STAY AT VILLA DE ST. SALA'ADOR. 



101 



them an entire human skeleton set up in the forest, to his great ter- 

 ror, as Southey relates. According to his account, they built their 

 huts like a pigeon-house, on a single post in the air, had no other 

 bed than a heap of leaves, and drank no river or spring-water, but 

 only such as collected in pits which they dug in the sand. 



These three tribes were at war on all sides with each other, and 

 with the Europeans, as well as with the Indians on the coast, but the 

 Portuguese colony at Espirito Santo had more particularly suffered 

 by them. In the year 1630 they sustained a severe defeat. In the 

 sequel they were gradually extirpated, or subdued and reclaimed, 

 whence arose the settlement on the Paraiba, which is now the richest 

 and most flourishing district between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia. The 

 whole tract is covered with detached fazendas and plantations ; and 

 on the south bank of the river Paraiba, which intersects this fertile 

 plain, at the distance of about eight leagues from the sea, is a con- 

 siderable town ( villa), which indeed deserves the name of a city 

 ( cidade ). 



Villa de St. Salvador dos Campos dos Goaytacases has between 

 four and five thousand inhabitants ; the population of the whole dis- 

 trict is computed at twenty-four thousand souls. It is usually called 

 Campos, is tolerably well built, with regular, for the most part paved, 

 streets, and neat houses, some of which are of several stories. Bal- 

 conies, closed with wooden lattices, in the old Portuguese fashion, are 

 still common. Not far from the river is a square, where stands 

 the public building in "which the meetings of the municipal autho- 

 rities are held, and in which also is the prison. There are seven 

 churches in the town ; five apothecaries' shops ; and a hospital, which 

 contained about twenty patients, who have a surgeon to attend them. 

 It is said that there are in this part of the country medical men of 

 much greater skill than in the other districts of the coast, where 

 practitioners worthy of confidence may often be sought in vain. 



