ill-informed, he possesses a great share of shrewdness and cunning, qualifications highly requisite for the maintenance of the despotism with which he has hitherto governed the province, under which it can certainly boast of a greater amount of peace and quietness than almost any other province in the empire. It is not a little strange that, notwithstanding his many enemies, only one attempt has hitherto been made to assassinate him, and that so late as the year before I arrived there. On the 17th of January, 1838, on returning from one of his fazendas, and when about half a league from the city he was fired at from behind some bushes; the shot only wounded him in the right shoulder. The assassins, for there were two, fled immediately, and one of them appeared among the first to congratulate the Barão on his arrival after so fortunate an escape. Parties were instantly despatched to scour the woods in pursuit of the delinquents, and a black man who was found hidden among some bushes, and who could not give a good account of himself, was taken to the city, and on being interrogated, confessed that although he was one of the parties, he did not fire the shot, the person who did so being one Joaquim Seleiro, a mulatto saddler, who lived in the house of the Barão. This man was said to be of a very vicious disposition, and of strong passions; and it was well known that a few days before the occurrence, he had been ill used in some manner by the Barão, without just cause. At the time he was denounced, he was leading a party in the woods in search of the assassins; and was not a little astonished on his return to find himself a prisoner. He strongly denied the crime of which few deemed him to be innocent; the laws of the country do not inflict the penalty of death for a mere attempt at murder: he was, therefore, committed to prison, where he died twenty-six days after the perpetration of that crime, under circumstances that have given rise to suspicious reports.