I was removed from this neighbour’s house, after a few days, in a hammock; but finding that the disorder increased, I sent for the manager, an old man of colour, whose wife attended upon me. By my desire, he collected a sufficient number of bearers, as it was my wish to be carried to Recife. About five o’clock in the afternoon we set off; there were sixteen men to bear the hammock by turns, and the manager was likewise in company; of these persons only two were slaves. After we had passed the wood and had arrived upon a good road, the bearers proceeded at a long walk approaching to a run. Their wild chorus, which they sung as they went along,—their mischief in throwing stones at the dogs by the road side, and in abuse, half joking, half wishing for an opportunity of quarrelling, confident in their numbers, and that as they were in the service of a white man he would bring them out of any scrape;—was very strange, and had I been less unwell, this journey would have much amused me. As we passed through Olinda, a woman asked my men if they carried a dead body (for it is in this manner that they are brought from a distance for interment). One of the bearers answered, “No, it is the devil[82]:” and then turning to me, said, “Is it not so, my master[83]?” I said, “Yes,” and the good woman walked away, saying, “Ave-Maria, the Lord forbid[84].” The wind was high and some rain fell, as we crossed the Olinda sands; we arrived at Recife between nine and ten o’clock. The bearers stopped before we approached the gate way at the entrance of the town, that each man might, in some way or other, conceal his long, unlawful knife; without one of these weapons no peasant or great man leaves his home, notwithstanding the prohibition.