386 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
own persistency and steadfastness of purpose. Farms were 
connected with all the Indian missions ; under the direction 
of the fathers, the Indians learned something of agriculture, 
which the Jesuits readily saw to he one of the great civiliz- 
ing influences in a country so fertile. They introduced a 
variety of vegetables and grains, and had herds of cattle 
where cattle now are hardly known. Humboldt, speaking 
of the destruction of the Jesuit missions, says, in reference 
to the Indians of Atures, on the Orinoco : " Formerly, being 
excited to labor by the Jesuits, they did not want for food. 
The fathers cultivated maize, French beans, and other Euro- 
pean vegetables. They even planted sweet oranges and 
tamarinds round the villages ; and they possessed twenty 
or thirty thousand head of cows and horses in the savan- 
nas of Atures and Carichana Since the year 1795, 
the cattle of the Jesuits have entirely disappeared. There 
now remain as monuments of the ancient cultivation of 
these countries, and the active industry of the first mission- 
aries, only a few trunks of the orange and tamarind in the 
savannas, surrounded bv wild trees." * 
/ V 
Our walk through the little village of Soures brought us 
to the low cliffs on the shore, which we had already seen 
from the steamer. The same formations prevail all along 
the coast of this island that we have found everywhere on 
the banks of the Amazons. Lowest, a well-stratified, rather 
coarse sandstone, immediately above which, and conform- 
able with it, are finely laminated clays, covered by a crust. 
Upon this lies the highly ferruginous sandstone, in which 
an irregular cross stratification frequently alternates with 
the regular beds ; above this, following all the undulations 
* Humboldt's Personal Narrative, Bohn's Scientific Library, Vol. II. Chap. 
XX. p. 267. 
