TO THE RIO GRANDE DE BELMONTE. 



257 



again to high and steep cHfFs of clay and sand-stone, which must be 

 ascended, because the violent surf renders the coast inaccessible. 

 You follow a steep path to the top of these barreiras, and find there 

 a dry elevated plain, a catnpo, which is called Jauassema, or Juassema. 

 On this spot, according to the tradition of the inhabitants, there ex- 

 isted in the early period of the Portuguese establishment a large and 

 populous town of the same name, or Insuacome, but which like S. 

 Amaro, Porto Seguro, and other settlements, was destroyed by the 

 warlike and barbarous nation of cannibals, the Abaquira or Abatyra. 

 This tradition is doubtless founded on the ravages which the Aymores, 

 now the Botocudos, committed in the Capitania of Porto Seguro, 

 when they invaded it in 1560; the account of which we find in 

 Southey's History of Brazil, and in the Corografia Brasilica. At 

 that time they also ravaged the settlements on the river Ilheos, or St. 

 George, till the governor, Mendo de Sa, drove them back. It is said 

 that pieces of bricks, metals, and similar articles are still found at 

 Jauassema ; they are the oldest memorials of the history of Brazil, for 

 no monuments are met with on this coast more ancient than the time 

 of the first settlement of the Europeans. Its rude inhabitants did not, 

 like the Tultekian and Azteckian nations in Mexico and Peru, leave 

 monuments to engage the attention of posterity after the lapse of 

 thousands of years : for the memory of the rude Tapuya disappears 

 from the earth with his naked body, which his brethren consign to 

 the grave, and it is indifferent to future generations whether a Boto- 

 cudo or a wild beast of the desert formerly lived on any particular 

 spot. At Jauassema I found the piassaba palm, a particular kind, 

 which will be more frequently mentioned in the sequel, distinguished 

 by its large erect leaves ; we had not previously seen this tree. Only 

 a few plants were now in flower, but when I visited this part of the 

 country again in November I found many rare and beautiful plants in 



