habitation, although I was invited by the owner of one of the houses to accept the accommodation it afforded. As the person whose horse I had hired could not leave till the following day, I was obliged, against my will, to await his convenience. Soon after my arrival I sent Pedro to purchase some milk for breakfast, and he returned with a large basinful, for which he said the people would not take money; and in the course of the forenoon I had similar presents sent to me from two other persons. During the season of the rains, and for a few months afterwards, milk is very abundant, and of excellent quality, but it is nowhere to be procured except in large towns, during the last four or five months of the dry season. The inhabitants prepare a little cheese, but have no idea of making butter; the milk remaining after breakfast, for they milk their cows only in the morning, is allowed to stand till night, when from the heat of the day it becomes curdled; this dish, of which they are very fond, is generally sweetened with a kind of unclarified sugar, to which they give the name of _Rapadura_, and which is brought from the country above Icó; it is formed into cakes about six inches long, three broad, and two thick; during a long time I was obliged to use this as a substitute for sugar, but although at first not very agreeable, I at length became so fond of it as to prefer it to sugar itself, and such I found to be the case with the people in this part of the country; I have repeatedly seen them make a meal of a lump of this with a little farinha. The greater part of the inhabitants of the district through which we were journeying, are rearers of cattle (_criadores de gado_), but none of them possess such immense herds as I afterwards found to exist in the provinces of Piauhy and Goyaz. Provisions were here very cheap, in consequence of the small demand for them; an ox could be purchased for about twenty-five shillings, and a sheep or a goat for four or five; Pedro bought a fowl in fine condition for about twopence halfpenny, and eight eggs for a penny. I observed very few cotton plantations, as these people grow it only for their own use; they also cultivate a little mandiocca, the root of which produces a kind of cassava, well-known all over Brazil under the name of farinha; this, together with dried beef (carne secca), forms their chief food; the farinha is either used in its dry state, when it is much of the consistence of saw dust, or is made up into a kind of pudding called Pirão, by mixing it with boiling water, or with milk when that article is abundant.