NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



535 



are handsome ones, were shut, and it is notorious that much of 

 the trade, which the town once maintained with Sahara and the Northern 

 parts of the province, is now removed to St. John. 



A progress of three miles farther, in which we descended full four 

 hundred and fifty feet, brought us to Registro Velho, where the toll of 

 the province used to be paid, before that advantage was transferred to 

 Mathasus Barboza. Itis situated close to the banks of the Rio dos Mortes, 

 which is here about seven yards wide, and of considerable depth and 

 rapidity. With its fiscal dignity, all marks of its former consequence 

 are not vanished ; for there are three ranchos, and four or five houses, 

 as well as an office, full of old papers, much neglected. 



The principal object of my visit to this place, was to examine a 

 Manufactory of Cotton and Woollen Cloth, which had been established 

 fifty years, and produced goods, which were celebrated over a great part 

 of Brazil. Specimens of both, which I have seen, were certainly excel- 

 lent of their kind. The old Government viewed this establishment with 

 jealousy, and ordered the projector and owner of it to Lisbon, to answer 

 for the breach of Colonial Laws ; there, as in such cases was too common, 

 he was kept without a definite hearing for twenty years, while the fabric 

 was every day going to ruin. When the Court, after its settlement in 

 this country, had leisure to attend to such matters, attempts were made 

 to revive the manufactory, but it was too late, a new direction had been 

 given to the industry of the people more congenial with their general 

 manners and habits ; the owner had become poor ; agriculture offered a 

 more sure and speedy mode of retrieving his fortunes ; the raw material, 

 which he would iequire, now sold for more in the city, by three hundred 

 per Cent, than he had formerly given for it, with the important 

 advantage, to the grower, of ready money, instead of ten or twelve 

 months credit. British fabrics, also, were pressed upon the country with 

 the usual spirit and urgency of our commercial adventurers, and rendered 

 at a price far below that of the goods, whose place they usurped. It is 

 not woiiderful, therefore, that I found the manufactory expiring ; nor 

 less so, that great complaints were made of the deterioration of materials, 

 —the common subterfuge of artizans, when their customers require 



