The Indians are in general a quiet and inoffensive people, they have not much fidelity, but although they desert they will not injure those whom they have served. Their lives are certainly not passed in a pleasant manner under the eye of a director, by whom they are imperiously treated, consequently it is not surprising that they should do all in their power to leave their villages and be free from an immediate superior; but even when they have escaped from the irksome dominion of the director they never settle in one place. The Indian scarcely ever plants for himself, or if he does, rarely waits the crop; he sells his maize or mandioc for half its value, before it is fit to be gathered, and removes to some other district. His favourite pursuits are fishing and hunting; a lake or rivulet will alone induce him to be stationary for any length of time. He has a sort of independent feeling, which makes him spurn at any thing like a wish to deprive him of his own free agency; to the director he submits, because it is out of his power to resist. An Indian can never be persuaded to address the master to whom he may have hired himself, by the term of Senhor, though it is made use of by the whites in speaking to each other, and by all other free people in the country; but the negroes also use it in speaking to their masters, therefore the Indian will not; he addresses his temporary master by the term of _amo_ or _patram_, protector or patron. The reluctance to use the term of Senhor may perhaps have commenced with the immediate descendants of those who were in slavery, and thus the objection may have become traditionary. They may refuse to give by courtesy what was once required from them by law. However, if it began in this manner, it is not now continued for the same reason, as none of those with whom I conversed, and they were very many, appeared to know that their ancestors had been obliged to work as slaves.