NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



and afford a site for some considerable farming establishments. Many 

 extensive patches formerly produced indigo, and on them the neglected 

 plant still grows most luxuriantly. 



Numerous are the evidences which the Jesuits have left, in this 

 part of the country, of the power and splendour of their Order, and of 

 its admirable political management. Speaking generally and dispassion- 

 ately, it may be said, that whatever was well contrived and executed 

 was done by them, and that the common prosperity and happiness have 

 declined since tlieir dispersion. Yet it must be acknowledged, that they 

 were little scrupulous in the use of indirect means to attain their 

 ends. Two circumstances, illustrative of this fact, are related in the 

 neighbourhood. 



The Society asked, and easily obtained from Lisbon, the privilege 

 of a tax on Espregos, which word, in Portugal, describes small nails, 

 and the Government was well aware that such articles were here little 

 used. In Brazil it means a fastener, and is applied particularly to Sipd, 

 the pliant twig, which is universally employed to bind together the 

 frame-work of buildings. So established was a thing once brought into 

 general use, that, long after the dissolution of the Order, the tax, diverted 

 to a different quarter, is still a subject of complaint. 



The other instance occurred about the time when the Society became 

 suspected at Court. By a petition it stated, that there was a piece of 

 water, belonging to the Crown, which would be useful to the house at 

 Santa Cruz as a duck-pond, and prayed for a grant of it. It was not 

 thought expedient to comply without examination, and on inquiry 

 it turned out that the pond was no other than the bay of Angra, 

 containing four hundred square miles of water, and several valuable 

 fisheries. The idea of a duck-pond was probably suggested by the 

 multitude of brown divers, here called Patos, which then appeared in the 

 bay, and are still occasionally seen on flat and unfrequented shores. 



Opposite to the house where we resided is an island, containing only 

 a few acres of land, planted with indigo. This we purchased with a 

 view of making experiments on the growth and preparation of that 



