there are many young men, who have received some education, and who by their good behaviour, and closer attention to business than the proud and indolent Brazilians, sooner acquire means of independence, which causes them to become the objects both of their envy and dislike. I had little opportunity of associating with the Portuguese on the coast, but in the interior, I have met with many worthy men of that nation, who have shown me the greatest kindness, when this has been refused by a Brazilian. Ever since the independence of Brazil, they have been very greatly persecuted, and whenever any political disturbance takes place, as a necessary consequence, numbers of Portuguese are murdered, and robbed of all they possess: there exists no fellow-feeling between the two nations. As soon as our host became aware of my intention to remain a month or two at Natividade, in order to give rest to my horses, he most kindly urged me to send them to his fazenda, where he would take charge of them till our departure; such, indeed, was the civility we experienced, that I had no reason to regret having taken the wrong road. Early on the following morning, the 25th of October, we left Sociedade, and after a journey of two long leagues, reached the Villa de Natividade. The country between these two places is flat and thinly-wooded, but on the east side of the road, near the Villa, there is an extensive Serra, about 2,000 feet high, which stretches from north to south. The road passes near the base of this Serra for about half a league, and I was astonished to see the soil, which is of a gravelly nature, dug up into deep trenches, and at intervals the ruins of what appeared once to have been houses. These trenches, I was informed, were old gold workings, which had been abandoned for a long time, on account of the gold being exhausted. The gold-workings seem to have been carried to a considerable extent, for the entire soil, for about half a league in length, and more than a quarter of a mile in breadth, had evidently been completely turned over, to some depth, and the whole appeared to have undergone the process of washing; I afterwards found that most of the country in the vicinity of the Villa had been explored in the same manner. On our arrival, we had no difficulty in finding an empty house for our accommodation, and shortly afterwards; the rains set in very heavily, on which account we were detained here upwards of three months. This, however, I did not regret, after our long journey of considerably more than a thousand miles, reckoned from the time we left Oeiras, from the effects of which the horses had become much exhausted.