In two hours, we arrived at St. Anne de Chaves. The town is spread out upon the circular shore of the bay, nearly half a mile in extent, and is defended by a stone fort, situated on the extreme point of the cape. There are three or four hundred houses, which, with few exceptions, are small, and constructed of wood. A long stone building is appropriated as the residence of the governor, and contains the public offices. The only remarkable edifices besides, are a large wooden church, looking very like a barn, and a smaller one of stone. The streets are unpaved, but kept remarkably clean, and not without an especial reason. The great, and almost only, article of commerce is coffee, which is kept in the houses, and dried daily in the streets. As soon as the sun is up, therefore, servants sweep the streets, as carefully as if it were a parlor-floor, and bring out large quantities of coffee, which they spread upon the ground to dry. At night, it is carried in. More than half the street, at the proper season, is covered with coffee yet in the husk. The exports of this article amount annually to about a million of pounds, producing from seventy to eighty thousand dollars. The only whites residing on the island, with one exception, are about sixty Portuguese; the number of colored inhabitants is estimated at fifteen thousand.
Black priests are plenty in the streets, walking about in bombazine robes, with the crisp hair shaven from their crowns. The Jesuits invariably followed hard upon the heels of the early Portuguese adventurers, in their African discoveries; but I am not aware that their efforts to Catholicise the natives have anywhere produced such permanent results, as in this island. To be sure, the religion of the inhabitants seems to amount to little more than the practice of a few external rites; for they have both the appearance and character of dishonesty and treachery, and are said to be addicted to all sorts of vice. So far as the black priests possess any influence, however, it is believed to be used conscientiously, and with excellent effect; nor, though provoked to smile at these queer specimens of the cloth, could I indulge the impulse without being self-convicted of narrowness and illiberally. St. Augustine, and other Fathers of the church, if I have heard aright, were of the same sable hue as the priests of St. Anne de Chaves.