tried
to raise him, but the slightest movement gave him excruciating pain.
As some of his bones seemed to be broken, a young man who had
accompanied us, went off immediately to procure assistance, and have
him taken to the hospital. All the information I could obtain relating
to this unfortunate being, was that at one time, he had been an officer
in the army, and was now doing penance for a murder he had committed in
his youth. We also visited a convent, the nuns belonging to which
prepare preserved fruits for sale. Unlike the one I visited at Bahia,
we could only speak to, not see, those who were within. The fruit was
put upon a shelf of a revolving kind of cupboard, and in this manner
sent out to us; the money and empty plates were returned in the same
way. Like all the preserves I have met with in the country, those we
had here were spoiled with too much sugar.
For
the first few days, my walks did not extend much beyond the suburbs of
the town. The country being quite flat, the soil sandy, and the dry
season having commenced, the herbaceous vegetation in the more exposed
situations was beginning to suffer for want of rain. For many miles
round the town, the Cocoa-nut and other large Palms grow in the
greatest profusion, mixed with fine trees of the Cashew-nut, then
loaded with their curious and refreshing fruit of a yellow or reddish
colour, and the Jack, the Bread-fruit, and the Orange. Much attention,
I observed, is paid to the gardens attached to the houses near the
town, many of them being tastefully laid out, and adorned with
beautiful shrubs, partly Brazilian and partly of Indian origin. The
Mimosa and other hedges, as about Rio, are festooned with climbers,
among which the Co,w-itch plant (Stizolobium urens) is the most abundant. There is also in many places a large species of Dodder (Cuscuta), which
climbs over the hedges with its long yellow cord-like branches, and
gives them a most singular appearance. The sea-coast yielded me many
curious plants, particularly one part of it about eight miles to the
southward of the town, where the soil for some distance inland is very
sandy and covered with shrubs. There I found in great plenty a new kind
of those curious mossy Cacti (Mdocactus depressus, Hook.); it was but a small
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