Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/262

 230 TRAVELS ON THE RIO NEGRO, [November,

sorry I could not oblige him, but that, as I was not accustomed to lying, I should be found out immediately if I attempted it : he, however, insisted that I might surely try, and I should soon learn to lie as well as the best of them. So I told him at once, that in my country a liar was considered as bad as a thief ; at which he seemed rather astonished. I gave him a short account of the pillory, as a proof of how much our ancestors detested lying and perjury, which much edified him, and he called his son (a nice boy of twelve or fourteen, just returned from school), to hear and profit by the example; showing, I think, that the people here are perfectly aware of the moral enormity of the practice, but that constant habit and universal custom, and above all, that false politeness which renders them unable verbally to deny anything, has rendered it almost a necessary evil. Any native of the country would have instantly agreed to Senhor Chagas's request, and would then have told every one of it up the river, always begging them not to say he told them, — thus telling a lie for themselves instead of for Senhor Chagas.

The next morning I reached Wanaw^ca, the sitio of Manoel Jacinto, and stayed to breakfast with him, luxuriating in milk with my coffee, and " coalhado," or curdled milk, pine-apple, and pacovas with cheese, — luxuries which, though every one might have, are seldom met with in the Rio Negro. His sitio is, perhaps, the prettiest on the river ; and this, simply because there is an open space of grass around the house, with some forest and fruit-trees scattered about it, affording shade for the cattle and sheep, and a most agreeable relief to the eye, long fatigued with eternal forest.

When I consider the excessively small amount of labour required in this country, to convert the virgin forest into green meadows and fertile plantations, I almost long to come over with half-a-dozen friends, disposed to work, and enjoy the country; and show the inhabitants how soon an earthly paradise might be created, which they had never even con- ceived capable of existing.

It is a vulgar error, copied and repeated from one book to another, that in the tropics the luxuriance of the vegetation overpowers the efforts of man. Just the reverse is the case : nature and the climate are nowhere so favourable to the labourer, and I fearlessly assert, that here, the " primeval "