` 
206 PLANTS OF MARCGRAV AND PISO. 
their Collecção de Noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ul- 
tramarinas, etc. (vol. iii. pars 1), under the title of Noticia do Brasil, 
descripcáo verdadiera da Costa daquelle estado que pretence & caroa 
da Reino de Portugal, sitio da Bahia de todos os Santos. The author 
was unknown. According to a hint of Cazal*, I had formerly} consi- 
dered a certain Francisco da Cunha to have been the author; until 
Franc. Ad. de Varnhagen, in his Reflexões criticas sobre o escripto do 
seculo XVI, impresso com o titulo de noticia do Brasil (in the Colleccáo 
das notic. ultamarinas, vol. v. pars ii., 1839) pointed out, that the author 
was Gabriel Soares de Souza of Lisbon, whom the * Bibliotheca Lusi- 
tana,’ vol. ii. p. 321, likewise quotes. According to the work just cited, 
this active man, who resided at Bahia, had moreover conducted the 
discovery and subjection (Conquista) of the country along the Rio de 
S. Francisco, But nothing is to be met with in the work itself, bear- 
ing directly on that expedition, or on another for the discovery of the 
emerald mines (Minas de Esmeraldas) which has likewise been attri- 
buted to him in the above book. 
The natural-historical, and especially the botanical remarks, con- 
tinued in this Noticia do Brasil, on account of their faithfulness and 
accurate localities, prominently conspicuous everywhere, deserve a eri- 
tical review and a comparison with the writings of Piso and Maregrav; 
I shall therefore extend my remarks to them, whenever occasion offers 
itself. "They are more partieularly important in a literary respect, in- 
asmuch as they give a large number of names of plants in the idiom 
of the aborigines, and are therefore the most valuable sources for in- 
quiries concerning the state of intellect these displayed in their know- 
. ledge of the surrounding nature. Those Indians, whom the Portuguese 
found inhabiting the sea-coasts, from the mouth of the Amazon River, 
to the bay of Rio de Janeiro, and thence still further to the southward, 
and with whom they soon became connected by the relation of supre- 
macy, belonged to the widely extended nation of the Tupis. These 
Indios mansos, as they were denominated by the Potuguese, in contra- 
distinction to the wild, free hordes of Nomads, the Indios bravos, Or 
Tapuyos, who lived far inland, were themselves subdivided into many 
* In the Corografia brasilica, i. p. 43, nota 20. d 
+ Herbarium Flore Brasil., in suppl. to Allgemeine botan. Zeitung, 1837, vol. ii. 
p. 3; and in Martius's State of Judicature among the Aborigines of Brazil, 1832, 
p. 5. ; 
$ 
