persuasion?  Is it that their intelligence, penetration, and discrimination, are superior to other men?  Or is it solely owing to their less scrupulous integrity?  My own conviction has always been, that want of success in any particular pursuit or profession, has arisen in most cases, out of an absence of that firmness which enables a man to reject the pleasures of the world, and the world’s frivolities, for the sake of the one purpose to which he should rightly devote all his energies.  When men practise a rigid course of self-denial in this respect; immolating all vain desires upon the altar of science, or of interest, they seldom fail to attain the utmost point of their ambition.

I found myself very weak, and much reduced by the low regimen which I had necessarily observed during the violence of my inflammatory cough.  A blister had also been kept open on my breast during the whole time of my sojourn at Rio de Janeiro, this had only received its first dressing just before I mounted my mule, and I had not got clear of the city before the inflamed state of my chest, so dried up the dressing, that the irritation produced was like a red hot iron applied to the surface:  this torture I was compelled to endure for more than three hours, before I could obtain any relief.  About four o’clock we arrived at Venda Nova, or Traja, also known by the name of Willis’s, it having been kept by an Englishman of that name.  It was much patronized by the English, who frequently made excursions of pleasure to this place, distant from Rio de Janeiro four Brazilian leagues or sixteen English miles.  We were well supplied here with provisions, but our lodgings were of a very inferior description, all the party, excepting myself, being literally, and actually, necessitated to exclaim

  “My lodging is on the cold ground.”

The only imitation of a bed-place was considerately resigned to me.  It consisted of a crib in a small room, no larger than a closet; however, as the horizontal position still continued most distressing to me, a bed of down could not have procured me repose, for I do not think I ceased coughing for three consecutive minutes the whole night.  And it was no small aggravation to my misery, to know that I was the means of disturbing all my friends in the next apartment.  Under these circumstances, I heard the summons for preparation, at a very early hour, with infinite satisfaction, and, ill as I was, though the morning was extremely raw and cold, I rejoiced to find that we were all in the saddle before daylight (half-past five)—­Mr. Raynsford, on his return to Rio de Janeiro, and our own party for the Mine Country.  Soon after noon, we arrived at Manganga, a distance of four leagues (16 miles), having passed over a very level country, where the heat of the day was equal in intensity, to the cold of the morning; the thermometer being, at one time, upwards of 90 deg.  F. This change was to me delightful, as heat agrees with me at all