In the afternoon I attended Mr. P. to see the negroes receive their daily allowance of food. It consisted of farinha, kidney-beans, and dried beef, a fixed measure of each to every person. One man asked for two portions, on account of the absence of his neighbour, whose wife had desired it might be sent to her to make ready for him by the time he returned. Some enquiries which Mr. P. made about this person, induced me to ask his history. It seems he is a mulatto boatman, the most trusty servant on the estate, and rich, because he is industrious enough to have earned a good deal of private property, besides doing his duty to his master. In his youth, and he is not now old, he had become attached to a creole negress, born, like him, on the estate; but he did not marry her till he had earned money enough to purchase her, in order that their children, if they had any, might be born free. Since that time, he has become rich enough to purchase himself, even at the high price which such a slave might fetch; but his master will not sell him his freedom, his services being too valuable to lose, notwithstanding his promise to remain on the estate and work. Unfortunately these people have no children; therefore on their death their property, now considerable, will revert to the master. Had they children, as the woman is free, they might inherit the mother’s property; and there is nothing to prevent the father’s making over all he earns to her. I wish I had the talent of novel writing, for the sake of this slave’s story; but my writing, like my drawing, goes no farther than sketching from nature, and I make better artists welcome to use the subject. The evening was very stormy: deep clouds had covered the Organ Mountains; and vivid lightning, sharp rain, and boisterous wind, had threatened the fazenda with a night of terror. But it passed away, leaving all the grand and gloomy beauty of a departed thunder-storm in a mountainous country; when the moon broke through the clouds, and the night seemed, from the contrast with the last few hours, even lovelier than the last. Then just as the "Sable clouds Turned forth their silver lining on the night, And cast a gleam over the tufted grove."