Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/92

34 attend, nor were gentlemen's sons ever excused; each of these was dressed in a black cassock with a short red cloak reaching half-way down the shoulders, and carried in his hand a lantern hung on the end of a pole about six or seven feet long. The light caused by this (for there were always at least 200 lanterns) is greater than can be imagined; I myself, who saw it out of the cabin windows, called my messmates, imagining that the town was on fire. Besides this travelling religion, any one walking through the streets has opportunity enough to show his attachment to any saint in the calendar, for every corner and almost every house has before it a little cupboard in which some saint or other keeps his residence; and lest he should not see his votaries in the night, he is furnished with a small lamp which hangs before his little glass window. To these it is very customary to pray and sing hymns with all the vociferation imaginable, as may be imagined when I say that I and every one in the ship heard it very distinctly every night, though we lay at least half a mile from the town.

The government of this place seems to me to be much more despotic even than that of Portugal, although many precautions have been taken to render it otherwise. The chief magistrates are the Viceroy, the Governor of the town, and a Council, whose number I could not learn, but only that the viceroy had in this the casting vote. Without the consent of this council nothing material should be done, yet every day shows that the viceroy and governor at least, if not all the rest, do the most unjust things without consulting any one; putting a man into prison without giving him a hearing, and keeping him there till he is glad at any rate to get out, without asking why he was put in, or at best, sending him to Lisbon to be tried there without letting his family here know where he is gone, as is very common. This we experienced while here, for every one who had interpreted for our people, or who had only assisted in buying provisions for them, was put into jail, merely, I suppose, to show us their power. I should, however, except from