192 



PROVINCE OF MATTO GROSSO. 



the same mines. Those two mdividuals, in consequence of the liberty with which 

 they had always triumphed over the laws, were imprudently selected ; and now 

 considered themselves more than ever authorised to consult with impunity their 

 own caprices. On arriving at the arraial, they adopted the most violent and 

 absurd measures, and wished to expel from the mines all those who were not 

 Paulistas. The chaplain remonstrating against this injustice, they ordered a 

 shot to be fired at him, which, erring in its object, killed one of his friends. 

 Actuated by the same lawless spirit, they ordered one Pedro Leite to be inhu- 

 manly insulted at the time he was hearing mass, merely from some feeling of 

 jealousy entertained against him. These and other atrocities, which they com- 

 mitted, induced the governor-general to transmit orders for their being arrested 

 and sent prisoners to St. Paulo. They received intimation of this circumstance 

 from one of their relatives, and on the arrival of the Master de Campo, Balthazar 

 Ribeiro, to execute the commands of the governor, they had already fortified 

 themselves in a remote place, accompanied by their partizans, where an attack 

 was ineffectually made upon them. In a short time, however, after the loss of 

 some lives on both sides, they fled to the interior with a great number of their 

 followers, but were pursued until Louren^o Leme was killed by a shot, and 

 his brother taken prisoner, and subsequently sent, with a summary of his crimes, 

 to the city of Bahia, the rela^am of which city ordered him to be executed 

 in 1724. 



The prodigious amount of quintos, or fifths, which were received at St. 

 Paulo in the year 1723, and the termination of the jurisdiction of the rapa- 

 cious Lemes, excited an universal spirit in that city for mining. Every one 

 was desirous of becoming a miner of Cuiaba, notwithstanding the calamities 

 attached to so laborious and prolonged a voyage. Of more than three hun- 

 dred persons, who in the year 1 725 departed from St. Paulo, with upwards of 

 twenty canoes, only two white men, and three negroes escaped. All the rest 

 were killed or made prisoners in an encounter which they had with an Indian 

 armada (the Payagoas) in the river Paraguay, in front of the embouchure of 

 the Harez. Although the Paulistas knew that the Payagoas were celebrated 

 mariners, they were totally ignorant of this nation possessing so numerous 

 a fleet. 



It may be proper to remark here, that the first Paulistas who entered the 

 river Paraguay met with two nations, denominated Payagoas, and Guaycurus; 

 both numerous and formidable ; the first from its large armadas, and the 

 second from the dexterity of the natives on horseback, from which they 



