NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



47^ 



for a single night. Rich people also, who have the means of pro- 

 curing such a luxury, it is observed, are less subject to the complaint 

 than poor ones; the disease, too, prevails much in mountainous countries, 

 such as the Alps, where there is least salt in the soil, and whither little is 

 transported from the plains. 



Though this particular malady prevails so much, the country may 

 be considered as an extremely healthy one ; there are in it only two or 

 three educated men who practise medicine, yet I was pleased to observe, 

 when passing the Register of Mathseus Barboza, that among the books, 

 which are of all suspected articles the most scrutinized, there was a copy 

 of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, translated into Portuguese ; and on one 

 unhappy occasion, when a gentleman, labouring under a pulmonary 

 complaint, consulted at the same time an eminent Physician in London, 

 and a Professor of Medicine at Sahara, who enjoyed great reputation in 

 such cases, the prescriptions from each were similar, the basis of them 

 being Digitalis, a plant, by the way, which grows in vast abundance 

 in Brazil. 



It is said here that the British Maps of the Province of Minas 

 Geraes are extremely incorrect, while those of Matto Grosso are the 

 contrary ; the Villa of St. John D' El Rey is about three miles South of 

 the Rio Dos Mortes, just below the junction of two small streams, one 

 of which, flowing by Estiva, has been noticed already ; the other follows 

 nearly the line of road which I passed. About a mile lower down 

 their united waters receive another small stream, which comes through a 

 delightful valley from the village of St. Joze, and further on lose them- 

 selves in the Rio Dos Mortes. This principal drain of the neighbourhood 

 rises thirty miles East of the town, flows a little South of West, and is 

 about a hundred and fifty feet broad where it passes the Royal bridge 

 near Matazinhos ; passing on, it falls into the Rio Grande, called by the 

 native possessors of the country the Para, which is one of the principal 

 branches of the magnificent Parana. The bed of the Rio dos Mortes is 

 extremely irregular, being sometimes profoundly deep, at others exceed- 



