( 



1 10 Prince Maximilian's 



place which at five Patacas the Alquier amounts to about 

 ^25,000, and employs several ships to Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio 

 de Janeiro, and other ports on the east-side. Thirty or forty 

 small vessels are also in use so that frequent opportunities 

 offer of sending letters or travelling by them to Rio. 



We now proceeded some miles in a Canoe after which we 

 continued our journey by land ; towards evening we arrived 

 at the fazenda da Findoba belonging to Senhor Cardosa where 

 we rested for the night. The country about here is unculti- 

 vated and full of impassBble woods where neither plantation 

 nor house is to be found. Near Pindoba we passed over a 

 small brook and in a wood of thick interwoven trees echoing 

 with the various notes of the feathered inhabitants, wholly un- 

 known to us, we heard a strange, loud, and shrill note, followed 

 by five or six others ; these noisy inhabitants of the wood were 

 in a company together, and as soon as one sent forth a note 

 all the rest joined in chorus. Our huntsman felt a great de- 

 sire to satisfy his eager curiosity and sprung directly into the 

 thicket, but acting incautiously they cost him much trou- 

 ble, but at last he succeeded in securing one of these 

 screamers. This bird the Mascicapa ijocijerans, is of the size 

 of a blackbird, of a disagreeable dirty ash-grey colour, about 

 ten inches long, its upper feathers deep ash-grey, the under 

 feathers lighter, breast and under the throat deeper, the ends 

 of the feathers here and there yellowish. 



The Portuguese give it the name of Sehastiam and in the 

 province of Minas Geraes the forest thrush, Sabia do maio vit- 

 gem. We soon after came to the river Alcobaga which is 

 here but small ; we arrived in the evening at the fazenda of 

 Sen. Munis Cordero and on the north shore lies another be- 

 longing to the minister of state ; the water is of a dusky colour 

 but contains stores of fish amongst which is abundance of Ja- 

 caras ; in the water grows the Arum liniferum. 



Ponte do Gentio has a fazenda with a quantity of land be- 

 longing to the minister of state ; here a Negro had killed one 

 of the tribe of the Patachos in the wood ; to be revenged they 

 way-laid him and three of them laid him dead with their long 

 arrows. 



At present six families of the Ilhores inhabitants of the 

 Azores reside here together with nine Chinese ; some Negro 

 slaves and a Feitor or Steward. The Chinese had been brought 

 over by the government to Rio de Janeiro to cultivate tea, 

 afterwards some were brought to Caravellos and others to this 

 place to work as day-labourers, they are altogether lazy and 

 at first did but little work ; they live together in a small house; 

 some of them have been converted and married to young In- 



