386 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



own persistency and steadfastness of purpose. Farms were 

 connected with all the Indian missions ; under the direction 

 of the fathers, the Indians learned something of agriculture, 

 which the Jesuits readily saw to be one of the great civiliz- 

 ing influences in a country so fertile. They introduced a 

 variety of vegetables and grains, and had herds of cattle 

 where cattle now are hardly known. Humboldt, speaking 

 of the destruction of the Jesuit missions, says, in reference 

 to the Indians of Atures, on ,the Orinoco : " Formerly, being 

 excited to labor by the Jesuits, they did not want for food. 

 The fathers cultivated maize, French beans, and other Euro- 

 pean vegetables. They even planted sweet oranges and 

 tamarinds round the villages ; and they possessed twenty 

 or thirty thousand head of cows and horses in the savan- 

 nas of Atures and Carichana Since the year 1795, 



the cattle of the Jesuits have entirely disappeared. There 

 now remain as monuments of the ancient cultivation of 

 these countries, and the active industry of the first mission- 

 aries, only a few trunks of the orange and tamarind in the 

 savannas, surrounded by wild trees." * 



Our walk through the little village of Soures brought us 

 to the low cliffs on the shore, which we had already seen 

 from the steamer. The same formations prevail all along 

 the coast of this island that we have found everywhere on 

 the banks of the Amazons. Lowest, a well-stratified, rather 

 coarse sandstone, immediately above which, and conform- 

 able with it, are finely laminated clays, covered by a crust. 

 Upon this lies the highly ferruginous sandstone, in which 

 an irregular cross stratification frequently alternates with 

 the regular beds ; above this, following all the undulations 



* Humboldt's Personal Narrative, Bohn's Scientific Library, Vol. II. Chap. 

 XX. p. 267. 



