breaking open the packages and pilfering the goods. Wine and carne seca are the principal objects of their desires, and it is seldom that, with all the watchfulness of the arreador, one of these convoys returns to the plantation intact.
BAD ROADS.
But these petty thefts are trifles compared with the anxieties felt for the mules in the stormy season, when the ground is soaked by long rains, which wash out deep gullies and render the roads impracticable. After an hour's travel the caravan presents a most pitiful aspect. The animals go hobbling along, panting for breath constantly plunging their half-shod feet into deep holes full of tenacious clay, till, at last one of them sinks down, never to rise again. The tocador shouts, the train halts, and the arraedor comes up and gives his orders. The animal is unloaded, a lasso slipped around his neck, and the negroes seize the rope and tug away, while the chief urges the poor beast with vigorous application of the lash. After half an hour of useless effort and shouting, the arreador at last abandons the almost dead mule and continues his journey. In order not to lose the eight arrobas (two hundred and fifty-six pounds) of coffee with which the animal was loaded, and which represents a value of forty milreis, (twenty dollars,) he orders the negroes to distribute it among the loads of the sound mules. The latter, instinctively feeling that an increase of burden is a poor means of helping them forward, gather their forces, and launch a shower of kicks at the negroes before they submit. Meanwhile, the journey is resumed. New gullies soon present themselves, and another mule shortly drops down. The fruitless efforts to get him up are renewed, and new additions allotted to the load of the surviving mules; but this time, knowing that it is a question of life and death with them, they offer such a lively resistance that they compel the tocadores to keep away, and await a more favorable moment for the application of their curious mechanical principles. It is then decided to leave the sacks of coffee where they are, and they are soon invaded by the myriad of rodent animals that swarm in the Brazilian forests, and that feed upon the contents of the sacks, while the urubus (vultures) devour the dead mule.
CARAVANS ON THE SERRA DO MAR.
I remember having witnessed the descent of one of these caravans in the Serra do Mar, a maritime range separating the waters of the Parahyba from the sea-coast. This region is much traversed by caravans of mules, taking the products of the interior to the capital. It was just after the heavy summer rains. The road was marked on both declivities of the mountain by an uninterrupted succession of debris of every kind, and especially by such a prodigious quantity of horse-shoes, that whole regiments of cavalry might be shod with them. Here and there we saw an ox abandoned on the road, or the carcass of a mule emitting an intolerable stench and covered with vultures, which seemed in nowise disturbed at our approach, so conscious were they of the utility of their work.
THE TROPEIRO'S MISFORTUNE.
Having reached the summit of the Serra, I encountered a tropeiro, who appeared very unhappy, and who told me of his misfortunes. He had started with an hundred oxen to get four sugar-boilers. He was overtaken by a storm on the journey, and was only able to gain the top of the mountain by the sacrifice of half of his cattle; he was now obliged to wait till his tocadores, whom he had sent ahead, should bring him fifty more, in order to continue his journey. This example may enable one to estimate the fearful waste of beasts of burden that annually occurs in the fazendas of Brazil. Hence every estate has a stock of young mules, which are trained up by peones. These animals generally come from the southern provinces.
