I had found lodgings in a venda for the last time, the preceding evening, at Canto Gallo.  I had now to rely upon the hospitality of the proprietors of the fazendas.  Custom requires that, on reaching a fazenda, any person who desires to stop the middle of the day or the night there, should wait outside and ask, through the servant, permission to do so.  It is not until his application is granted, which is almost always the case, that the traveller dismounts from his mule, and enters the building.

They received me at the Fazenda of Boa Esperanza in the most friendly manner, and, as I happened to arrive exactly at dinner-time (it was between 3 and 4 o’clock), covers were immediately laid for me and my attendant.  The dishes were numerous, and prepared very nearly in the European fashion.

Great astonishment was manifested in every venda and fazenda at seeing a lady arrive accompanied only by a single servant.  The first question was, whether I was not afraid thus to traverse the woods alone; and my guide was invariably taken on one side, and questioned as to way I travelled.  As he was in the habit of seeing me collect flowers and insects, he supposed me to be a naturalist, and replied that my journey had a scientific object.

After dinner, the amiable lady of the house proposed that I should go and see the coffee-plantations, warehouses, etc.; and I willingly accepted her offer, as affording me an opportunity of viewing the manner in which the coffee was prepared, from beginning to end.

The mode of gathering it I have already described.  When this is done, the coffee is spread out upon large plots of ground, trodden down in a peculiar manner, and enclosed by low stone walls, scarcely a foot high, with little drain-holes in them, to allow of the water running off in case of rain.  On these places the coffee is dried by the glowing heat of the sun, and then shaken in large stone mortars, ten or twenty of which are placed beneath a wooden scaffolding, from which wooden hammers, set in motion by water power, descend into the mortars, and easily crush the husks.  The mass, thus crushed, is then placed in wooden boxes, fastened in the middle of a long table, and having small openings at each side, through which both the berry itself and the husk fall slowly out.  At the table are seated negroes, who separate the berry from the husk, and then cast it into shallow copper cauldrons, which are easily heated.  In these it is carefully turned, and remains until it is quite dried.  This last process requires some degree of care, as the colour of the coffee depends upon the degree of heat to which it is exposed; if dried too quickly, instead of the usual greenish colour, it contracts a yellowish tinge.

On the whole, the preparation of coffee is not fatiguing, and even the gathering of it is far from being as laborious as reaping is with us.  The negro stands in an upright posture when gathering the berry, and is protected by the tree itself against the great heat of the sun.  The only danger he incurs is of being bitten by some venomous snake or other—­an accident, however, which, fortunately, rarely happens.