ly enough,
notwithstanding the orchestral entertainment. At sunrise, when I opened
my eyes again, the boy was still at it. I removed the cotton from my ears
... yes, indeed, the identical two chords!

The boy and the guitar will perhaps never know what a narrow escape they
both had! In despair I gave orders to get the mules ready at once in
order to depart immediately.

Those halts in farmhouses were dreary beyond words. The Brazilians of the
interior--quite unlike those of the big towns in or near the coast--were
sullen people, with no conversation--or else too much--no interest in
anything, no art, no imagination. They were timid and vain to an
incredible degree, suspicious, avaricious, and easily offended, so that
the greatest tact had to be used with them. They were ignorant of
everything even in their own immediate neighbourhood. Yet, mind you, with
all that, extraordinarily kind and ultra-polite of speech. They all
seemed turned out of the same mould. When you had seen one you had seen
them all. There were, of course, a few exceptions--Brazilians of recent
German, French, Italian or Spanish origin--but these exceptions were
indeed very rare in the interior.

Ill-fed, his blood corrupted and impoverished to the utmost degree--his
health, therefore, never in a normal condition--his finances at the
lowest ebb, the Brazilian of the interior had little indeed to make him
happy. His home at best was as miserable and dirty as possible. The room
generally given to an honoured guest--the best in the house--was the
granary. More than once was my camp-bed perched on a mound of Indian
corn. And the furniture? A wooden bench of the roughest
description--really an instrument of torture rather than an article of
comfort; a few wooden pegs in the wall for hanging rifles or other
things; an occasional wooden bedstead; seldom, very seldom, a stool or a
chair--in any case, never a comfortable one such as you invariably find
with peasants and old-established colonists of most other countries. They
cared not for comfort. Their beds, a mass of rags, were shared by masters
and hens and dogs. Everything was in an abandoned state, everything had
fallen to rack and ruin. All looked as if they were tired of life, too
indolent to move. They seldom saluted when you met them on the trail, nor
when you entered their houses; if they did, they rapidly touched their
dilapidated hats as if afraid to spoil them. Never did you perceive a
smile upo