She is illiterate, but clever. Her understanding is quick, and her perceptions keen. I think, with education she might have been a remarkable person. She is not particularly masculine in her appearance, and her manners are gentle and cheerful. She has not contracted any thing coarse or vulgar in her camp life, and I believe that no imputation has ever been substantiated against her modesty. One thing is certain, that her sex never was known until her father applied to her commanding officer to seek her. There is nothing very peculiar in her manners at table, excepting that she eats farinha with her eggs at breakfast and her fish at dinner, instead of bread, and smokes a segar after each meal; but she is very temperate. Sept. 8_th_, 1823.--I went with Mr. Hoste and Mr. Hately, of His Majesty's ship Briton, to Praya Grande, to see a party of Botecudo Indians, who are now there on a visit. As it is desired to civilise these people by every possible means, whenever they manifest a wish to visit the neighbourhood of the city, they are always encouraged and received kindly, fed to their hearts' content, and given clothes, and such trinkets and ornaments as they value. We saw about six men, and ten women, with some young children. The faces are rather square, with very high cheek-bones, and low contracted foreheads. Some of the young women are really pretty, of a light copper-colour, which glows all over when they blush; and two of the young men were decidedly handsome, with very dark eyes, (the usual colour of the eyes is hazel,) and aquiline noses; the rest were so disfigured by the holes cut in their lower lips and their ears to receive their barbarous ornaments, that we could scarcely tell what they were like. I had understood that the privilege of thus beautifying the face was reserved for the men,[122] but the women of this party were equally disfigured. We purchased from one of the men a mouth-piece, measuring an inch and a half in diameter. The ornaments used by these people are pieces of wood perfectly circular, which are inserted into the slit of the lip or ear, like a button, and are extremely frightful, especially when they are eating. It gives the mouth the appearance of an ape's; and the peculiar mumping it occasions is so hideously unnatural, that it gives credit to, if it did not originally suggest, the stories of their cannibalism.[123] The mouth is still more ugly without the lip-piece, the teeth appearing, and saliva running through. [Note 122: See Southy's Brazil, for the manners of the Tupayas. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the filiation of the Indian tribes, to know what relation the Botecudos bear to the Tupayas.]