Note 2 — VII GRAÇA ARANHA

In such passages as these Senhor Aranha seems to fall into the exaggeration of that very imagination which he has sought to interpret to foreigners. Araripe Junior, in a study of Gregorio Mattos, coined the word obnulation to signify the transformation worked upon early settlers by their new surroundings,—a retrogressive subsidence into the savage state. Here Milkau seems at once to fear and prophesy a new “obnulation.”