Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/312

280 clay, the palaces of the cupims, or white ants, which they are said to desert when finished. They must be very fond of building. The sabiá (the Brazilian nightingale) sang loud in the waving tops of the "roast-fish tree." We passed over wooded hills, broad plains, and across running streams and small falls. At last we reached the bottom of the great Serra Mantiqueira. The ascent was very bad and steep for ten miles, and through a Scotch mist and rain. All the men had to get down and walk, and even so we often stuck in deep mudholes, and appeared as if we were going to fall over on one side. I now comprehended why my baggage could not come; my heart ached for the mules. Travelling on the top of that coach was a very peculiar sensation. When we were on plain ground and in full gallop we heaved to and fro as if in a rolling sea, and when going fast it was like a perpetual succession of buck-jumping, especially over the caldeiroês, lines of mud like a corduroy across the road. On the descent our coachman entertained us with a history of how he once broke his legs and the guard his ribs and the whole coach came to grief at that particular spot.

Our next station (and it seemed so far) was Nascisuento Novo; then came Registro Velho, where travellers used to be searched for gold and diamonds, and amusing stories are told how they used to conceal them in their food or keep them in their mouths. Here we had our last change of mules, and here the Morro Velho Company from the mines halted for the night, and we found to our delight that we should find a special troop of them waiting at Barbacena to convey