260 



AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



Like that of Goyaz and Minas Geraes, this Brazilian population of Matto 

 Grosso consists in great measure of Paulistas, who, thanks to their almost comiDlete 

 isolation, have better preserved the old Portuguese usages than elsewhere. The 

 womenkind are still carefully secluded, and the host seldom introduces his wife 

 and daughters to visitors, who on their part discreetly avoid all mention of them 

 in conversation. 



T()POGR\PHY. 



The old capital, which still bears the name of the State, was called Villa Bella 

 in the flourishing days of the mining industry. In 1737 the first settlers had 

 formed an encampment at Porto Alegre some distance off, and the river which 

 joins the Guapore two miles above 3Iatto Grosso has preserved this name of Alegre. 

 But the city properly so-called dates only from 1752. At one time it had a 



Fig. 112. — Matto Geosso anb the Upper Gttapoeé. 

 Scale 1 ; 350,000. 



West oF Greenwicln 59° 



00 Miles. 



population of 7,000, but it was ruined by the abandonment of the mines, and is 

 now one of the most wretched villages in Brazil ; it is also one of the worst 

 situated, and travellers speak of it as a hotbed of fever. Were it not maintained 

 by the Government as a military station, it would soon be forsaken by its few 

 remaining white residents. 



S. Luiz de Caceres, formerly Villa If<iria, is better situated on the left bank of 

 the Paraguay above the Jauru confluence, at the converging point of several 

 natural routes, and in a splendid grazing district. The neighbourhood contains 

 inexhaustible stores of iron ores, which have not yet been worked. An islet in 

 the Uberaba lagoon is so charged with sulphuret of iron that if a fire is kindled 

 on the ground the heat causes the pyrites to explode, and sets them flying in all 

 directions. 



Cuyaha, the present capital, stands on a j^lain encircled by an amphitheatre 

 of hills, opening in the direction of the west. Its first inhabitants, the Cuyaba 

 Indians, were disjDersed by the gold-hunters at the beginning of the eighteenth 



