It is this universal love of trade which leads, I think, to three great vices very prevalent here--drinking, gambling, and lying,--besides a whole host of trickeries, cheatings, and debaucheries of every description. The life of a river trader admits of little enjoyment to a man who has no intellectual resources; it is not therefore to be wondered at that the greater part of these men are more or less addicted to intoxication; and when they can supply themselves on credit with as much wine and spirits as they like, there is little inducement to break through the habit. A man who, if he had to pay ready money, would never think of drinking wine, when he can have it on credit takes twenty or thirty gallons with him in his canoe, which, as it has cost him nothing, is little valued, and he perhaps arrives at the end of his voyage without a drop. In the towns in the interior every shop sells spirits, and numbers of persons are all day drinking, taking a glass at every place they go to, and, by this constant dramming, ruining their health perhaps more than by complete intoxication at more distant intervals. Gambling is almost universal in a greater or less degree, and is to be traced to that same desire to gain money by some easier road than labour, which leads so many into commerce; and the great number of traders, who have to get a living out of an amount of business which would not be properly sufficient for one-third the number, leads to the general use of trickery and lying of every degree, as fair means to be employed to entrap a new customer or to ruin a rival trader. Truth, in fact, in matters of business is so seldom made use of, that a lie seems to be preferred even when it can serve no purpose whatever, and where the person addressed must be perfectly aware of the falsehood of every asseveration made; but Portuguese politeness does not permit him by word or look to throw any doubt on his friend's veracity. I have been often amused to hear two parties endeavouring to cheat each other, by assertions which each party knew to be perfectly false, and yet pretended to receive as undoubted fact. On the subjects of the most prevalent kind of immorality, it is impossible to enter, without mentioning facts too disgusting to be committed to paper. Vices of such a description as at home are never even alluded to, are here the subjects of common conversation, and boasted of as meritorious acts, and no opportunity is lost of putting the vilest construction upon every word or act of a neighbour.