486 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



their young, where they suckle them for a week or two, and frequently 

 lose them by cold or wild beasts. At this time the horses are worked 

 very hard, and frequently appear lean, weak, and spiritless. A similar 

 system prevails, on breeding farms, through this and several other 

 provinces. 



My host, a lively pleasant man, received me with little form, and 

 abundant cordiahty ; for the former, indeed, he had no room, his house 

 being extremely bare of accommodations and furniture. We seem also 

 to be quite out of the region of lime-stone, for there was no where the 

 slightest appearance of whitewash or plaster, but have again entered 

 upon a district of golden soil, and I was led to imagine that these two 

 substances are seldom if ever met with in the same bed. The Thermo- 

 meter being so low as 60° in the hottest part of the day, and the air, in 

 the evening, chilly, we made a fire on the earthen floor of one of the 

 principal apartments, and round it, seated upon forms and blocks of 

 wood, enjoyed a sociable and cheerful evening. A very agreeable priest, 

 to whom I had been furnished with letters, added greatly to its pleasures ; 

 he had been for three months on a sort of visitation tour, had come last 

 from Juruocca, was to spend the next Sunday at Queluz, in the 

 discharge of his sacred functions, and would then return to Villa Rica, 

 the place of his usual residence. 



Having entered upon the great North road, leading through 

 Barbazena to Villa Rica, and passed the small village of Resquinha, we 

 began to mount a considerable eminence. On the right were some hills, 

 improperly called Catas Altas, the deep pits, crowned with woods, 

 which seemed to belong to the great forest lying to the Eastward. I 

 endeavoured to learn how broad were the naked Morros to the West, 

 but not being sure that my inquiries were rightly comprehended, 

 mention with diffidence the information obtained, that the distance from 

 forest to forest, in a right line, drawn East and West, was about fifty 

 leagues. Toward the North-East and South- West the naked land seemed 

 to have no woody boundaries, for no one whom I met with had been to 



