90 RIO DE JANEIRO. 
at last discovered tliat there were two booksellers' shops in 
St. Sebastian ; but it required less time to find out that thej 
contained nothing that was likely to be useful or interesting 
to us, ]\Iany old volumes on medicine and alchemy, stilly 
more on church history and theological disputations, and 
some few on the exploits of the house of Braganca, swelled 
their catalogues ; nothing that related to the country was to 
be found. This portion of South America, one of the most 
fertile regions of the globe, had scarcely supplied from the 
pen of the Portugueze a single page of natural history, eco- 
nomics or statics, beyond Avhat appears in the general ac- 
counts ,of the conquest of the Brazils. A Franciscan friar 
informed us that he had long been amassing materials for a 
Flora Jiuminensis, as he meant to call it in allusion to the 
name of Rio, which he hoj^ed soon to publish ; but I have 
not heard that it has yet made its appearance. A small work 
has lately been published on the importance of the commerce 
of Portugal and its«colonies, by Coutinlio Bisliop of Fernam- 
buco ; but the little it contauis ^\ ith regard to the Brazils is 
of a xQvy general natuie, and not at all descriptive. It is 
pretended indeed, that both in tliis town and at St. Salva- 
dor tlie government is in possession of very voluminous 
manuscripts, which Avere compiled by the Jesuit missionaries. 
If the fact be so, it is more than probable they contain little 
more than journals of their transactions, and copies of their 
correspondence with their superiors in Europe. If the greater 
part of the time of the priests and monks of Rio, where they 
are very numerous, was not employed in luxury and indo- 
lence, or in meddling with the private concerns and domestic 
arrangements of every family, and in bearing about from one 
• 7 
