are very primitive, and scarcely above a half-civilized condition. The floors of the dwellings are nothing but the natural ground. Household utensils are very scanty.

People eat with their fingers, instead of with knives and forks, and are expert in throwing the food into their mouths. Women seldom sit at the table with the men, especially if there be a stranger present; but, with the children, will take their meals sitting on the ground, the food being spread on a dry hide, instead of on a cloth. Some of the habits, such as bending the head down, and wiping the mouth, after eating, on the bare table, are repulsive enough. For a little fun, after a jovial meal, one of the naked children-five or six years old it may bewill be put upon the table, and made to frolic about by different ones giving it an amiable slap. Women belonging to the middle class, in the rural districts, make visits to their neighbors barefooted. The clothing of men is frequently nothing more than a shirt and a pair of trousers. If it is cold, they will wear the same red woolen blanket that they use for cover at night. The hammock is commonly used, instead of a bed, and is much the more tidy article of furniture, it being the custom to wash it twice a month. The ordinary hammock is of cotton, woven by hand at home, and quite durable. Some of them have neat variegated borders, and cost twelve dollars. So also out in the wilds of Matto-Grosso there will be seen large, square, and home-made hammocks, woven with different colors, which are worth forty dollars each. People sleep in the hammock at night without undressing. In the daytime the hammock has to serve for a seat, chairs being very scarce. Indeed, the long dry season on the interior table-lands tends to cause wooden furniture to fall to pieces. The same people who eat with their hands, it

must be said to their credit, are clean in regard to their bodies; they are in the habit of bathing frequently. In Matto-Grosso, women as well as men are addicted to smoking cigarettes. People have coffee served to them in a small cup in the morning before getting out of the hammock.

CHAPTER V.

THE EMPEROR OF BRAZIL.

"WHAT sort of a man is the Emperor?" This was the question most frequently asked me on my return from Brazil to the United States. Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil, is six feet tall, and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. He has an intellectual head, eyes a grayish blue (his mother was the Archduchess Leopoldine of Austria), beard full and gray, hair well trimmed, also gray, complexion florid, and expression sober. He is erect, and has a manly bearing. Being now upward of sixty years of age, he is not, of course, so sentimental a man as when, thirty years or so ago, he used to talk to American travelers about our poets. Descended from a long line of rulers, he came to the throne in 1840, at the early age of fourteen and a half years. His reign began fifteen years after Brazilian independence, for his father, being unwilling to accept so liberal a Constitution, frankly expressed his sentiments, honorably abdicated, though at great sacrifice of his feelings, and retired to Portugal. During this long period there have been some provincial rebellions and some local turmoil, but the Emperor has always shown a tact, energy, and humanity that helped much to restore order, quiet, and good feeling. Thus, while he has held the scepter his country has continued to prosper. Its

vast area has been held intact, and it has become an important empire. As I have looked at his gray head, when he has been driving in his carriage through the streets of Rio, I have said to myself, "There certainly is an august and venerable character."

The sixtieth anniversary of his birthday, December 2, 1885, was celebrated by the Municipal Council of Rio by the liberation of one hundred and thirty-three slaves, with funds contributed by private parties for that purpose. The whole amount thus contributed was 34,925 milreis ($12,256), of which the sum of 30,000 milreis was from some person unknown, but generally believed to be the Emperor himself. During the ceremony of conferring the letters of liberty upon the slaves, the Emperor is said to have expressed the wish that God would give him life to bestow liberty upon the last slave in Brazil.

My wife and I had the honor of being presented to the Emperor and Empress of Brazil, at the Palace of São Christovão, some little time after our arrival, and were graciously received by both. As was natural on this occasion, reference was made to the Emperor's visit in the United States, and I was glad to assure him of his popularity there. I told him he had many friends in the United States. He replied: "That is a good record." On his learning that the place of my nativity was in the same region of country as Boston, the Emperor said that Boston pleased him more than any other city in the United States. The first person he visited when in Boston was Mr. Clark, of Cambridge, the celebrated telescopemaker. As all the world knows, the Emperor is not only a scholar, but a man of great activity. He is unwearied in his visits to observe and encourage industrial and educational enterprise. Day after day one hears of his spend

ing two or three hours at a time at some of the public institutions or establishments-it may be a department of the Government, or the National Library or Museum, or a public-school examination, or a hospital, or the Military Academy, or the Government machine-shops, or the Arsenal.

Daniel Webster would get up at four o'clock in the morning to study a patent case, and has been seen thus early with his coat off, lying on the floor on his back under a machine, studying the principle and details of its operation. The Emperor does almost as much, for he has been known, on an American vessel at Rio, to descend on ladders through a narrow passage-way down to the bottom of the vessel and minutely study its machinery. He makes journeys, lasting several days, into the interior to assist in the opening of new railroads, and on these occasions he is frequently accompanied by the Empress, a very popular lady, of fine manners. A recent instance of his notice of scientific work, which he seems always particularly glad to honor, was his visit, October 10, 1884, on board the United States Coast-Survey vessel Charles S. Patterson, then lying at Rio on her way to Alaska for scientific service. He was welcomed on board by the American minister, ex-Governor Thomas A. Osborn, and Lieutenant Clover, commanding the vessel. He went through the vessel, examined carefully its library, scientific instruments, charts, new apparatus for measuring depth, as well as the newly invented steam launches. Later in the day he attended the opening of the new inclined-plane Corcovado Mountain Railway to Paineiras. The following day, according to the journals of October 11th, he spent three hours at the Government Office of Public Archives, where he read several documents of