language, and the slave owners are greedy and unjust enough never to tell them that they are free; and in all this the government looks to the slavery through the fingers in every possible way, otherwise it should be easy for the authorities to prevent such injustice."

Among other topics of conversation, we also discussed the ecclesiastical conditions in the fatherland and ( 035 ) the position of the Lutheran society(43) against the Berlin society(44), whereby it then turns out that he was very much in favor of the Prussian church and had completely wrong ideas about the purpose of the Dresden society, believing that it was created to counteract the Berlin society. The strong emotion that he revealed here gave me no small secret joy, as I concluded that the Uniards(45) were afraid of us and were therefore admitting the actual illegality of what they had started. However much we differed in our beliefs about the church and mission societies, this did not prevent him from entertaining us in an inn in the evening. Here we got to know two other Germans, namely the Hamburg consul(46) and another merchant, who seem to live on very confidential terms with the pastor. The latter's position seems to have been accompanied by no small temptations from some quarters, firstly because of his worldly compatriots and secondly because of the high footing on which he lived there. He often spoke of society, and in particular of the German "Club Germania"(47), which had also gathered on the day of our arrival to celebrate the birthday of the King of Prussia. And how high he lived is evident from his high salary, which amounts to 2,000 Rthl [Reichsthaler], as well as from the fact that he keeps a riding horse.

Under such circumstances, the ( 036 ) church must of course be sad, as can be seen from the fact that, according to the pastor, out of 500 Germans, barely 30 attend the Sunday service. Since I'm now talking about Neumann, I want to add everything I have to say about him here, even though it doesn't belong here given the time. Apart from himself, his entire household consists of two people, an old German church servant and a Negro slave. The church is located on the very outskirts of the city, close to a mountain, and consists of a simple one-story house, the long front of which has been converted into a spacious, nice hall and in the back of which the pastor has his apartment. A great defect in their church service is that they cannot sing because they lack both an organ and a good lead singer, and what is even worse is that the noble merchants themselves are ashamed to sing. I inquired about a German school, but learned, to my dismay, that there was neither one now, nor any hope that one would be created soon, although there had already been talk of it. The education of children, I was told, usually takes place in Portuguese schools or is completely neglected. Neumann gave the Brazilians special praise. The Europeans come into little contact with [them] because everyone seeks the company of their fellow countrymen. I was in two Brazilian churches and, to my astonishment, found no seats, nothing but altars on the sides and an empty nave in the middle, from which I concluded that they never or rarely preach. The people also go to mass very little and in general I find Christianity very low in all European settlements, including here.