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 the 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.
( 037 ) This circumstance, like many other observations, sufficiently refute the opinion, which I also previously held, as if history would leave its old setting and make the new world it instead. At least there is nothing in Rio that would lead one to expect major social events, unless one would consider mean brawls among the weak peoples.
As a result, I went to the shore almost every day, which the kindness of the Governor, who took me into his boat free of charge, gave me a good opportunity to do. I also usually visited the pastor every day; On the last day he gave me two pieces of his printed inaugural sermon, one for me, one for Teichelmann. The farewell between him and Br. Teichelmann was cold, and between me and him it was friendly but not particularly warm.
Through him we became acquainted with the missionary Spaulding(048), who was sent here by North American Methodists for the Catholics. He has been here for two years, but so far his efforts seem to have been completely unsuccessful, to which his still very imperfect knowledge of Portuguese may have contributed not a little. Our arrival caused a great excitement from him, which still continues, because of the Bibles that he brought to Rio and made available to the people, as well as because of the annual report that he sent to North America. A clever Irish pastor named Tilbury(049a) (049b) had seen this report, which spoke very unfavorably of the Brazilian clergy, and had written a book against it; and just as we were present, the same clever spirit had had an article against Bibles printed in the newspaper, prompted by an advertisement from the missionary that Bibles were for sale at a certain gentleman's. In the latter it was claimed that the Bible had made the English people the wisest, most religious, and happiest in the world ( 038 ); but the priest refuted this quite aptly by cleverly using his knowledge of the ecclesiastical and moral situation in England, and I only regretted that he used the ecclesiastical disunity and the great moral corruption, especially in London, as evidence against reading the Bible. It is as clear as the sun that all of Spaulding's efforts to influence the Catholic Brazilians in the way he has begun will be fruitless. He had a store of German and English Bibles and New Testaments, and we were very grateful to him for providing us with a significant number of both, especially the former. In his place should stand a man of greater gifts and knowledge than I perceived in Spaulding to make a difference.
August 12th, 1838. Sunday.
After we had been here for over 8 days, we left the port of Rio de Janeiro on this Sunday with the best wind; By midday we had lost sight of the land.