trees and villas, and the city looks very fine till you get
into it. I hoped not to be detained there more than three days, so as
soon as Peter had returned from the shore where he went to order our
provisions, and to learn where we could get the best water, I took my
wife and Mary and the rest of the children there, that they might see
what a foreign city is like.

Scarcely had we set foot on shore than we saw collected on the quay
nearly two hundred black people all huddled together, men and women,
young girls and boys, and little children, with hardly a rag to cover
them, looking wretched and startled and wild, very little like human
beings. Mary drew closer to me.

"Oh, father, what are they?" she asked.

"Those are negroes just landed from a slave ship," said I, for in those
days the Brazilians had no law against slaving. "They are on their way
to a shed, to be washed, fed, and dressed a little may be, and then sent
up to the slave market, where they will be sold one by one, or a lot
together, just as buyers may require, as a farmer sells his sheep and
cattle to a butcher or a grazier, to kill or fatten."

"And those poor people have souls just as we have," exclaimed Mary.
"How dreadful!"

As we walked on we passed numbers of negroes grunting under heavy loads,
some working for their owners, others let out to hire like beasts of
burden, but none labouring for themselves. A little further on we
passed a shrine, a little house open in front, with a figure in it, and
ornamented with flowers, and candles burning; and some people, women and
old men, were kneeling down before it, and muttering words as quickly as
their lips could move, and counting on necklaces with small and large
beads, and a cross at the end; and suddenly, as soon as they had done,
it seemed, up they jumped, and walked on, and other people passing just
made a bow and the sign of the cross, and hurried away.

"Is that an idol, father?" asked Mary; "I didn't know these people were
heathen."

I thereon told her that the figure was that of a saint, and that the
people in their ignorance had got to worship the figure instead of
saying prayers to the saint, though even that to our notion was very
bad, as Christ had taught us to pray to God only. I saw that my dear
wife, and Mary and Susan, were greatly shocked at this, but they were to
see something worse, for before long we espied a great crowd moving
towards us, and we got up into a porch to