“No race in all America is better fitted to cope with the wilderness. The sertanejo is emphatically what the French call ‘a male.’ His Indian blood has given him endurance and a superhuman patience in adversity. From his white forefathers he has derived intelligence, the love of individual as opposed to general freedom inherent in the Latin races, good manners, and a sound dose of self-respect. His tinge of negro blood, although in the sertão it tends to disappear out of the race, at least in outward characteristics, may perchance have given him whatever qualities the African can claim. Far from demonstrative, he yet feels deeply; never forgets a benefit, and cherishes an insult as if it were a pearl of price, safe to revenge it when the season offers or when the enemy is off his guard. “Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in his short, curved saddle, a modification of the ‘recao’ used on the Pampas of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed. Then he sits upright as a lance, or, bending low over his horse’s neck, flies at a break-neck pace, dashing through the thick scrub of the _caatingas_ in a way that must be seen to be believed. Menacing boughs hang low and threaten him. He throws himself flat on the horse’s back and passes under them. A tree stands in his way right in the middle of his headlong career. If his horse, highly trained and bitted, fails to stop in time, he slips off like a drop of water from a pane of glass at the last moment, or if there is the smallest chance of passing on one side, lies low along his horse’s flank after the fashion of an old-time Apache or Comanche on the war-path.” [3] I quote the translation of this quatrain from Cunninghame-Graham. The third quatrain, here given as I find it in _Os Sertões_, 1914, fifth edition, differs in a single unimportant spelling from that used by the author of _A Brazilian Mystic_, who translates it: “Our King, Dom Sebastian, will come to visit us and free us from the reign of the dog.” I do not think this is correct, as the two final lines are a threat to the other side. VI MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA LIMA