^ KOTES ON BRAZIL. 329 



Northern point, care should be taken to avoid a short reef, 

 which lies there. 



The information given us by the Minister of Police, now appeared 

 to be correct, and we were satisfied of the extreme difficulty of proceeding 

 inland from this part of the coast. The mountainous region through 

 which we wished to have penetrated, was covered with thick forests, and 

 it would have been necessary to travel with instruments, wherewith to 

 open a narrow track, and to have advanced in Indian file for thirty miles 

 together. I returned therefore towards the South ; but my companion 

 went on to the Parahyba and St. Salvador, and afterwards communi- 

 cated to me some of his observations on that part of the country. 



He found the scene beyond the Macahe uninteresting, except from 

 the singular roughness of the hills on his left, and the great number of 

 lakes which he passed. Into one of them a stream from the Serro of 

 Bengualas discharges itself, and during the rainy period, probably opens 

 to it a communication with the sea. The largest of them lies to the 

 North, and from its appearance is named Lagoa Fea, the Ugly Lake. 

 From its borders the mountains trend Westward and leave a passage to 

 St. Salvador, a village situated on the Parahyba, containing nearly a 

 hundred and fifty houses and upwards of eleven hundred inhabitants. 

 To the right of this route the country is level and fertile, over- 

 flowed in the wet seasons, in the dry ones reduced to an arid sand. 

 According to Cazal, it contained, in 1801, two hundred and eighty sugar 

 mills, chiefly placed on the higher grounds. It is the Delta of the river, 

 which, in several points, resembles the Nile, as Lagoa Fea does Lake 

 Mareotis. The climate is excessively hot and unhealthy ; even brutes 

 find it intolerably oppressive. My informant not only brought away 

 disease, but declared that he never was so near perishing with hunger as 

 on the boasted plains of Campos. 



The inhabitants of this district, with a high-sounding extent of 



estates, sacrifice the whole to a passion for making sugar and rum, of 



which the lower classes drink in abundance. Reared in habits of extreme 



indolence, and at the same time, of great hardihood, they seem to think 



T t 



