Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/36

14 rockets are looked upon as quite a part of the religious ceremony: on asking an old Negro why they were let off in the morning, he looked up to the sky and answered very gravely, "Por Deos" (for God). Music, noise, and fireworks are the three essentials to please a Brazilian populace; and for a fortnight we had enough of them, for besides the above-mentioned amusements, they fire off guns, pistols, and cannon from morning to night.

After many inquiries, we at last succeeded in procuring a house to suit us. It was situated at Nazare, about a mile and a half south of the city, just opposite a pretty little chapel. Close behind, the forest commences, and there are many good localities for birds, insects, and plants in the neighbourhood. The house consisted of a ground-floor of four rooms, with a verandah extending completely round it, affording a rather extensive and very pleasant promenade. The grounds contained oranges and bananas, and a great many forest and fruit trees, with coffee and mandiocca plantations. We were to pay twenty milreis a month rent (equal to £2 5s.), which is very dear for Pará, but we could get no other house so convenient. Isidora took possession of an old mud-walled shed as the domain of his culinary operations; we worked and took our meals in the verandah, and seldom used the inner rooms but as sleeping apartments.

We now found much less difficulty in mustering up sufficient Portuguese to explain our various wants. We were some time getting into the use of the Portuguese, or rather Brazilian, money, which is peculiar and puzzling. It consists of paper, silver, and copper. The rey is the unit or standard, but the milrey, or thousand reis, is the value of the lowest note, and serves as the unit in which. accounts are kept; so that the system is a decimal one, and very easy, were it not complicated by several other coins, which are used in reckoning; as the vintem, which is twenty reis, the patac, three hundred and twenty, and the crusado, four hundred, in all of which coins sums of money are often reckoned, which is puzzling to a beginner, because the patac is not an integral part of the miley (three patacs and two vintems making a milrey), and the Spanish dollars which are current here are worth six patacs. The miley was originally worth 5s. 7 1/2d., but now fluctuates from 2s. 1d. to as. 4d., or not quite half, owing probably to the