What he said was what is said by all the charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether they be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers.

At the bottom the same self-possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, the same description of threadbare witticisms, the same amusing dexterity, and, on the part of the natives, the same wide-mouth astonishment, the same curiosity, the same credulity as the simple folk of the civilized world.
It followed, then, that ten minutes later the public were completely won, and crowded round Fragoso, who was installed in a _"loja"_ of the place, a sort of serving-bar to the inn.
The _loja_ belonged to a Brazilian settled at Tabatinga.

There, for a few vatems, which are the sols of the country, and worth about twenty reis, or half a dozen centimes each, the natives could get drinks of the crudest, and particularly assai, a liquor half-sold, half-liquid, made of the fruit of the palm-tree, and drunk from a _"coui"_ or half-calabash in general use in this district of the Amazon.
And then men and women, with equal eagerness, took their places on the barber's stool.

The scissors of Fragoso had little to do, for it was not a question of cutting these wealthy heads of hair, nearly all remarkable for their softness and their quality, but the use to which he could put his comb and the tongs, which were kept warming in the corner in a brasier.
And then the encouragements of the artist to the crowd! "Look here! look here!" said he; "how will that do, my friends--if you don't sleep on the top of it! There you are, for a twelvemonth! and these are the latest novelties from Belem and Rio de Janeiro! The queen's maids of honor are not more cleverly decked out; and observe, I am not stingy with the pomade!" No, he was not stingy with it.

True, it was only a little grease, with which he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he plastered it on like cement! And as to the names of the capillary edifices--for the monuments reared by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture--buckles, rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything found there a place.