the usual service, and the slaves chanted the responses in alternate companies, so that sopranos, contraltos, tenors, and basses, contrasted in a striking and effective manner.  The singing, indeed, was excellent; far better than in many churches at home.  After the conclusion of the mass the master shook hands with everybody, exchanged good wishes with his slaves, and dismissed them.  While they were dawdling about, gossiping in the verandah, I had a closer look at the babies, which had all been brought to church.  They seemed of every shade of colour, the complexions of some being quite fair, but the youngest, a dear little woolly-headed thing, was black as jet, and only three weeks old.  The children all seemed to be on very good terms with their master and his overseers, and not a bit afraid of them.  They are fed most liberally, and looked fat and healthy.  For breakfast they have coffee and bread; for dinner, fresh pork alternately with dried beef, and black beans (the staple food of the poor of this country); and for supper they have coffee, bread, and mandioca, or tapioca.

Returning to the house, we sat down, a party of thirty, to an elaborate breakfast, the table being covered with all sorts of Brazilian delicacies, after which several complimentary speeches were made, and we all started off to walk round the fazenda.  Our first visit was to the little schoolchildren, thirty-four in number, who sang very nicely.  Then to the hospital, a clean, airy building, in which there were happily but few patients, and next we inspected the new machinery, worked by water-power, for cleaning the coffee and preparing it for market.  The harvest lasts from May to August.  The best quality of coffee is picked before it is quite ripe, crushed to free it from the husk, and then dried in the sun, sometimes in heaps, and sometimes raked out flat, in order to gain the full benefit of the heat.  It is afterwards gathered up into baskets and carefully picked over, and this, being very light work, is generally performed by young married women with babies.  There were nineteen tiny piccaninnies, in baskets, beside their mothers, in one room we entered, and in another there were twenty just able to run about.

Cassava is an important article of food here, and it was interesting to watch the various processes by which it is turned into flour, tapioca, or starch.  As it is largely exported, there seems no reason why it should not be introduced into India, for the ease with which it is cultivated and propagated, the extremes of temperature it will bear, and the abundance of its crop, all tend to recommend it.  We went on to look at the maize being shelled, crushed, and ground into coarse or fine flour, for cakes and bread, and the process of crushing the sugar-cane, turning its juice into sugar and rum, and its refuse into potash.  All the food manufactured here is used on the estate; coffee alone is exported.  I felt thoroughly exhausted by the time we returned to the house, only to exchange