Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/60

the Pará people were much inferior to Southern Brazilians in energy and industry. Provisions and house rents being cheap and the wants of the people few—for they were content with food and lodging of a quality which would be spurned by paupers in England—they spent the greater part of their time in sensual indulgences and in amusements which the government and wealthier citizens provided for them gratis. The trade, wholesale and retail, was in the hands of the Portuguese, of whom there were about 2500 in the place. Many handicrafts were exercised by coloured people, mulattos, mamelucos, free negroes and Indians. The better sort of Brazilians dislike the petty details of shopkeeping, and if they cannot be wholesale merchants prefer the life of planters in the country however small may be the estate and the gains. The negroes constituted the class of field-labourers and porters; Indians were universally the watermen, and formed the crews of the numberless canoes of all sizes and shapes which traded between Pará and the interior. The educated Brazilians, not many of whom are of pure Caucasian descent—for the immigration of Portuguese, for many years, has been almost exclusively of the male sex—are courteous, lively, and intelligent people. They were gradually weaning themselves of the ignorant, bigoted notions which they inherited from their Portuguese ancestors, especially those entertained with regard to the treatment of women. Formerly the Portuguese would not allow their wives to go into society, or their daughters to learn reading and writing. In 1848, Brazilian ladies were only just beginning to emerge from this inferior