tent, adopting the ways of
the Brazilian country-side rather than those of the capital. Thus she
accustomed herself to large heavy boots adorned with enormous spurs, and
would ride astride on a horse, her hair being suffered to hang loose
about her face and shoulders. In fact, she paid not the slightest
attention to those attractions with which Nature had endowed her. She
was a being of intense charity and love, polished to a degree, an
accomplished letter-writer, and a lover of the fine arts in general.

Had the Empress bestowed less care on others and more upon her own
person, there is little doubt but that she would have led a happier
life, for the Emperor, surrounded by the temptations which are always in
the path of crowned heads, allowed his affections to stray. Indeed, so
wrapped up was Dom Pedro in his liaison, that the unfortunate Empress,
under pressure, found her rival attached to her Court as
lady-in-waiting. Her meek and affectionate temperament does not appear
to have resented this--at all events openly. When, however, this rival
insisted on making her way to the death-bed of the Empress, it was felt
by the attendants that all bounds had been passed. On their own
responsibility they prevented the proposed entrance, and after the death
of the Empress suffered for their pains at the instigation of the
slighted favourite.

Towards the end of 1826 Colonel Cotter, an Irish officer in the
Brazilian Service, undertook to bring over a number of his countrymen
from their native land in order that they should become soldier
settlers--that is to say, they were promised fifty acres of land a head
if they would undertake to perform military service when needed. The
result was a fiasco. The unfortunate Irishmen came out, but found
nothing prepared for them. They were insulted, moreover, by the negroes,
who took to calling them "white slaves" as a mark of contempt for the
ragged clothes to which they found themselves reduced in the end.

Goaded beyond endurance, not only by neglect, but by periodical assaults
on their numbers, the Irish, together with a number of Germans and other
soldiers who found themselves in a similar situation, broke out into
open mutiny, and a pitched battle took place between them and the
blacks, who had now been armed by the authorities. In the end the
Brazilians intervened, assisted by the French and the English Marines,
who were landed from the fleets of their respective nations, and the
mu