the fazenda or factory of Aseoli, or Filisberti, both of whom were partners in Jerome Buonaparte's commercial establishment here. There is no town on Itaparica; but there is a villa, or village, with a fort on the Punto de Itaparica, which commands the passage between it and the main land, and also the mouth of the river, on which stands Nazareth da Farinha, so called from the abundance of that article which it produces. There are also a great many fazendas, which, with their establishment of slaves and cattle, may be considered as so many hamlets. Each sugar farm, or ingenho, as the fazendas are oftener called here, has its little community of slaves around it; and in their huts something like the blessings of freedom are enjoyed, in the family ties and charities they are not forbidden to enjoy. I went into several of the huts, and found them cleaner and more comfortable than I expected; each contains four or five rooms, and each room appeared to hold a family. These out-of-door slaves, belonging to the great ingenhos, in general are better off than the slaves of masters whose condition is nearer to their own, because, "The more the master is removed from us, in place and rank, the greater the liberty we enjoy; the less our actions are inspected and controuled; and the fainter that cruel comparison becomes betwixt our own subjection, and the freedom, or even dominion of another." But, at best, the comforts of slaves must be precarious. Here it is not uncommon to give a slave his freedom, when he is too old or too infirm to work; that is, to turn him out of doors to beg or starve. A few days ago, as a party of gentlemen were returning from a pic nic, they found a poor negro woman lying in a dying state, by the side of the road. The English gentlemen applied to their Portuguese companions to speak to her, and comfort her, as thinking she would understand them better; but they said, "Oh, 'tis only a black: let us ride on," and so they did without further notice. The poor creature, who was a dismissed slave, was carried to the English hospital, where she died in two days. Her diseases were age and hunger.[71] The slaves I saw here working in the distillery, appear thin, and I should say over-worked; but, I am told, that it is only in the distilling months that they appear so, and that at other seasons they are as fat and cheerful as those in the city, which is saying a great deal. They have a little church and burying-ground here, and as they see their little lot the lot of all, are more contented than I thought a slave could be.