Two Indians presented themselves at the gate of the Carmelite convent of Goiana, and requested and were permitted to see the prior. They put into his hands a purse containing several gold coins, saying that they had found it near Dous Rios; they begged that he would order a number of masses to be said in their behalf, which were to be paid for from the contents of the purse. The prior, admiring their honesty, asked one of them to remain with him as his servant, to which the man agreed. The friar was in the habit of going into the country to a friend’s house to shoot. On one occasion, after the Indian had served him for some time, he left the convent and took him on one of these expeditions, but when they were about half way, the friar discovered that he had forgotten his powder-horn; he gave the key of his trunk to the Indian and desired him to fetch the powder whilst he proceeded. In vain he waited at his friend’s house for his servant, and on his return to the convent in the evening he heard that he was not there. He went immediately to his cell, supposing that he had been robbed of all his money, and whatever else the fellow could carry of; but to his joy he discovered on examination, that the man had only taken the powder-horn, two silver coins of about 4s. value each, an old clerical gown, and a pair of worn out nankeen pantaloons. This story I had from an intimate friend of the prior. One of the days of my stay at Searà we passed upon the borders of a lake, which is between two and three leagues distant from the town, for the purpose of shooting. This lake was nearly dry. The general feature of the country about Searà is arid; the captaincy produces no sugar, but the lands are adapted for cotton, of which however the crop this year was very trifling. So excessive had the drought become, that a famine was feared, and great distress would have been experienced if a vessel had not arrived from the southward laden with the flour of the mandioc. The usual price of it was 640 _reis per alqueire_, but the cargo of this vessel was sold at 6400 _reis per alqueire_; a fact which proves the scarcity to have been very great. Formerly considerable quantities of beef were salted and dried here, and were exported to the other captaincies, but from the mortality among the cattle, caused by the frequent dry seasons, this trade has been unavoidably given up entirely, and the whole country is now supplied from the Rio Grande do Sul, the southern boundary of the Portugueze dominions. But the meat which arrives at Pernambuco from the Rio Grande do Sul, still preserves its name of Searà meat, _carne do Searà_. The country to the northward and eastward I understood to be much superior to that in the neighbourhood of Searà. The captaincy of Piauhi, which lies in that direction, is accounted fertile, and is not subject to droughts.