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PROV[NCE OF SEREGIPE D' EL REY. 



Itabaianna, situated in the vicinity of the serra of the same name, having a 

 church of St. Antonio, is a small town, and celebrated for the race of small 

 horses, bred in its extensive district, where cattle are also reared, as well as 

 various necessaries of life. 



Villa Nova de St. Antonio is agreeably situated, upon an eminence refreshed 

 with fine breezes, upon the St. Francisco, on the opposite side, and two miles 

 below Penedo. It has a good church, a royal professorship of Latin, and in 

 its vicinity quarries of grindstone. In its district, which extends to the sea, 

 cattle are bred and various productions cultivated. Two parishes of Indians 

 are within its precincts, with the title of missions. 



Propiha, originally called Urubu de Baixo, created a town in 1800, is 

 twenty-five miles above the preceding, upon the margin of the same river, 

 between two lakes of great disproportion ; the smaller, of a circular figure and 

 sixty fathoms in diameter, may hereafter be in the centre of the town, when it 

 has experienced that augmentation of which its advantageous situation renders 

 it so susceptible. It is near a valley opened by the diversifying hand of nature 

 across a plain, appearing more like a human operation, and by which the river 

 at all times extends an arm to the centre of a campinha of more than eight miles 

 in length, and of proportionate width, that becomes a large and handsome 

 lake, abounding with fish during the period of the floods. It has a market 

 every week, where its inhabitants provide themselves with those necessaries 

 which the sterility of its environs denies them. The church, which was formerly 

 a chapel of St. Antonio, besides being the only place of public w orship in the 

 town, is very small and poor. The western limits of its district are the same 

 as those that bound the province. The principal revenue of the camara is the 

 product of the public sale of fish, which enter periodically into the temporary 

 lake, the mouth of the valley being barricadoed with mats of cane, to prevent 

 their return to the river with the receding waters. 



Within the district of this town is the parish of St. Pedro, situated upon the 

 margin of the St. Francisco, in a flat country, and which becomes an island 

 immediately the river begins to swell. It consists of eighty families, almost 

 generally Indians, for whom it was exclusively founded. The colony is com- 

 posed of two tribes. The Romans, who are the remains of the native aborigines, 

 and the Ceococes, from the vicinity of the serra of Pao d' Assucar, (Sugar 

 Loaf,) fifteen miles distant from the province of Pernambuco. Even at the 

 present day, they are repugnant to the intermarriage of one with the other. 



