When, thoroughly exhausted by fatigue and hunger, we timorously hinted that we should be glad of our meal, the pompous, and (though true) most unsatisfactory answer was, "It will be ready when it is ready." If we had dared to remonstrate any further, we should have been told to proceed on our journey, as being too impertinent.

The hosts are most ungracious and disagreeable in their manners; their houses and their persons are often filthily dirty; the want of the accommodation of forks, knives, and spoons is common; and I am sure no cottage or hovel in England could be found in a state so utterly destitute of every comfort.

At Campos Novos, however, we fared sumptuously; having rice and fowls, biscuit, wine, and spirits, for dinner; coffee in the evening, and fish with coffee for breakfast.

All this, with good food for the horses, only cost 2 shillings 6 pence per head.
Yet the host of this venda, being asked if he knew anything of a whip which one of the party had lost, gruffly answered, "How should I know?
why did you not take care of it ?--I suppose the dogs have eaten it." Leaving Mandetiba, we continued to pass through an intricate wilderness of lakes; in some of which were fresh, in others salt water shells.

Of the former kind, I found a Limnaea in great numbers in a lake, into which the inhabitants assured me that the sea enters once a year, and sometimes oftener, and makes the water quite salt.