380 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



dinally. The water is brought down to the wheel through a trough, in 

 such a manner as shall enable it to strike the ladles with force, and give 

 motion to the wheel. The axis passes through the floor of a small build- 

 ing, where it turns a single pair of mill stones. Such a machine has 

 very little power, but is recommended in a mountainous country by 

 its applicability to almost every situation, by the simplicity of its struc- 

 ture and the little cost at which it may be erected. 



At the distance of half a league is a large estabhshment of Padre 

 Correio, whose buildings form three sides of an area, with a fine wild 

 fig-tree in the centre. The mansion-house stands at the South-Eastern 

 angle, one side of the square is occupied by offices belonging to the farm, 

 another by two houses designed for the accommodation of those travellers 

 who may wish for comforts not to be found in the common Rancho. 

 Here also are workshops, where blacksmiths are constantly employed in 

 finishing horse shoes, which have been roughly made, either in Rio or 

 in England. Their labour consists in beating the exterior edge, while 

 the iron is quite cold, until a sort of rim is raised all round the shoe, 

 sufficient to inclose the extremity of the hoof, and preserve it from injury, 

 by this cold beating, the iron is rendered harder and more durable. The 

 Piabiina washes the other side of the area, and has just received a con- 

 siderable tribute of dark waters from the Eastward, through a narrow 

 valley, which seems to be about fifteen miles long, and is flanked on 

 each side by naked cones of grey granite, from fifteen hundred to two 

 thousand feet high, forming a view as rough as the imagination can 

 easily conceive. We were one day surprised at the quantity of water 

 which came down this channel, at its superior blackness, at the rapidity 

 and rolling form of the current, and concluded that there must have been 

 rain far up the valley, though not the slightest appearance of it had been 

 observed with us ; a circumstance which seemed to confirm our opinion 

 respecting the length of the stream. 



Behind the houses destined for strangers, is a large kitchen garden, 

 well stocked vv'ith vegetables, and kept in good order ; at the back of the 

 dwelling-house is an extensive piece of ground appropriated to floAvers ; 



