Daily National Intelligencer

FROM THE GEORGIAN

The following sketch of South American scenery, habits and manners, is more impartial than those Elysian pictures which seduce youthful imaginations from their home, country, kindred, and friends, to dash into perilous enterprises and sacrifice fame, fortune and happiness in a land of fairy fiction. In describing the flowery plains and perennial groves of the South, some writers forget to add that they are infested with innumerable musquitoes, serpents, alligators, and tygers; that some of the trees which beautify them cast a shade which is deadly, and bear fruit, which to eat is death. When they describe their dwellings with furniture of gold and silver, they neglect to mention that they are abominably filthy, over-run with vermin, and that but for the labor of combating against these persevering enemies, they would be always idle. We hear that when a certain Vice-roy entered Lima, the inhabitants literally paved the streets with silver and gold, but the writer does not add that those very streets are almost nightly stained with human blood, by midnight assassination. We are told of the sublimity of the mountains, covered with eternal snow, of exhaustless mines of gold and silver, diamonds, emeralds, and other precious gems, but we are not reminded at the same time that this rich and enchanting land is subject to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which often annihilate the beauties of nature and art, and engulph and overthrow cities and bury thousands of human beings beneath their ruins, in an unexpected moment.

South America is a country which combines the extremes of whatever is odious and enchanting; rich and poor, pleasing and dreadful. A ragged Spaniard collecting gold dust from the earth, to purchase his daily bread, is a striking combination of wealth and poverty, and illustrates the general character of the country.

Extract of a letter to a gentleman in Boston, dated Rio de Janeiro, November 26, 1818.

"This is "a city set" every where but "upon a hill"—that is to say, round about a number of hills—from no one of which can you have a view of the whole of it at once. Its population is rated at more than two hundred thousand—a large proportion blacks. That term, however, does not altogether imply slaves; for if you talked tolerable Portuguese, and chanced to call perhaps one of the fourth sort of the black population a slave, he would retort "slave! I am no slave, signor; I wear shoes!" The privilege of wearing which, is extended to those only who have by some means received their freedom. They all look as though they were tolerably well fed, and by no means so wretched as you might infer from their condition. They perform all the work of the Portuguese, who are indolent to a proverb. The court is here, and, I understand, the Palace is completely "a house divided against itself"—the queen at variance with the king; & the prince of Brazil, the heir to the throne, as well as the princess, his sister, heading several parties, each against the rest, and no chance of coalition.

"Here are fine subjects for the pencil of a painter—from high sublime to deep absurd.' He might take his range from the truly alpine elevations of 'this delicious land,' clad with a most luxuriant, lofty, and various vegetation—which gives an appearance entirely new to the scenery, compared with that of our northerly hemisphere, and such as characterizes the face of nature throughout the torrid zone; or, if his talent is of a nature stamp—if, like Hogarth, he is a moral painter, tracing faintly the outline, he might follow these abrupt descents far down to the fog of the city. wherein he would discern the effeminate, insincere, haughty, and revengeful Portuguese, swoln with ignorance and pride, and subject to the absolute control of the Catholic Church—whose worse than unproductive members live here in splendor upon the fattest of the land. 'To me it appears—perhaps it would strike him also, that the population exhibits a greater number of what is called the shabby genteel, than I recollect to have seen any where else; and the best of them seem to pique themselves upon a kind of gaudy tinsel display, which is really grotesque, their persons being distorted at the same time by a factitious politeness, quite ultra-Parisian.

* * * It is a goodly sight to see
What Heaven hath done for this delicious land
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the hills expand.
But whoso entereth in this town,
That, sheening far, celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down
Mid many things, unsightly, strange to see;
For hut and palace show like filthily,
The dizzy denizens are reared in dirt;

"The above description, though intended by Lord Byron to apply to Lisbon, serves equally well for Brazil. Lisbon is the model to this people for every thing; and a man cannot recommend himself more highly to them, than by satisfying them that he is a "Child of Lisbon;" i.e. born there. The opera house is the largest edifice of the kind I have ever seen; but not well constructed for the audience—each box being completely partitioned and boarded up from the others; producing a gloomy and unsocial appearance, by which arrangement also there is a great waste of room. The orchestra consists of more than 30 performers; (the first night I was there, there were 38)—and the music is very good. There is nothing new here. You get the news in Boston concerning Spanish America sooner than they do here. The government publish what they choose the people should know, and there is only one gazette. They are training troops both here and at St. Salvador—for what object I can't conjecture."