The Arraial de Conceição contains a population of about one hundred persons; but there are many houses in the village, belonging to fazendeiros, who only occupy them at the time of the principal church festivals; blacks and mulattos form the greater portion of the residents, and during the four days we remained here, we saw very few white people. This village is situated in a hollow between two small hills, but the country around in general is level; the houses stand principally in two long streets, and one of the two churches it contains is now in ruins. The water with which the Arraial is supplied, is obtained from a small rivulet; it is very bad and of a brackish taste; it seems to have some connection with the production of goître, so prevalent along the western side of the Serra Geral, which, as far as I have traced it, is bounded by limestone similar to that which exists at Natividade. The streams which flow over these rocks are all more or less saline, and wherever these waters are drunk by the inhabitants, there goître is found to exist. Along the eastern side of the Serra, on the contrary, this disease is scarcely to be met with, and there, at least in those parts which I visited, no limestone was to be seen, nor were any of the rivulets impregnated with saline matter. The soil for nearly a league round the village, has evidently been well turned over in search of gold, and from all accounts a considerable quantity was found in former times; the little met with at present scarcely repays the labour of searching for it. The soil in which it is found is of a clayey, gravelly nature, being evidently the débris of primitive rocks, the gold appearing either in very minute particles, or in grains of all sizes, some of which are said to weigh several ounces. Rich veins are also supposed to exist in the solid rock, which consists mostly of quartz, but these they cannot explore to any depth, as they do not possess the means of getting rid of the water which accumulates. I was informed by the Vigario, who perhaps exaggerated the fact, that at a short distance from the village there exists a mine so rich, that a small bucket of soil yields nearly a quarter of an ounce of gold: he said it was not above, twenty feet deep, but in consequence of the influx of a spring, it had been abandoned for a long time. The only method they employed to get rid of the water, was by a number of men stationed at different heights, who handed it to one another in buckets; when I enquired why they did not make use of pumps, he said they had only heard of such things, but had never seen them, the mechanics of the place being so ignorant that they did not know how to construct so simple an instrument! From the Vigario I received a great deal of kindness during my stay: he was a man of very benevolent disposition, and much respected by the people; although advanced in years, he was of a very active temperament, far more so indeed than the generality, not