I had a visit in October from a strange old man, whose age was generally supposed to border upon ninety years. He was a creole black, and had been a slave upon the plantation of Santos Cosmo e Damiam in the Varzea to the southward of Recife; he had settled at Iguaraçu, after he obtained his manumission, having married when he was about seventy years of age, a young woman of his own colour; and he was now surrounded by a young family. This man did not reckon his age by years, but by the governors; and as each of these, with few exceptions, remained at the head of the province only three years, something near the truth could be collected. This mode of computation is very common. I have often, on asking the age of any person, received for answer, that the individual concerning whom the enquiry was made, had been born in the first, second, or third year of such a governor. The dreadful famine of 1793 is also an era from which the peasants date many circumstances. Old Apollinario was staying at Conception with a friend, and I requested him to come down to my place every evening for the purpose of teaching some of the young persons their prayers, a task of which I knew him to be fond, as he considered this to be a meritorious action; one by which he would have still further services to plead in his favour with the Virgin and St. Peter, as he himself told me. When he came to give his report to me of the progress of each negro, I liked much to keep him, that I might converse with him. He often spoke of the Jesuits, under the name of the _Padres da Companhia_; he was fond of them, but he added, “I must not speak well of them, for our prince does not like them; and yet they did a great deal of good too.” He said that they were true and saint-like _padres_, very different to those of the present day. He was much surprised at my knowing any thing about them; he said, “You were not alive at the time they were here, and even if you had been alive, you could not have been in Pernambuco; therefore how is it that you know of their existence at the time of which I speak.” I never could make him perfectly comprehend how I obtained my knowledge of them. But he was not the only person whose comprehension, thus taken by surprise, could not contain the new ideas which were imparted, by the knowledge of the existence of books spread all over the world, and of men who wrote for the instruction of others. Some of these people with whom I conversed were much puzzled, when I spoke of the variety of languages and countries in the world; “then,” they would say, “how is it that people understand each other?” To this I answered, that these languages were to be acquired by study. “Yes, I understand you,” they would rejoin “you are all much cleverer than we are here[137]; we could not learn any language but our own.” These people were invariably humble, and always ready to receive instruction.