Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/187

 1850.] FREI JOZB. 157

wait patiently and idly at Guia. For days I would go out into the forest, and not get a bird worth skinning; insects were equally scarce. The forest was gloomy, damp, and silent as death. Every other day was wet, and almost every afternoon there was a thunderstorm : and on these dull days and weary evenings, I had no resource but the oft-told tales of Senhor L., and the hackneyed conversation on buying and selling calico, on digging salsa, and cutting piassaba.

At length, however, the Padre, Frei Joze, arrived with Senhor Tenente Filisberto, the Commandante of Marabitanas. Frei Joze dos Santos Innocentos was a tall, thin, prematurely old man, thoroughly worn out by every kind of debauchery, his hands crippled, and his body ulcerated ; yet he still delighted in recounting the feats of his youth, and was celebrated as the most original and amusing story-teller in the province of Para. He was carried up the hill, from the river-side, in a hammock ; and took a couple of days to rest, before he commenced his ecclesiastical operations. I often went with Senhor L. to visit him, and was always much amused with his inexhaustible fund of anecdotes : he seemed to know everybody and everything in the Province, and had always something humorous to tell about them. His stories were, most of them, disgustingly coarse; but so cleverly told, in such quaint and expressive language, and with such amusing imitations of voice and manner, that they were irresistibly ludicrous. There is always, too, a particular charm in hearing good anecdotes in a foreign language. The point is the more interesting, from the obscure method of arriving at it ; and the knowledge you acquire of the various modes of using the peculiar idioms of the language, causes a pleasure quite distinct from that of the story itself. Frei Joze never repeated a story twice in the week he was with us ; and Senhor L., who has known him for years, says he had never before heard many of the anecdotes he now related. He had been a soldier, then a friar in a convent, and afterwards a parish priest : he told tales of his convent life, just like what we read in Chaucer of their doings in his time. Don Juan was an innocent compared with Frei Joze ; but he told us he had a great respect for his cloth, and never did anything disreputable— during the day I

At length the baptisms took place : there were some fifteen or twenty Indian children of all ages, to undergo the operation