The capitanias of the brothers Souzas, could not be enlarged beyond their prescribed limits, although the adjoining districts of land were _devoluta_, or without donatories; yet the first settlers there from these capitanias were always considered their people, and known as Vincentistas and Paulistas, until those districts were erected into this province. It is the most southern one in the Brazil, very extensive and important, lying between twenty-eight and thirty-five degrees of south latitude, and is bounded on the north by the province of St. Catharina (from which it is separated by the river Manbituba) and the province of St. Paulo; on the west it is skirted by the river Uruguay and the province of that name; on the south by the river Plate; and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; being upwards of five hundred miles long and four hundred wide. The climate is temperate, participating almost equally of heat and cold, and the air is pure and healthy. Winter begins in May and lasts till October. The prevailing wind is from the south-east. The longest day of the year, in the most southern part of the province, is about fourteen hours, or rather more. Frost occasionally prevails from the month of July till September. The greatest part of this province is flat, having extensive plains, watered with numerous torrents, or rapid streams, and with lakes. No other district possesses such abundant pastures. In its southern parts the soil is well adapted to a profitable diversity of productions; to wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, rice, peas, beans, water-melons, melons, onions, as well as to all that arises from Spanish horticulture; also, some cotton, mandioca, and the sugar-cane. Hemp and different qualities of flax grow in great abundance. Fruit-trees of the south of Europe prosper here better than between the tropics, and none multiply so prodigiously as the peach. The vine flourishes in profusion and perfection; but the absence of a spirit of industry and improvement still retards the manufacture of wine, of which the grape here would afford an excellent quality. D. Peter de Mendonça, sent by Charles V. with eight hundred men, in order to form a colony in the river Plate, in 1535, established himself in the place where the city of Buenos Ayres now stands, in the country of the _Maracotos_, by whose hands he lost his life, and a great part of his followers, in 1539. The rest had, in the preceding year, advanced up the Paraguay, and already begun the city of Assumption. D. Pedro Ortez de Zarate, governor of that city, re-established the colony of Mendonça at Buenos Ayres, and took up his residence there in 1580, in order to supply the want of a port to the city of Assumption, which they could not obtain on the opposite margin of the Plate.