The section in which the government buildings and custom house and the principal retail stores, theaters, and places of amusement are to be found is the one called São Antonio, on a large island a little to the southeast. This part of the town is much better built. Many of the old houses, as in Recife, are reminiscent, some of the early Portuguese, others of the Dutch occupation—tall, pointed-roof structures, painted white or pale blue or pink—but the newer ones, and the streets generally, are more sightly and characteristic of the indulgent, easy-going, artistic temperament of the people. The fashionable residence district is called Boa Vista and lies back on the mainland, where the bishop has his palace. Most of the houses here are the charming one-story affairs, surrounded by beautiful gardens, so suited to life in the tropics. Three or four miles to the north is a suburban section called Olinda, where many of the old families still have their homes. In colonial times, as Dawson tells us, when this part of the country was supplying Europe with nearly all of the sugar it used and the planters were rolling in wealth, this “was the largest town in Brazil and the one where there was the most luxurious living and the most polite society. Great sums were spent in fêtes, religious processions, fairs, and dinners. The simple Jesuit Fathers were shocked to see such velvets and silks, such luxurious beds of crimson damask, such extravagance in the trappings of the saddle horses. Carriages were unknown and, instead, litters and sedan chairs were used, and these remained in common use until very recent times.” Lots of these old houses and customs still exist, and there are many new features of the town that are worth seeing. São Salvador da Bahia, “where the wicked Brazilian cigars come from,” was the provincial capital once, and the seat of government of the whole Portuguese empire when the King was forced by Napoleon’s aggressions to take refuge in Brazil. Formerly, too, it was the headquarters for diamonds, before the mines in the south and in South Africa were developed. Now it is the capital of the rich Bay State, and is the third of the big cities in point of size and importance—though here the percentage of negro blood is much higher than anywhere else in the country.