Journal of a Voyage to Brazil: And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823Callcott, Maria, Lady
History
Journal of a Voyage to Brazil: And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823
Callcott, Maria, Lady
Brazil -- Description and travel
The scene in the Campo presented all manner of varieties. Within the
enclosure where the artillery was placed, all was gravity and
business-like attention: the soldiers on the alert, and the officers in
groups, canvassing the events of the preceding night, and the
circumstances of the day; and here and there, both within and without
the circle, an orator was stationed with his group of auditors around
him, listening to his political discussions, or patriotic harangues. In
the open part of the Campo were straggling soldiers, or whole companies,
escaped from the heated crowd of the enclosure: horses, mules, and
asses, many of all lying down from sheer fatigue. In all directions,
negroes were coming, laden with capim or maize for the horses, or
bearing on their heads cool drink and sweetmeats for the men. In one
corner, a group of soldiers, exhausted with travel and watching, lay
asleep; in another, a circle of black boys were gambling: in short, all
ways of beguiling the time while waiting for a great event might be
seen; from those who silently and patiently expected the hour, in solemn
dread of what the event might be, to those who, merely longing for
action, filled up the interval with what might make it pass most
lightly. I was well pleased with the view I had of the people in the
Campo, and still better as the day wore away, for I staid sometime, to
feel assured that all was to pass without bloodshed, beyond the two or
three persons killed accidentally during the night.
On our return to the ship, we were stopped for some time in the palace
square, by a great concourse of people assembled to witness the entrance
of the first Brazilian guard into the palace, while the last Portuguese
guard marched out, amid the loud huzzas of the people; and on reaching
the stairs, where we were to embark, we found the last of one regiment,
and the first of another, about to sail for the Praya Grande, so that
the city may sleep in security to-night.
The inhabitants generally, but especially the foreign merchants, are
well pleased to see the Lisbon troops dismissed; for they have long been
most tyrannically brutal to strangers, to negroes, and not unfrequently
to Brazilians; and, for many weeks past, their arrogance has been
disgusting to both prince and people.[88]
[Note 88: The heavy step of the Portuguese infantry has earned for
them the nickname of _Pedechumbo_, or leaden foot; now applied to all
partisans of Portugal.]
The appearance of the city is melancholy enough: the shops are shut up,
guards are parading the streets, and every body looks anxious. The
shopkeepers are all employed as militia: they are walking about with
bands and belts of raw hides over their ordinary clothes, but their
arms and ammunition were all in good order, and excepting these and the
English, I saw nobody at all out of doors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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