Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/29

 stood; in his efforts to do which he was very amusing. Having no other medium through which we could make known our wants, we progressed rapidly in learning Portuguese. I was quite surprised to find little or no trace in Isidoro of that baseness of character which I had read of as being the rule amongst negroes in a slave country. Isidoro was an old man, with an anxious, lugubrious expression of countenance, and exhibited signs of having been overworked in his younger days, which I understood had been passed in slavery. The first traits I perceived in him were a certain degree of self-respect and a spirit of independence: these I found afterwards to be by no means rare qualities among the free negroes. Some time after he had entered our service, I scolded him one morning about some delay in getting breakfast. It happened that it was not his fault, for he had been detained, much against his will, at the shambles. He resented the scolding, not in an insolent way, but in a quiet, respectful manner, and told me how the thing had occurred; that I must not expect the same regularity in Brazil which is found in England, and that "paciencia" was a necessary accomplishment to a Brazilian traveller. There was nothing ridiculous about Isidoro; there was a gravity of demeanour and sense of propriety about him which would have been considered becoming in a serving-man in any country. This spirit of self-respect is, I think, attributable partly to the lenient treatment which slaves have generally received from their white masters in this part of Brazil, and partly to the almost total absence of prejudice against coloured people amongst the inhabitants. This