The wild Indians have occasionally crossed from the main land to the island, and have committed depredations upon the houses and gardens in the neighbourhood of St. Luiz. Some of these people have been at different times made prisoners and brought to the town, where very little pains, I fear, have been taken to conciliate them. I did not see any of them, but they were represented to me as most frightful beings; their features are excessively ugly, and their hair is black and preposterously long, both before and behind. They are of a dark copper colour, darker than Indians that have been domesticated. The last individuals taken, to the number of four or five, were brought into the town quite naked, were put into close confinement, and I was informed that there they died. I could not find out that any attempt had been made to send them back as mediators, or that any plan of conciliation had been entered into; and on mentioning something of this kind, I was in more than one instance told that it would be of no use, that rigour was the only method. I do not think that this is the general opinion regarding them, but I much apprehend that, but faint hopes can be entertained of any zeal being shown for their civilization. There are now no enthusiastic missionaries; the Jesuits no longer exist in that country, and the other orders of friars have become lazy and worse than useless. However the Indians cannot be enslaved; therefore, at least, they are not hunted down like wild cattle, as formerly was the practice. The name which is given generally both here and at Pernambuco to all wild Indians is _Tapuya_; and that of _Caboclo_ is applied to those who have been domesticated.