PROVINCE OF MATTO GROSSO. 



191 



governor of St. Paulo, investing him M^ith much authority, and promising him 

 imphcit obedience. Antunes consumed many months, from the various difficul- 

 ties which beset his way, before he reached St. Paulo, where the new dis- 

 covery of the mines being divulged, numerous persons took their departure for 

 them the following year, in various caravans, none of which arrived at Cuiaba 

 without loss ; many died on the way of fevers and different disasters. The 

 misfortunes and losses which the numerous bandeiras, that continued to bend 

 their course towards this province, annually sustained, were the result of ill-regu- 

 lated measures, and the absence of judicious combinations for preventing disor- 

 der upon the march, and obviating the palpable neglect of proceeding without 

 fishing instruments, which would have preserved many from famishing, and 

 without fire arms for shooting game, or defence against wild animals and 

 the natives. 



In the same year the arraial or establishment was removed to the situation of 

 Forquilha, where Cabral had found a better vein of gold; and in the following, 

 one Miguel Sutil, from Sorocaba, having taken up a station with his party upon 

 the margin of the Cuiaba, two Carijos, or domestic Indians, sent into the 

 woods in search of honey, brought him at night twenty-three pieces, folhetas, 

 or lamina, of gold, which weighed one hundred and twenty oitavas, stating that 

 there was more in the wood where they had found it, Sutil, highly delighted, 

 next morning went with his European comrade, Joam Francisco, called by way 

 of nickname Barbado, and all his domestic estabhshment, conducted by the 

 two Carijos to the place where they had found the precious metal, and which is 

 the present site of the town of Cuiaba. Here they spent the day, gathering with 

 their hands all the gold upon the surface of the ground, or thinly covered, and 

 desisting only with the termination of daylight; they assembled late at their 

 bivouacs, when Sutil found that he had accumulated half an arroba, or six- 

 teen pounds weight, of gold, and Barbado upwards of four hundred oitavas. 

 This adventure becoming known at the arraial of Forquilha, caused its removal 

 to the situation where Sutil and Barbado had been so successful, and where it 

 was calculated that four hundred arrobas of gold were collected in one month, 

 without the excavations exceeding four fathoms in depth. 



In this same year the governor Rodrigo Cezar de Menezes arrived at St. 

 Paulo, whose first concern was to exact the payment of the royal fifths upon 

 this metal. With this intention he nominated two brothers, resident at St. 

 Paulo, of distinguished birth and fortune, Louren^o Leme to the situation of 

 Procurador of the Fifths, and John Leme to the post of Master de Campo of 



