The summer of St. Veronica was endless that year, and we had the most glorious weather. The air was much fresher on the height and did us all good. Everyday’s ramble showed me fresh wonders. There was a deep lake near the house, said (of course) to be unfathomable; it was surrounded by thick tangled woods and haunted by gay butterflies. In it ounces—wild cats— were said to drink morning and evening. I never saw them, but they had lately carried off two of our host’s small flock of sheep, and I saw some skins of these small tigers, which were richly marked and coloured. One morning we spent on the actual peak, which rises a perfect obelisk of rock five thousand feet above the sea. Some of the more adventurous of our party mounted to the very top.
The earth had entirely disappeared from the crannies, leaving the huge iron stones loosely piled on one another. In spite of the want of soil, these rocks were loaded with clinging plants, bulbs, orchids, and wild pines. Tillandsias and bilbergias of many sorts crowded round them; the latter were very curious—great green or lilac cornucopias with feathery spikes and many-coloured flowers, or beautiful frosted bunches of curling leaves, from the centre of which fell a graceful rose-coloured spray of flowers. There were also many euphorbias and velvet-leaved gesnerias, trailing fuchsias, ipomoeas, and begonias with wonderful roots like strings of beads. It was impossible to carry away half I longed for, even if possible to climb over such rocks with two loaded hands.
One day I rode with Mary and the Baron to visit a dairy farm some miles off, where we sat and gossiped, ate toasted cheese, and drank enough strong coffee to poison any well-regulated English constitution; but our life was far too healthy to be hurt by such little luxuries. Another day we rode down to visit some people on the plain below. All these expeditions showed fresh beauties of nature and miseries of humanity. At last Mr. G. came to fetch us, and on the Sunday before we left he read the Service, three Cornish miners coming up from below to assist at it. Their captain afterwards made a speech to say what a pleasure and a privilege it was, etc., on which Mr. G. said if they would only come up, he would read it every Sunday in the same way. “Oh no, it warn’t that, it war them four ladies all stannin’ of a row; it war so long sin’ I seen four English ladies all at once, it war!” The poor old man almost cried over the extraordinary event. He went down to his expiring mine again, and we rode home, leaving our kind host to utter loneliness.
About the end of March 1873, we all started up the hills with bag and baggage, crossing over a shoulder of the Coral mountains, and on to Sabara, the chief town of the district, where we took coffee at the house of “a most respectable brown woman,” who hugged all my friends most warmly. Mrs. G. told me she was much to be pitied, having lost her only son, to whom she was devoted. “Was she a widow?”—“Oh dear no; she had never heard of her being married, but as Brazilians go she was a most respectable person!” Opposite her house we saw a room full of remarkably clean little black boys, all dressed alike, and an ill-looking, dandified man in charge of them. He was a slave dealer, buying up well-grown boys over twelve years of age for the Rio market. The law now forbids the sale of younger children, and every year a year will be added, so that children of eleven are safe for life where they are, and all the next generation will be free. These boys looked very happy, and as if they enjoyed the process of being fatted up.
Our road followed the banks of the river for some way; sometimes along the low banks amongst reeds and bushes of Franciscea; often over the higher sierras, among strange scraggy trees, which were covered with more flowers than leaves. On one, especially, the white lily-like flowers were very fascinating. The ipomoeas and bignonias, or trumpet flowers, were in great variety. One large lilac ipomoea grew in massive bunches on the tops of the trees; and a smaller white one had fifty or sixty buds and flowers on every spray, making the trees look as if they had just been covered with snow. The round-backed Piedade Mountain got nearer and nearer, and we put up for the night at Caitá, a village at its foot.
It was a perfect fairyland. The great blue and opal morpho butterflies came flopping their wide wings down the narrow lanes close over our heads, moving slowly and with a kind of seesaw motion so as to let the light catch their glorious metallic colours, entirely perplexing any holder of nets. Gorgeous flowers grew close but just out of reach, and every now and then I caught sight of some tiny nest, hanging inside a sheltering and prickly screen of brambles. All these wonders seeming to taunt us mortals for trespassing on fairies’ grounds, and to tell us they were unapproachable. At last we left the forest, and the real climb began amidst rocks grown over with everlasting peas, large, filmy, and blue haresfoot ferns, orchids, and on the top grand bushes of a large pleroma with lilac flowers and red buds like the gum cistus, and beds of the wild strawberry, which some Italian monk had introduced years ago. Two old ladies, beate, lived alone in the old convent, which was still in good repair.
The Baron took charge of the two girls and myself over the hills; and at the edge of the Bossa Grande property its superintendent met us, showed us his trim little mine and big wheels, and gave us luncheon, then took us up the hill to admire the view, and accompanied us through two leagues of real virgin forest, the finest I had yet seen, to the old Casa Grande of Gongo—a huge half-ruined house that had originally belonged to some noble family.
The great gold mine here had at one time yielded more than £100,000 a year. In that day there were a thousand miners there, and twenty servants in the great house alone. The superintendent used to drive a carriage with two horses over the tangled and stony path by which we had just come; now, one old black man and his family alone inhabited the place to keep the keys (which didn’t lock) and hold up authority. Gaunt ruins of the different houses stood around; but though their roofs were whole, and unbroken glass in their windows, they were scarcely accessible or even visible from the thick growth of tangled trees and greenery that had wreathed itself around and over them. All was thick mat and forest, except on one side where the grassy hills rose, affording abundant food for the flocks and herds that supplied the mines on the other side of the mountains. To this old deserted place Mr. D. had sent furniture, food, and slaves, and persuaded his mining captain to let his pretty little wife go and keep house for us, taking baby Johnnie to amuse her and us too. She soon made us at home.
After tea we played a game of whist in the ghost-like old hall with its heavy wainscoted cupboards, and great gilt hooks from which the mirrors and chandeliers had formerly hung, and on which a late superintendent had once committed suicide. When the present one would have ridden back through the forest we begged him to stay and keep the Baron company and the ghosts out, and wishing the two goodnight we began our retreat towards our own part of the house; but when we came to the grand staircase, behold! a gambat was coming down it very quietly. Now a gambat is a fascinating quadruped. He only sees in the dark, and his wife carries her young in her pocket like a kangaroo. He is like a tiny bear with most human-looking hands, and a long prehensile tail so enormously strong that when once he has twisted it round some firm anchorage it would resist the pull of a strong man, and hold on though bleeding and torn. He has also the power of emitting a horrible smell like the skunk, thereby driving away his enemies. Once I remember Lopez was himself so objectionable after killing one of these creatures that he had to be locked up for a day or two; he was, unfortunately, not with us now, and we all cried out for help. The poor little beast, looking extremely puzzled at seeing his usually quiet premises invaded by strange creatures, with strange lights in their hands, was too brave to turn and, I am sorry to say, was killed ruthlessly by our two knights, who had rushed to our assistance.
The next morning our Baron, who had begun life as a blacksmith, went round and mended the locks of all the doors we were likely to use, and our party dispersed, leaving me to enjoy a fortnight of perfect quiet in the great empty house and rich forest scenery, with Mrs. S. and her baby boy to keep me company: to her it was an agreeable change,