great, and the people still speak of it with the utmost horror; nearly all the horses and cattle were exterminated, and the loss of human life was very great, it being estimated that 30,000 of the inhabitants of the province perished. Great numbers of these died while attempting to reach the coast; wild as well as domestic animals fell victims to the want of water and food: these droughts have been observed to occur periodically. Aracaty was, during my visit, supplied with water of tolerable quality from a well near the town, but it was expected shortly to have an excellent supply from a spring about a league distant; the individual who undertook to procure this was Senhor Maya, a native of Gibraltar, who has been settled for many years at Aracaty; having received a privilege from government, he laid a brick channel for the water to run in, and as the spring is considerably lower than the town, he was erecting a force-pump for the purpose of raising it; the water from the well near the town, was sold through the streets in small barrels carried on low carts, which were often drawn by sheep. Senhor Maya expects to remunerate himself by the sale of the produce of his labour, which will certainly, from its superior quality, obtain preference. As at Maceio, there is only one British merchant resident at Aracaty, Mr. Miller, to whom I had letters from Pernambuco, and in whose house I was hospitably entertained during the fortnight I remained here. I had also letters to several respectable Brazilians, from whom I likewise received many kind attentions, not the least of which were letters to their friends in the interior. Besides making the necessary preparations for my journey, I made a few excursions in the neighbourhood, and thereby obtained specimens of most of the plants which were then in flower, among these was a very pretty species of _Angelonia_ (_A. arguta_, Benth.). As the Senhores Pinto were sending their goods to Icó in waggons, they obligingly allowed me to despatch, by this opportunity, all the heaviest portions of my luggage. I thus only required to purchase two horses at Aracaty, and these, two of the best travelling ones that were to be had, cost only four guineas each. Having agreed to accompany the Pintos to Icó, we started on horseback from Aracaty, on the morning of the 3rd of August, in the midst of a heavy shower of rain, which, however, soon ceased. After riding through a dense forest of Carnahuba palms on a perfectly level sandy road, we crossed the river at the distance of about two leagues and a half from the town. The ford is called the Passagem das Pedras, from the rocky nature of the bed of the river. These rocks I found belonged to the gneiss series, with the strata nearly vertical, the little inclination which they had, being towards the west in the direction of the hill already alluded to, called the Serra d’Areré, about half a mile distant. At nine o’clock we halted to breakfast in a