194 



LATE GOVERNOR OF SEARA. 



sugar, but the lands are adapted for cotton, of 

 which however the crop this year was very 

 trifling. So excessive had the drought become, 

 that a famine was feared, and great distress wouid 

 have been experienced if a vessel had not arrived 

 from the southward laden with the flour of the 

 mandioc. The usual price of it was 640 reisper 

 alqueire, but the cargo of this vessel was sold at 

 6400 rets per alqueire ; a fact which proves the 

 scarcity to have been very great. Formerly 

 considerable quantities of beef were salted and 

 dried here, and were exported to the other 

 captaincies, but from the mortality among the 

 cattle, caused by the frequent dry seasons, this 

 trade has been unavoidably given up entirely, 

 and the whole country is now supplied from the 

 Rio Grande do Sul, the southern boundary of 

 the Portuguese dominions. But the meat which 

 arrives at Pernambuco from the Rio Grande do 

 Sul still preserves its name of Seara meat, came 

 do Seard. The country to the northward and 

 eastward I understood to be much superior to 

 that in the neighbourhood of Seara. The cap- 

 taincy of Piauhi, which lies in that direction, is 

 accounted fertile, and is not subject to droughts. 

 Many were the praises which I heard of the 

 late Governor of Seara, Joam Carlos, who was 

 appointed to this province before he had arrived 

 at the age of twenty years, and who was at the 

 time I visited Seara captain-general of Mato 



