42 RIO DE JANEIRO CHAP, II 
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 Here follows, in the manuscript, a list of 316 plants collected by Banks 
near Rio de Janeiro. 
