The governor was a very young man, and a member of one of the first noble families of Portugal[65]. There are few situations in which it is so greatly in a man’s power to be much beloved or much disliked as that of governor of a province in Brazil; in which a man may be either the benefactor or the scourge of the people over whom he is sent to rule. My friend’s residence, in which I staid during my visit to Maranham, was situated by the water side, and almost within hail of the ships at anchor in the harbour. I was amused sometimes at the rapidity with which the fishermen paddled their canoes; these are long and of just width sufficient to allow of two men sitting abreast. I have seen in one of them as many as sixteen men in two rows, with each a paddle, which they move with quickness and great regularity. The last men upon the bench steer the canoe when necessary, placing the paddle so as to answer the purpose of a rudder; one or other of the two men steering, according to the direction which the vessel is to take. These fellows are mostly dark-coloured mulattos and blacks, and are entirely naked excepting the hats which they wear upon their heads; but when they come on shore, they partially cloath themselves. The print will give some idea of the strange appearance which they make. The nakedness of the negro slaves is also not sufficiently concealed; neither males nor females have any covering from the waist upwards, excepting on Sundays and holidays. Though the climate may not require any more cloathing, decency certainly does. I speak here of slaves who are at work in the streets, for the household servants are at least tolerably covered, and some of them are neatly and even gaudily dressed. At Pernambuco, the slaves are always decently cloathed. The criminals who are to be seen chained together, as at Pernambuco, are here more numerous; and in walking the streets, the clanking of the chains is continually striking the ear, reminding every man of the state of the government under which he resides. Such is the power of a governor, that a respectable person might be sentenced to this dreadful punishment, at least until redress could be obtained from the seat of the supreme government at Rio de Janeiro, a period of four months or more intervening.