Our route was now nearly in a southerly direction, and lay through a beautiful country, consisting of diversified and park-like scenery. Many large flat tracts occur, to which the name of Chapada is given; these are but thinly wooded, the trees consisting of the Cashew (_Anacardium occidentale_), Jatobá (_Hymenæa_), Parahiba (_Simaruba versicolor_), and the Folha largo (_Salvertia convallariodora_),—a beautiful tree with large leaves, and spikes of sweet-smelling flowers, not unlike those of the horse-chesnut. As the weather was now quite settled, we generally slept in the open air at night, slinging our hammocks between trees. At a short distance from Oeiras, we passed through some of the national fazendas, and on one of them had an opportunity of seeing the method adopted by the vaqueiros for catching the cattle, which roam about in large herds nearly in a wild state. In the southern provinces, it is well known that the cattle are caught by the lasso and bolas, the open country of those districts allowing their free use, which is not the case in the north. The instrument used here is a slender pole about nine feet long, a little thicker at one end than at the other; into the thicker end, a quadrangular pointed piece of iron is fixed, projecting only about half an inch; mounted on horseback, with this pole in his hand, the vaqueiro selects with his eye the animal he wishes to take, and pursuing it at full gallop, he soon overtakes it, and striking it on the hip with the armed end of the pole, while it is going at full speed, he easily upsets it, and before it can rise again, the vaqueiro has dismounted, and secured it; in this manner nearly all the cattle are taken in this province. There are no fences between the different properties, but every fazendeiro has a brand, with which all his horses and cattle are marked before they are allowed to roam at liberty, and by which they are, of course, easily recognised. The cattle of Piauhy supply for the most part the markets of Maranham, Bahia, and Pernambuco; droves are also occasionally sent into the province of Minas Geräes; they are generally of a large size, and vary very much in colour, though brown is the prevailing one; their horns are long, pointed, and wide-spreading. We stopped a night at one of these national fazendas, which was entirely devoted to the rearing of horses, and the principal vaqueiro informed me that it produced annually about 400 foals. The horses of Piauhy are in general small, and not long-lived, seldom exceeding ten or twelve years; those used on the cattle farms, owing to the violent exercise of hunting the cattle, do not last so long. The riding horses are broken in with great care, and some of the paces which they are taught are very pleasant; they are never shod, and this is less necessary here than in many of the other provinces, for the roads are generally level and soft. The price of a good working horse, that is, one fit for carrying a load