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JOURNEY FROM THE RIO DOCE 



to erect the saw-mill, the minister ordered Mr. Jose Marcelino da 

 Cunha, ouvidor (high bailiff) of the district of Porto Seguro, to re- 

 pair hither, to assemble the necessary hands for establishing a /<32e7?<iff , 

 to make the plantations requisite for the support of the inhabitants 

 and slaves, and to protect them against the attacks of the Tapuyas. 

 It accidentally happened that Captain Bento Lourenzo Vas de Abreu 

 Lima, an inhabitant of Minas Novas, who with twenty-two armed 

 men had penetrated from the frontiers of the Capitania of Minas 

 Geraes, along the banks of the Mucuri, through the wildernesses, had, 

 just at this time, happily reached the sea-coast. His unexpected ap- 

 pearance in the Villa do Port AUegre, induced the minister to give 

 the bailiff the further order, to furnish that enterprising Mineiro with 

 the people requisite to form a passable road through those forests, in 

 the route which he had taken. I had the pleasure to find this in- 

 teresting man here, and to learn from himself the particulars of his 

 bold and dangerous enterprise. Being employed in looking for pre- 

 cious stones, and continually living in the woods, he resolved to 

 penetrate through those gloomy intricate solitudes down the river, 

 which he conceived to be the St. Matthew. For several years he 

 caused a path to be made at his own expense through the woods ; and 

 when the work was advanced to a certain point, he undertook the 

 journey on foot with twenty-two soldiers and armed volunteers. He fell 

 in with, the alclea of Captain Tome, a celebrated Indian chief, who had 

 collected Indians of different tribes in the forests of the interior, on 

 the Upper Mucuri ; he had previously baptized many of them in this 

 place. The aldea no longer exists, the chief being dead : but on the 

 spot where it stood, there are bananas and other plants growing wild, 

 which are now made use of by the savages in their excursions. After 

 a journey of about fifty days, the Captain succeeded in reaching the 

 sea-coast, when he discovered that he had followed the course of the 

 Mucuri, and not of the St. Matthew, as he had designed. 



