Their slaves, for the English are all served by slaves, indeed, eat a sort of porridge of mandioc meal with small squares of jerked beef stirred into it, or, as their greatest luxury, stewed caravansas; and this is likewise the principal food of the lower classes even of the free inhabitants. In the fruit season, pumpkins, jackfruit, cocoa-nut, and melons, nearly take place of the mandioc. The huts of the poor are formed of upright poles, with branches of trees wattled between, and covered and lined either with cocoa-leaf mats, or clay; the roofs are also thatched. The better houses are built either of a fine blue stone, quarried on the beach of Victoria, or of brick. They are all white-washed: where the floor is not laid with wood, a fine red brick, six to nine inches square, and three in thickness, is used, and they are roofed with round red tiles. The houses are generally of one story high, with a room or two above by way of a look-out house. Under the house is generally a sort of cellar, in which the slaves live; and really I have sometimes wondered that human beings could exist in such. _Friday, 2d November._--Several of our people having yielded to the temptations of some worthless persons in the town, who induce sailors to desert in order that they themselves may profit by the premium given for the discovery of deserters, and having consequently swam on shore, the frigate has been moved up the harbour as far as Bom Fim, and it is intended to take her up still higher. I am glad of the opportunity of seeing more of this beautiful bay, and shall endeavour to land on the Ilha do Medo, or the point of Itaparica, where the first adventurers from Europe underwent hardship that appear hardly credible in our modern days. We also wish to examine the harbour within the funil or passage between the two islands, and into which the river or creek of Nazareth, which supplies Bahia with great part of the mandioc flour consumed there, runs.