TO CARAVELLAS, &C. 



189 



he ordered him to give us a single soldier. Considering however the 

 length and insecurity of the way to St. Matthew's, it appeared to 

 the officer himself very hazardous to expose a single man to the danger 

 of returning alone: our persuasions completely decided him, and we 

 obtained two soldiers for our escort. We were afterwards informed 

 that the governor had, very unreasonably, punished him for this with 

 a long arrest ; and we sincerely regretted having drawn upon this 

 worthy man so unjust and harsh a treatment. 



After taking leave of the kind friends who had accompanied us thus 

 far, we proceeded the same day six or seven leagues further along the 

 monotonous coast. Our two soldiers, a negro and an Indian, stopped 

 very often to dig in the sand for turtles' eggs, with w hich they filled their 

 knapsacks. Though this was disagreeable to us, because their stop- 

 ping delayed our progress, we had in the evening every reason to re- 

 joice at it. The tract from the Rio Doce to St. Matthew's, as we have 

 observed before, is an uninhabited dreary wilderness, in the greatest 

 part of which not even fresh water is to be found ; the few^ places 

 where this indispensable article can be procured, must therefore by 

 no means be passed by, and for this reason it is highly necessary to 

 have a guide well acquainted with the road. Unfortunately neither 

 of our soldiers had ever been this way before. We missed the first 

 watering-place, called Capimba de S.Joao, but found the second, 

 which is a lagoa, in a small low valley called Piranga, on the road 

 side, at noon, when we had dispersed in all directions in search of 

 water: it afforded some refreshment to us and our cattle. At the 

 place where we stopped for the evening our search for water w as how- 

 ever fruitless; none was to be found, and we were consequently un- 

 able to make use of the provisions w hich we had brought with us, they 

 being too hard to be eaten without the addition of water. Our only 

 resource was to satisfy our hunger with a little dry maize-flour, and 

 "he turtles' eggs fortunately collected by the soldiers, which we could 



