The fazenda of Boa Esperança is one of the largest I had yet visited in Brazil, giving pasture to upwards of 5,000 head of cattle, and several hundred sheep. Although like all others in the Sertão, it is occasionally exposed to long droughts, yet there is an abundant supply of water all the year round, even should no rain fall for more than twelve months. The river passes at a little distance from the house, and although it only contains water in the wet season, an abundant supply is obtained at all times, by means of a high and very strong dam thrown across it at a place where its banks are somewhat high, and rocky on each side. This dam, notwithstanding that it has been built more than fifty years, is still as effective as when first constructed, a circumstance not a little astonishing in a country like Brazil, where works of this nature are in general so badly executed. The house is built on a slight eminence, and as there are about thirty smaller houses behind it belonging to the slaves, the place has all the appearance of a small village; near the house the Padre has erected a neat chapel, in which he says mass every morning to his people. The country in which this fazenda is situated, (as indeed, the whole of the eastern portion of Piauhy, and nearly the whole of the province of Ceará) is called by the inhabitants of the Sertão, Mimoso, in contradistinction to the central and western portions of Piauhy, to which the term Agreste is applied. The vegetation of the Campos Mimosos is characterized in the first place, by the forests being of that nature called Catinga; these are the forests which I have already spoken of as losing their leaves in the dry season; it is remarkable that they form buds like other deciduous trees, but should no rain fall they can remain for several years without producing foliage. In the second place, as has been very correctly remarked by Von Martius, the general vegetation of the Campos Mimosos is distinguished by the tenderness of fibre, rigidity of leaves, the presence of hairs, stings, or prickles, small flowers, and thick and frequent milky juice. The grasses of the pastures are for the most part annual, and generally of a brighter green colour, and have more tender and pliant leaves than those of the Campos Agrestes, of which I shall hereafter speak. The cattle reared in the Mimoso country very soon get fat after the rains have set in, and their flesh is much more esteemed than that of those which have been fed on the coarse pastures of the Agreste districts.