The next morning we continued our journey over the sand hills to Natal, travelling at about two miles within the hour. The distance from Goiana to Natal is fifty-five leagues. The sand hills are perpetually changing their situations and forms; the high winds blow the sand in clouds, which renders it dangerous to travellers; it is white, and very fine, so that our horses sunk up to the knees at every step,—painful to a very great degree, when the sun has had full power upon it. Poor Julio had mounted upon the haunches of one of the loaded horses, and occasioned our travelling still slower. All was desolate and dreary; for the great lightness of the sand almost prevented vegetation, though some of the creeping sea-side plants had succeeded here and there in establishing a footing. The track of country between Goiana and Espirito Santo, and indeed even to Cunhàû, keeping at no great distance from the coast, is appropriated for the most part to sugar-plantations; but many of the Senhores de _Engenho_, sugar-planters, also employ part of their time in raising cotton. The general feature is of an uncultivated country, though a great quantity of land is yearly employed. The system of agriculture is so slovenly, or rather, as there is no necessity for husbandry of land, from the immensity of the country, and the smallness of its population, lands are employed one year, and the next the brushwood is allowed to grow up, giving thus to every piece of ground that is not absolutely in use that year, the look of one totally untouched, until a person is acquainted, in some measure, from practice, with the appearance of the several kinds of land. He will then perceive the difference between brushwood that will not grow because the land is of a barren kind, and that which is left to rise, that the land may rest for another crop. From this manner of cultivating their lands, a plantation requires three or four times more ground than would otherwise be necessary. I passed through several deep woods, and ascended some steep hills, but I saw nothing which deserved the name of mountain; I crossed some flat sandy plains, upon which the acaju, mangaba, and several species of palm or cabbage trees grow; these are merely fit to turn cattle upon in winter, and will only be brought into cultivation when lands begin to be scarce in Brazil. _Varseas_, or low marshy lands, adapted to the sugar cane, I also frequently saw. The _cercados_, or fenced pieces of ground, attached to each sugar plantation, upon which are fed the cattle kept for the work of it, are the only spots which bear the look of fields; and even in these, the brushwood is not always sufficiently cleared away, unless the proprietor is wealthy and has an abundance of persons upon his estate; otherwise, such is the fertility of the soil, that without great care, the _cercado_ will in time become a wood. There are several hamlets upon the road, consisting of three and