It Is A Place Where Dogs At Times Seem More
Numerous Than People, A Town Where Justice Is Administered In Ways
New And Strange.
Does the reader wish an instance?
An assassin of the
deepest dye was given over by the judge to the tender mercies of the
crowd. The man was thereupon attacked by the whole population in one
mass. He was shot and stabbed, stoned and beaten until he became
almost a shapeless heap, and was then hurried away in a mule cart,
and, without coffin, priest or mourners, was buried like a dog.
Perhaps the populace felt they had to take the law into their own
hands, for I was told that the Governor had taken upon himself the
responsibility of leaving the prison gates open to thirty-two men,
who had quietly walked out. These men had been incarcerated for
various reasons, murder, etc., for even in this state of Matto Grosso
an assassin who cannot pay or escape suffers a little imprisonment.
The excuse was, "We cannot afford to keep so many idle men - we are
poor." What a confession for a Brazilian! I do not vouch for the
story, for I was not an eye-witness to the act, but it is quite in
the range of Brazilian possibilities. The only discrepancy may be the
strange way of Portuguese counting. A man buys three horses, but his
account is that he has bought twelve feet of horses. He embarks a
hundred cows, but the manifest describes the transaction as four
hundred feet.
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