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 milrey (three patacs and two vintems making a milrey), and the Spanish dollars which are current here are worth six patacs. The milrey was originally worth 5_s._ 7½_d._, but now fluctuates from 2_s._ 1_d._ to 2_s._ 4_d._, or not quite half, owing probably to the over-issue of paper and its inconvertibility into coin. The metallic currency, being then of less nominal than real value, would soon have been melted down, so it became necessary to increase its value. This was done by restamping it and making it pass for double. Thus a vintem restamped is two vintems; a patac with 160 on it counts for 320 reis; a twovintem piece counts for four. The newer coinage also having been diminished in size with the depreciation of the currency, there has arisen such a confusion, that the size of the coin is scarcely any index to its value, and when two pieces are of exactly the same size one may be double the value of the other. An accurate examination of each coin is therefore necessary, which renders the making up of a large sum a matter requiring much practice and attention. There were living on the premises three Negroes who had the care of the coffee- and fruit-trees, and of the mandiocca field. The principal one, named Vincente, was a fine stout handsome Negro, who was celebrated as a catcher of “bichos,” as they here call all insects, reptiles, and small animals. He soon brought us in several insects. One was a gigantic hairy spider, a _Mygale_, which he skilfully dug out of its hole in the earth, and caught in a leaf. He told us he was once bitten by one, and was bad some time. When questioned on the matter, he said the “bicho” was “muito mal” (very bad), and concluded with an expressive “whew-w-w,” which just answers to a schoolboy’s “Aint it though?” and intimates that there can be no doubt at all about the matter. It seems probable therefore that this insect is not armed in vain with such powerful fangs, but is capable of inflicting with them an envenomed wound.