MONTEALEGRE. 
143 
1849.] 
itself forms a spacious square, in which the most con- 
spicuous object is the skeleton of a large and handsome 
church of dark sandstone, which was commenced about 
twenty years ago, when the place was more populous and 
thriving, and before the revolutions which did so much 
injury to the province ; but there is little prospect of its 
ever being finished. The present church is a low, thatched, 
barn-like edifice, and most of the houses are equally poor 
in their appearance. There are no neat enclosures or 
gardens,— nothing but weeds and rubbish on every side, 
with sometimes a few rotten palings round a corral for 
cattle. 
The trade of this place is in cacao, fish, calabashes, and 
cattle. The cacao is grown on the low lands along the 
banks of the rivers. It is here all planted on cleared 
ground fully exposed to the sun, and does not seem to 
thrive so well as when in the shade of the partially cleared 
forest, which is the plan we had seen adopted in the 
Tocantins. When an Indian can get a few thousand 
cacao-trees planted, he passes an idle, quiet, contented 
life : all he has to do is to weed under the trees two or 
three times in the year, and to gather and dry the seeds. 
The fruit of the cacao-tree is of an oblong shape, about 
five inches long, and with faint longitudinal ribs. It is of 
a green colour, but turns yellow as it ripens, and it grows 
on the stem and larger branches by a short strong stalk, 
never on the smaller twigs ; it grows so firmly, that it 
will never fall off, but, if left, will entirely rot away on 
the tree. The outer covering is hard and rather woody. 
Within is a mass of seeds, which are the cacao-nuts, 
covered with a pure white pulp, which has a pleasant 
