On the 24th of September, in this year, at mid-day, in clear weather, a subterraneous noise was heard, and the earth immediately quaked, continuing to experience various tremulous agitations, which produced considerable alarm in all places of Matto Grosso and Cuiaba. At this period, a drought already prevailed, which lasted till 1749. All the woods were parched up, and no longer exhibited any foliage; the atmosphere was now only the vehicle of smoke; all living creatures suffered from famine and other calamities; and death stalked in universal triumph. The earthquake, which, in October two years afterwards, 1746, agitated the territory of Peru, and destroyed the city of Lima, its capital, was here very sensibly felt; filling every living creature with sudden dread, but unattended with worse consequences. Before the conclusion of this same year, the Captain Joao de Souza, descended the Arinos, Tapajoz, and the Amazons, to Para, and returned the following year by the Madeira, with European merchandise; after his arrival, other dealers departed by the same route, which has been frequented to this day, in spite of the great difficulties to which this prolonged voyage has hitherto been subject. Two years had almost elapsed, before the rains had reanimated the face of the country, given verdure to the foliage of the unbounded woods, renovated the springs, arrested the ravages of death, and facilitated journeys by land; when, about the beginning of January, 1751, a numerous fleet arrived at Cuiaba, accompanied by Don Antonio Rolin de Moura, as governor of the new province, a Juiz de Fora, (Theotonio de Sylva Gusmao,) two Jesuits, and a troop of dragoons. At the end of this year, the governor proceeded to the mines of Matto Grosso, with the intention of promoting the navigation discovered by Manuel de Lima to Gram Para, and to compel the retrocession of the Spanish Jesuits established on the right margin of the Guapore. D. Antonio Rolin, commanded to found a town in the situation best adapted for the effectuating those projects, selected for its site a place called Pouzoalegre, founded and named it on the 19th of March, 1752; and, on the 25th of November, by order of the bishop of Rio de Janeiro, the hermitage of St. Anna was converted into its mother church. With the opening of the roads to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, and with the new navigation of Gram Para, that of Camapuan began to be less frequented. The miners who were interested in proceeding to St. Paulo by this fatal way never accomplished it, except with a considerable number of canoes, equipped with chosen men, and armed with the best instruments of defence; and occasionally accompanied by canoes of war to a certain situation in the river Tocoary, where they waited for the Paulista fleet to protect them through the passage of the Pantanos.