yself been more than once deceived.

ARRIVAL AT SAN SALVADOR.

A succession of winds between South-South-East and South-East, with the
aid of a strong westerly current, soon brought us near the Brazils. We
made the land on the morning of the 17th, about 15 miles to the
north-east of Bahia, and in the afternoon anchored off the town of San
Salvador.

Though this was neither my first nor second visit to Bahia, I was still
not indifferent to the magnificent or rather luxuriant tropical scenery
which it presents. A bank of such verdure as these sun-lit climes alone
supply, rose precipitously from the dark blue water, dotted with the
white and gleaming walls of houses and convents half hidden in woods of
every tint of green; while here and there the lofty spires of some
Christian temple pointed to a yet fairer world, invisible to mortal eye,
and suggested even to the least thoughtful, that glorious as is this
lower earth, framed by Heaven's beneficence for man's enjoyment, still it
is not that home to which the hand of revelation directs the aspirations
of our frail humanity.

STATE OF THE COUNTRY AT BAHIA.

I had last seen Bahia in August, 1836, on the homeward voyage of the
Beagle; and it was then in anything but a satisfactory condition; the
white population divided among themselves, and the slaves concerting by
one bloody and desperate blow to achieve their freedom. It did not appear
to have improved during the intervening period: a revolutionary movement
was still contemplated by the more liberal section of the Brazilians,
though at the very period they thus judiciously selected for squabbling
with one another, they were living in hourly expectation of a rising, en
masse, of the blacks. That such an insurrection must sooner or later take
place--and take place with all the most fearful circumstances of long
delayed and complete revenge--no unprejudiced observer can doubt.

SLAVE TRADE.

That selfish and short-sighted policy which is almost invariably allied
with despotism, has led to such constant additions by importation to the
number of the slave population, that it now exceeds the white in the
ratio of ten to one, while individually the slaves are both physically
and in natural capacity more than equal to their sensual and degenerate
masters. Bahia and its neighbourhood have a bad eminence in the annals of
the Brazilian slave-trade. Upwards of fifty, some accounts say eighty
cargoes, had been landed there sinc