There lived at this village formerly a poor man who died of consumption, dragging on for some time a miserable existence. The opinion is general in Pernambuco and other parts which I visited, that consumption is contagious; and from this notion, any person so afflicted is immediately separated from the rest of the family. A hovel is erected at a distance from any habitation, and the miserable patient is removed to it, and is shunned by every one, even receiving his food without the bearer approaching the hovel. I can conceive no situation more wretched than this,—to be in a weak and helpless state, and to be forsaken,—to be doomed to solitude, and to have, perhaps for years, no thoughts but those of death; nothing to relieve the mind, and to divert the attention. I know not, however, whether the opinion of contagion respecting this disorder is totally founded on prejudice, or whether there is some truth in it; for I have heard from persons who are not liable to hasty decisions, many stories which seem to indicate that there is some reason for the precautions which are taken. They are, doubtless, carried too far; they are insisted upon to a savage excess, which fails not to bring to the recollection the custom of some tribes of Indians, who forsake their aged, their infirm, and their dying kinsmen. I frequently visited the plantation of Amparo, which is conducted in the manner which I had attempted at Jaguaribe; but here it was performed with more system. The owner of this place employed constantly great numbers of free workmen, of all casts; but the Indians formed the principal part of them, and as their master, I suppose, finds it impossible to keep them under due controul, (for the wish to do so he must of course have,) the disturbances which are raised upon the estate, and which are entered into at other places by his men are very numerous[110]. But this person would have done much service to the country in general, if he had managed to keep them in due order, for in that case he would have proved the possibility of the introduction of free men as daily labourers, without the opinion of their unruliness being unavoidable, having been adopted by great numbers of the planters. The state of Amparo is often mentioned as an objection to hired labourers, from the want of reflecting that in the instance in question, the evil proceeds not from the plan itself, but from its execution. It is too true that the lower orders of people are unruly, and upon slight provocations, murders have been committed; but does not this proceed from the propensity which the higher ranks shew to protect those who reside upon their lands? Thus they display their influence with men in office, when they plead for the pardon of a criminal, and feel a considerable degree of gratification,—of self-importance in the idea that an individual should have been preserved from punishment by their means, even though he had only been treated according to his