42 RIO DE JANEIRO CHAP, n 



looking about them. It may therefore be, as my informer 

 said, that the existence of such a bay has been but lately 

 discovered ; indeed, were it not for that policy, I could 

 believe anything of their stupidity and ignorance. As an 

 example of this, the governor of the town, Brigadier-General 

 Don Pedro de Mendozay Furtado, asked the captain of our 

 ship whether the transit of Venus, which we were going to 

 observe, were not the passing of the North Star to the 

 South Pole, as he said he had always understood it to be. 



The river, and indeed the whole coast, abounds with 

 greater variety of fish than I have ever seen ; seldom a day 

 passed in which we had not one or more new species 

 brought to us. Indeed the bay is the most convenient place 

 for fishing I have ever seen, for it abounds with islands 

 between which there is shallow water and proper beaches 

 for drawing the seine. The sea also without the bay is full 

 of dolphins, and large mackerel of several sorts, who very 

 readily bite at the hooks which the inhabitants tow after 

 their boats for that purpose. In short, the country is 

 capable, with very little industry, of producing infinite 

 plenty, both of necessaries and luxuries : were it in the 

 hands of Englishmen we should soon see its consequence, as 

 things are tolerably plentiful even under the direction of the 

 Portuguese, whom I take to be, without exception, the laziest 

 as well as the most ignorant race in the whole world. 



The climate here is, I fancy, very good. During our 

 whole stay the thermometer was never above 83, but we 

 had a good deal of rain, and once it blew very hard. I am 

 inclined to think that this country has rather more rain 

 than those in the same northern latitude are observed to 

 have, not only from what happened during our short stay, 

 but from Marcgrav, who gives us meteorological observations 

 on this climate for three years. It appears that it rained 

 here in those years almost every other day throughout the 

 year, but more especially in May and June, when it rained 

 almost without ceasing. 1 



1 Here follows, in the manuscript, a list of 316 plants collected by Banks 

 near Rio de Janeiro. 



