162 



PROVINCE OF ST. PAULO. 



CHAP. IX. 



PROVINCE OF ST. PAULO. 



Boundaries — First Settlement — Mountains — Mineralogy — Rivers and Ports — 

 Islands — Phytology — Zoology — Bugre Indians, Dwellings and Customs — 

 Character of tlie Paulistas — Division into Comarcas — Comarca of Curytiba — 

 Towns and Productions — Comarcas of St. Pavlo and Hitu — Towns and 

 Productions. 



This province, formed by the union of a part of the capitania of St. Amaro, with 

 one half of that of St. Vincente, took the name which designates it in the year 

 1710, when John V. incorporating them with the crown lands by purchase, 

 nominated a governor, with the title of captain-general, in the person of Antonio 

 de Albuquerque Coelho, and the city of St. Paulo for his residence. It is con- 

 fined on the north by the province of Minas Geraes, from which the serra of 

 Mantiqueira separates it, and by that of Goyaz, from which it is divided by the 

 river Grande ; on the south by Rio Grande do Sul, of which the river Pellotas 

 forms the division ; on the west by the river Paranna, which separates it from 

 the provinces of Goyaz and Matto Grosso ; and on the east by the ocean, and 

 the provinces of Rio de Janeiro on the northern part, and St. Catherma on the 

 southern. Its territory is almost all within the temperate zone, between 20° 30' 

 and 28° south latitude, comprising four hundred and fifty miles from north to 

 south, and three hundred and forty miles of medium width from east to west 5 

 and possessing much variety in the climate, soil, and aspect of the country. 



John III. determining to divide the Brazilian coast into capitanias, at the period 

 that Martini Affbnso de Souza was in this new region, presented him, in 1532, 

 with one comprising a hundred leagues of coast, and his brother Pedro Lopez 

 de Souza, who had accompanied him, with another of fifty ; but the letter of do- 

 nation to Martim Affonso was not signed till the 20th of January, 1535, at the 

 time when he had already taken his departure for India. It specified that this 

 captaincy, which afterwards took the name of St. Vincente, should extend from 

 the river Maccahe as far as twelve leagues to the southward of the island of 

 Cannanea, where the bar of Paranagua is situated, excepting a certain portion 



