Next day, Feb. 4th, we left Barra de San Antonio Grande about mid-day, and reached Maceio at five o’clock in the evening. Shortly afterwards I delivered the letters of introduction I had brought with me from Pernambuco to Mr. Burnet, the only British merchant in the place, who kindly invited me to remain with him during my stay. The town of Maceio is of considerable size, containing about 5,000 inhabitants; previous to the independence of Brazil, when the Portuguese were expelled by the Brazilians, the population amounted to upwards of 7,000, and as these were the principal capitalists, the trade of the place has declined considerably ever since. The town itself stands on a platform about fifty or sixty feet above the level of the sea, and distant from it about a quarter of a mile; but at a little more than a mile to the north-east, there is a small village called Jaragua, close to the sea, where there are two wharfs for the loading and unloading of goods, and a custom-house. The bay of Maceio is of considerable size, forming a kind of semicircle, and offering good anchorage for shipping. Formerly much cotton and sugar were shipped from this port in British bottoms, but now scarcely more than two or three English vessels visit it in the course of the year, the greater part of this produce being sent either to Bahia or Pernambuco. The country round Maceio is not so monotonous and flat as that around Pernambuco; low undulating ridges of hills reaching close to the sea, covered with a vegetation of low trees and shrubs. During several walks which I took in the vicinity, in company with a young Scotchman who had been sometime resident there as a medical practitioner, I made many additions to my botanical collections, particularly on a flat sandy tract to the north-east of the town. Among these I may mention a fine _Diospyros_, a curious _Eriocaulon_, _Marcetia taxifolia_, an _Eschweilera_ different from that found at Pernambuco, and a _Melocactus_. Maceio is considered more unhealthy than Pernambuco or Bahia, ague being of very frequent occurrence, particularly at the beginning of the rainy season.