'Pipe-tar and lamp-soot'
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que só tresandão a sarro de pito e murrão de candeia.
that reek of nothing but pipe-tar and lamp-soot.
The sensory detail is exact and unlovely: the walls 'tresandão,' stink, of 'sarro de pito,' the tarry gum of a tobacco pipe, and 'murrão de candeia,' the charred, smoking wick of an oil-lamp. This is the true air of the senzala — smoke, tallow, cheap tobacco — and the plain naming of it is one of the ways Guimarães makes the reader feel, through the nose, the meanness of the enslaved's world.
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A Escrava Isaura 7.195 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/7.195/