TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



149 



thriving state of the place, which, on account of 

 its inland trade, is one of the most lively in Brazil. 

 The Villa de S. Joao d'El Rey, so called after 

 King John V., is, like Villa Rica, Villa do Prin- 

 cipe, Sahara, and lately, Paracatu, one of the 

 capitals of the five comarcas in the capitania 

 of Minas Geraes ; namely, of the comarca das 

 Mortes, which is about fifty miles in diameter. 

 The town itself has a population of 6000 inhabit- 

 ants, only one third of whom are whites, a supreme 

 judge (Ouvidor), a gold-smelting house (Casa de 

 fundigdo do oiro), a Latin school, an hospital, a 

 house of correction, where for the most part mur- 

 derers are confined, several chapels, and four 

 churches, among which, the handsome metropo- 

 litan church is distinguished. Though the en- 

 virons of the town are very mountainous and 

 bare, and seem also to be thinly peopled, yet 

 in the clefts of the mountains and the valleys 

 many fazendas are scattered, which furnish the 

 necessary supplies of maize, mandiocca, beans, 

 oranges, tobacco, and likewise a small quantity 

 of sugar-cane and cotton, above all, cheese, cattle 

 in abundance, swine, mules, and, together with 

 the streams that are full of fish, provide them with 

 sufficiency of food. 



In former times, the chief occupation of this 

 people was searching for gold. They obtained it 

 partly by washing in the stream, partly out of 

 some shallow trenches {calderoes) which are cut 



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