f 



300 PROVINCE OF PORTO SEGURO. 



mined to engage the foe, leave the aged, the women, and children, in some 

 secure place in the centre of their district. Their barbarity has always pro- 

 duced the idea that they are much more numerous than they are really found 

 to be. The garrisons newly established upon the eastern line of the province of 

 Minas Geraes, and those in the centre of this, have obliged many to sue 

 for that peace which had been so frequently offered them, and which they 

 always rejected, secure in extensive woods, where there are few, if any, Chris- 

 tian colonists to subdue their wild habits, or mitigate their savage propensities. 



Of all the provinces of the Brazil, this may be said to be the most backward 

 in cultivation, and in the civilization of the aboriginal inhabitants. It is almost 

 one wood of fine timber, and different species of trees, indicating, beyond a 

 question, the great fertility generally of its soil. The want of good ports capa- 

 ble of receiving large ships is assigned as the cause of its present condition ; 

 but want of industry, and the requisite energy and spirit of improvement, as 

 well as the deficiency, it must be allowed, of population, are the real causes. 

 The Christianized population only possess the parts adjacent to the ocean, and 

 few days pass in certain months of the year, that its coasts are not visited by 

 the Indians in search of the eggs of the tortoise. From these people the Cana- 

 rins are known, who are the nearest hordes to the towns of Caravellas, and 

 Villavi90za. It is said that they have an establishment of one vast house in the 

 centre of the country, hid in a valley between two mountains. The Machacaris 

 are masters of a country washed by the rivers Norte and Sul. In the western 

 part are known the Cumanacho, Mono, Frecha, Catathoy, Aimore, and the 

 Patacho nations ; the last are more numerous than all the others together, and 

 extend themselves, divided into tribes, from one extremity of the province to 

 the other. 



The Aimores are anthropophagi, and the dread of all the other nations except 

 the Patachos. 



From the river Doce, the southern limit of this province, as far as a league 

 to the north of the Jucurucu, the lands are so flat, that they scarcely exceed the 

 level of the highest tides. In the whole of this tract, (more than one hundred 

 miles,) not one mountain, or even small elevation is seen. From this point 

 nearly to the Buranhen, the shore is of a green or white colour, and of four to 

 six yards in height ; the remainder of the coast to the river Belmonte is in parts 

 flat, in others rather more elevated. Fine woods are everywhere seen extend- 

 ing to the margin of the ocean. 



