the ground, greatly increases
the risk; but I comfort myself with the reflection that a knowledge of
this will lead to redoubled precaution to prevent such a disaster. She
is withal a good sea-boat, and as well calculated for the service as
could be desired.

"Most of her hands had been with me for three years or upward,
and the rest were highly recommended. They are, almost without
exception, young, able-bodied, and active--fit in all respects for
enduring hardship and privation, or the more dangerous reverse of
self-indulgence, and willing to follow the fortunes of the Royalist and
her commander through all the various shades of good or evil fortune
which may betide. A fine, though slow passage took us to Rio Janeiro,
which presents features of natural beauty rarely equaled. The weather
during our stay was hot in the extreme, and very wet, which marred,
in some degree, the satisfaction I should otherwise have enjoyed in
wandering about this picturesque country. I passed ten days, however,
very agreeably, and departed with some regret from this brief visit to
America and from my friends (if they will so allow me to call them)
on board H.M.S. Calliope. I must not omit to mention that, during my
stay, I visited a slaver, three of which (prizes to our men-of-war)
lay in the harbor. It is a most loathsome and disgusting sight. Men,
women, and children--the aged and the infant--crowded into a space as
confined as the pens in Smithfield, not, however, to be released by
death at the close of the day, but to linger, diseased and festering,
for weeks or months, and then to be discharged into perpetual and
hopeless slavery. I wish I could say that our measures tended toward
the abolition of this detestable traffic; but from all that I could
learn and observe, I am forced to confess that the exertions made to
abolish slavery are of no avail in this country, and never will be
till harsher means are resorted to.

"There are points of view in which this traffic wears a more cheering
aspect; for any one comparing the puny Portuguese or the bastard
Brazilian with the athletic negro, cannot but allow that the ordinary
changes and chances of time will place this fine country in the hands
of the latter race. The negro will be fit to cultivate the soil, and
will thrive beneath the tropical sun of the Brazils. The enfeebled
white man grows more enfeebled and more degenerate with each succeeding
generation, and languishes in a clime which