The next morning, about nine o’clock, we reached a well to our great joy, but, fortunately for us, the water was so bad, that we could not drink much; it was as usual dirty and brackish, but of the first draught I shall never forget the delight;—when I tried a second, I could not take it, the taste was so very nauseous. On looking round, we saw some goats, Julio went towards them, and then discovered some fowls, proceeded a little farther and found an inhabited cottage. He came and gave us the joyful intelligence; we determined to remain here to rest, if the people could give us any hopes of food for our horses. I found an elderly woman and her two daughters in the hut; the father was not at home. The old woman seemed quite astonished to hear that we had crossed the Seara-Meirim; she said, she did not know how soon she and her family might be obliged to leave their cottage, as many others had done. She directed the major and my people to a dell at some distance, where dry grass and leaves might perhaps still be picked up; she said, that it was the last place which could have any, for travellers did not in general know of it, and she and her husband made a point of not discovering it. But I paved the way, by making her a present of some _farinha_, throwing maize to the fowls, and by pouring in an immense number of _minhas Senhoras_. I had purchased a kid and a fowl, and laid down the money immediately. Persons circumstanced as these were, are sometimes robbed in a most unpardonable manner by travellers, who take advantage of their houses, eat their poultry, and leave them without paying; but considering the entire non-existence of law in these regions, I am only surprized that greater enormities are not committed; however, every man feels it to be his own case, if he has a house and family; he is aware that on going from home, those he may leave are in the same helpless state. These persons and their property were at the mercy of any travellers; if they had been murdered, and the cottage from being deserted began to fall, it would have been supposed that its inhabitants, like many others, had decamped, and no enquiry would be made about the direction they had taken, such is the rambling disposition of the people in general, and the state of this part of the country, at the period of which I speak. They have nothing to make them remain upon one spot, neither comfort nor security.