Till within the last ten years, they had a resident priest among them, but since that period, they have been without any; once a year, they have a few days’ visit from one residing in the Villa de Natividade, thirty leagues distant, where their marriages are celebrated, and their children baptized. There is no school in the Aldea, and the only persons who can read and write are the two captains, one of whom is a man about forty years of age; the other, who is called Luiz Francisco Pinto, was then in his seventy-fourth year, and from him I obtained nearly all my information regarding the mission. His wife, who was nearly as old as himself, was confined to bed from dropsy; I visited her frequently during our stay, prescribing such medicines as I thought would be of service to her; but what she most enjoyed, was a small basin of tea which I sent her morning and evening. Part of the wall of the apartment in which she was lying had fallen in, but an attempt had been made to keep out the wind and rain, by placing a few palm leaves in the aperture. All the inhabitants speak Portuguese, but many of them still keep up the language of their forefathers. By the old captain I was informed that the mission was established in the year 1730, by a Lieut. Colonel Wencisläo Gomez, who came up with troops from Pernambuco, and conquered the Coroá nation of Indians, being that from which the present race is descended; at that time they formed three Aldeas, and amounted in all to about 1,000 individuals. These three Aldeas were united to form the present one, Duro, which place is called in their own language Ropechedy, signifying beautiful situation, a title which it well merits. Here also I found that the inhabitants lived in constant fear of the Cherente Indians, who inhabit the woods on the banks of the Rio Tocantins to the north-west of Duro. These Indians have made several attacks on the mission, but the occasion on which they committed the greatest havock, was in the year 1789, when a body of them amounting to upwards of two hundred, surrounded the Aldea one morning about ten o’clock, and before evening had burned all the houses in the outskirts of the Aldea, and killed about forty persons, including men, women, and children. They also carried away four children, two of whom were nephews of the old captain. The inhabitants of the Aldea kept up a constant fire upon the Cherentes, but they could not tell how many of them were killed, as they took all their dead with them when they left.