"This feeling of uneasiness in regard to the new
government," writes Cunninghame-Graham, "the mysti-
cism of the people as shown in the belief in the return to
earth of Dom Sebastian, and the fear that the govern-
ment meant the destruction of all religion, tended to
make the dwellers in the sertao especially susceptible to
any movement, religious or political alike, during the
time between the abdication of the Emperor and the firm
establishment of the new government. Out of the
depths of superstition and violence, Antonio Consel-
heiro arose to plunge the whole sertao into an erethism
of religious mania and blood."

As relatively late as 1837 the region had witnessed a

"Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone
of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the
gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in hit
short, curved saddle, a modification of the 'recao' used on the Pampas
of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and
rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single
rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch
of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed.
