. . .e could give us any hopes of food for our horses. I found an elderly woman and her two daughters in the hut; the father was not at home. The old woman seemed quite astonished to hear that we had crossed the Seara-Meirim; she said, she did not know how soon she and her family might be obliged to leave their cottage, as many others had done. She directed the major and my people to a dell at some distance, where dry grass and leaves might perhaps still be picked up; she said, that it was the last place which could have any, for travellers did not in general know of it, and she and her husband made a point of not discovering it. But I paved the way, by making her a present of some farinha, throwing maize to the fowls, and by pouring in an immense number of minhas Senhoras. I had purchased a kid and a fowl, and laid down the money immediately. Persons circumstanced as these were, are sometimes robbed in a most unpardonable manner by travellers, who take advantage of their hou. . . Read More