The city of Paraiba, (for much smaller places even than this bear the rank of city in these yet thinly peopled regions) contains from two to three thousand inhabitants, including the lower town. It bears strong marks of having been a place of more importance than it is now, and though some improvements were going on, they were conducted entirely through the means which Government supplied for them, or rather, the Governor wished to leave some memorial of his administration of the province. The principal street is broad, and paved with large stones, but is somewhat out of repair. The houses are mostly of one story, with the ground floors as shops, and a few of them have glass windows; an improvement which has been only lately introduced into Recife. The Jesuit’s convent is employed as the governor’s palace, and the _Ouvidor_’s office and residence also; the church of the convent stands in the centre, and these are the two wings. The convents of the Franciscan, Carmelite, and Benedictine Orders are very large buildings, and are almost uninhabited; the first contains four or five friars, the second two, and the third only one. Besides these, the city has to boast of six churches. The public fountains at Paraiba are the only works of the kind I met with any where on the part of the coast which I visited. One was built, I believe, by Amaro Joaquim, the former governor,—it is handsome, and has several spouts; the other, which was only then building, is much larger, and the superintendance of the workmen was the chief amusement of the governor.