1850.] SENHOR BRAND AO. 129
forest, planted orange, tamarind, mango, and many other fruit- bearing trees, made pleasant avenues, gardens, and pastures, stocked them well with cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, and set himself down to the full enjoyment of a country life. But about twenty years ago, while his family were yet young, disturbances and revolutions broke out, and he, as well as all natives of Portugal, though he had signed the constitution of the Empire, and was in heart a true Brazilian, became an object of dislike and suspicion to many of the more violent of the revolutionists. A tribe of Indians who resided near him, and to whom he had shown constant kindness, were incited to burn down his house and destroy his property. This they did effectually, rooting up his fruit-trees, burning his crops, killing his cattle and his servants, and his wife and family only escaped from their murderous arrows by timely flight to the forest. During the long years of anarchy and confusion which followed, he was appointed a magistrate in Barra, and was unable to look after his estate. His wife died, his children married, and he of course felt then little interest in restoring things to their former state.
He is a remarkably intelligent man, fond of reading, but without books, and with a most tenacious memory. He has taught himself French, which he now reads with ease, and through it he has got much information, though of course rather tinged with French prejudice. He has several huge quarto volumes of Ecclesiastical History, and is quite learned in all the details of the Councils, and in the history of the Reformation. He can tell you, from an old work on geography, without maps, the length and breadth of every country in Europe, and the main particulars respecting it. He is about seventy years of age, thirsting for information, and has never seen a map ! Think of this, ye who roll in intellectual luxury. In this land of mechanics' institutions and cheap literature few have an idea of the real pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, — of the longing thirst for information which there is no fountain to satisfy. In his conversation there was something racy and refreshing : such an absence of information, but such a fertility of ideas. He had read the Bible in Portuguese, as a forbidden book, though the priests make no very great objection to it here ; and it was something new to hear a man's opinions of it who had first read it at a mature age, and
