“When the country was opened to the enterprise of foreigners, it was not at all surprising that the City of Rio and its commerce should have increased with an unexampled rapidity. Such was the avidity of speculation in England, that everything was sent to Brazil without the smallest regard to its fitness or adaptation to the climate, or the wants of the people who were to purchase them. The shops were ransacked and swept; and the consideration was not what should be sent, but how soon could it arrive. In this way, when the multitude of cases were opened at the custom-house, I have been told, the Brazilians could not contain their astonishment and mirth at the incongruous things they saw displayed before them; implements useful only to Canadians and Greenlanders, and comforts and conveniences fit only for polar latitudes, were cased up and sent in abundance to regions between the tropics. “Among this ingenious selection was a large supply of warm blankets, warming-pans to heat them, and, to complete the climax of absurdity, skates to enable the Brazilians to enjoy wholesome exercise on the ice, in a region where a particle of frost or a flake of snow was never seen. However ridiculous or wasteful this may seem, these incongruous articles were not lost in a new country, where necessity and ingenuity could apply things to a use for which they were never intended by the sage exporters. Even the apparently hopeless and inconvertible skate was turned to a useful purpose. Then, as well as now, there was nothing in the country so scarce as wrought iron for shoeing mules and horses; and though “ferradors,” or smiths, are to be met at every rancho, “ferraduras,” or shoes, are seldom to be had. When the people, therefore, found they could not use these contrivances on their own, they applied them to their horses’ feet; and many an animal has actually travelled on English skates from Rio to Villa Rica. “The bustle and activity of the place give a high idea of the commerce of Rio. A multitude of negroes are constantly employed, who labour without intermission the whole day in removing packages of different kinds. They are generally lying open, either to be, or after having been examined; and it presents really a curious and interesting spectacle to pass along the courts and warerooms, through manufactures of every kind, and from all parts of the globe.