PROVINCE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUE. 



Ill 



Catharina (from which it is separated by the river Manbituba) and the province 

 of St. Paulo ; on the west it is skirted by the river Uruguay and the province 

 of that name ; on the south by the river Plate ; and on the east by the Atlantic 

 Ocean ; being upwards of five hundred miles long and four hundred wide. 



The climate is temperate, participating almost equally of heat and cold, and 

 the air is pure and healthy. Winter begins in May and lasts till October. The 

 prevailing wind is from the south-east. The longest day of the year, in the 

 most southern part of the province, is about fourteen hours, or rather more. 

 Frost occasionally prevails from the month of July till September. The greatest 

 part of this province is flat, having extensive plains, watered with numerous 

 torrents, or rapid streams, and with lakes. No other district possesses such 

 abundant pastures. In its southern parts the soil is well adapted to a pro- 

 fi^table diversity of productions ; to wheat, rye, barley, Indian com, rice, peas, 

 beans, water-melons, melons, onions, as well as to all that arises from Spanish 

 horticulture; also, some cotton, mandioca, and the sugar-cane. Hemp and 

 different qualities of flax grow in great abundance. Fruit-trees of the south 

 of Europe prosper here better than between the tropics, and none multiply so 

 prodigiously as the peach. The vine flourishes in profusion and perfection ; 

 but the absence of a spirit of industry and improvement still retards the manu- 

 facture of wine, of which the grape here would afford an excellent quality. 



D. Peter de Mendon^a, sent by Charles V. with eight hundred men, 

 in order to form a colony in the river Plate, in 1535, established himself in 

 the place where the city of Buenos Ayres now stands, in the country of the 

 Maracotos, by whose hands he lost his life, and a great part of his followers, 

 in 1539. The rest had, in the preceding year, advanced up the Paraguay, and 

 already begun the city of Assumption. D. Pedro Ortez de Zarate, governor 

 of that city, re-estabhshed the colony of Mendonca at Buenos Ayres, and 

 took up his residence there in ] 580, in order to supply the want of a port to the 

 city of Assumption, which they could not obtain on the opposite margin of the 

 Plate. 



The Vincentistas would not consent to any Spanish establishment on the 

 northern margin of this river, from Cape St. Mary to the embouchure of the 

 river Paraguay, and from whence they were repulsed every time they attempted 

 to gain a footing. The settlers from St. Paulo, in the years 1536, 1538, and 

 1540, expelled some priests of the orders of St. Cosme, St. Damiao, St. Anna, 

 &c. who had settled in the land of St. Gabriel, from the upper to the eastern 

 part of the river, and effectually drove them into the province of Paraguay. 



