Part 17

Although the domesticated cattle are not bred up with such a satiety of provision as the wild ones, which enjoy the whole of the mother’s milk, and pasture the entire day without working, yet they grow as large and become fatter. This is attributed to the fearful nature of the undomesticated kind, who fly from every animal that appears; whilst the tame ones, although they eat less, live in quiet, always retaining the habit of going to the fold, and approaching people without alarm; they are also less time in the fields, consuming less pasturage, and it is estimated that the aliment which four thousand head of wild cattle exhaust is sufficient to sustain eight thousand of the tame. The meat of the latter is esteemed the most savoury.

The same _fazendeiros_ breed also droves of horses and mules. The latter are the most lucrative, a male one being at least double the value of a horse; and in consequence, its species is more numerous, although very few persons breed more than two hundred annually. The she mules of two years old are either sold or separated from the rest, in order to avoid the destruction which they would cause in the species. A she mule seeing the foal of a mare, immediately begins to caress it as her own, and will not allow the mother to approach to give it milk; the result is, that it perishes with hunger.

The breed of sheep would, if attended to, much exceed that of cattle, in consequence of their generally producing two at a birth; they are not however numerous, few farmers possessing one thousand head, and the major part not any. Nothing here appears so easy and cheap as the multiplication of this animal. For the purpose of shepherding a flock of one thousand, two cur dogs are sufficient, bred up in the following mode. As soon as they are whelped, the lambs of a ewe are killed, the puppies are put to her, and she suckles them until she becomes habituated to treat them as her young, when, upon opening their eyes and seeing no other benefactor, they attach themselves to her, and play with the lambs as if they were of the same species. Nothing is ever given them to eat; they are shut in the fold with the sheep, and on obtaining strength and vigour to attend the flock, they are suffered to go at large, when they accompany it to the field. In a little time, and without more instruction, they are so familiarized with the sheep, that they never separate from them. When it happens that a ewe lambs in the field, and the lamb cannot accompany the mother, in consequence of its not yet having sufficient strength to follow her, one of the dogs watches near, and if he finds that the lamb cannot follow the mother to the flock, he carries it in his mouth, without doing it the least harm. No other animal or unknown person can approach the sheep, of which these dogs are the guardians, without the risk of being attacked. The other domestic dogs and the hordes of the chimarroe dogs are the greatest enemies to the flock; against them and the birds of prey, which pick out the eyes of the lambs, the vigilance of the watch dogs is requisite.

Amongst other species of birds are the Macuco partridge, the parrot, _caroe_, _inhuma_, _sócó_, _tayugu_, _jaluerá_, heron, _jacu_, the _araponga mutum_, _tucano_, and the quail. In the lakes are large numbers of wild ducks, and large wild geese, some brown, some white, others with black necks, which when stripped of their feathers, are covered with a fine long down, similar to the Armenian fur, and serving for the same uses. The marine geese, which have a bill like a turkey, with smaller wings and without feathers, for the most part go at the bottom of the sea, and are seen occasionally upon this coast, as well as the sea calf. It is said, that here the emu ostrich lays many eggs in one nest, to which they never return after having finished laying; the male then hatches them, after instinctively breaking two, for the collection of a large quantity of flies; thus the young find sustenance till they are able to accompany their protector, when he remains their guide for several days. The people do not generally follow hunting or shooting, so that game is very abundant; neither are they partial to fishing.

The inhabitants are instructed in the use of the _laço_, in order to catch wild cattle. It is a cord of twisted leather, secured by one end of the saddle or girth of the horse, upon which the laçador is mounted, the other end forms a noose through which the cord runs, and, curling it up, the horseman throws with dexterity to a great distance, and secures the animal by the horns or the neck. The sagacious horse instantly throws itself into a firmly inclining posture, to resist the opposing power of the animal to escape. There are men so skilled in this art, that they catch the wary ounce with the laço. The laçador as quickly dismounts and despatches it.

They are not less dexterous in the management of the balls, which are two round stones secured at the extremity of a cord, formed also of leather, and being thrown at the legs of the animal, unexpectedly entangles them so effectually, that it cannot move another step. These species of weapons are used by them against each other. This custom was borrowed from the Maraocoto and other Indian tribes, who used the laço and balls with great effect against Mendonça when he landed and founded the city of Buenos Ayres. The _Peons_, who act as guides, as well as others of mixed origin, are expert with these weapons.

The Spaniards denominate the progeny of the Indian and Negro, _Somboloros_; and of these latter and the Mulatto, _Saccalaguas_; the son of a Mestico (offspring of a white and an Indian) and an Indian, _Cholo_. The Portuguese call the first _Curibocas_.

The principal towns in this province are St. Pedro, Portalegre, and Monte Video.

St. Pedro is a commercial town, and advantageously situated upon the extremity of a tongue of land, between the gulf of Manguein to the south and a bay to the north-east. It has a church dedicated to the apostle from whom the town derives its name. It has two orders of devout women; the one called St. Francisco and the other Carmo. The houses are generally very wretched, and the streets of a fine sand, the same as that of the neighbourhood. It enters so profusely into the houses, at the season of the high winds, that it is impossible to eat any thing without a portion of sand being intermixed with it. This town, begun a league to the south-west, in the situation called Estreito, was removed by Gomes Freyre d’Andrade, between the years 1747 and 1750, and was the capital till the year 1763. The heat is intense. Cats fly from the rats, which are large and exceedingly numerous; but they have a formidable enemy in the dog. Here are some English establishments in connexion with houses at Rio de Janeiro.

Upon the eastern bank of the river, in front of St. Pedro, is the considerable and flourishing _arraial_ of St. Joze, with a hermitage of the same name. It is the town’s port; and, in 1814, there sailed from it three hundred and thirty-three vessels of various kinds, laden with wheat, hides, _carne-secco_, or dried beef, tallow, cheese, and other articles. Six leagues to the south of St. Pedro is the arraial of Povo Novo, ornamented with a hermitage of Nosso Senhora das Necessidades. Its inhabitants, originally from the Azore islands, are husbandmen.

Portalegre (delightful port) is a large, populous, and commercial town, has good houses, and straight streets, principally paved, and is situated upon the southern margin of a bay to the eastward of the Jacuhy, seven leagues above its mouth, and forty-three leagues north of St. Pedro. It is the capital of the province, the residence of the governor, now Conde de Figura, of the ouvidor, and a vicar-general. It has a church, dedicated to Our Lady Madre de Deos, (Mother of God,) the chapel Das Dores, (of Grief,) an hospital, a Junta da Fazenda Real, (a treasury,) and a Cadeira regia de Latim, (a royal professorship of Latin.) The senate is presided by a Juiz de Fora, or a judge similar to a mayor, who also presides over the orphan establishment.

With the loss of the town of St. Pedro, in 1762, the village of Nosso Senhora de Conceiçao, became the capital, and the hermitage with which it was ornamented the parochial for some years, inasmuch as the governor, Joze Marcellino de Figueyredo did not remove the seat of government; but increased and improved this village, to which he gave the name so appropriate to its good port. In 1808, it received the title of town.

A great part of the commodities that are exported from the port of the town of St. Pedro, are shipped thither from Portalegre, in hyates, or small craft.

The adjacent country is fertile and watered by the Cahy, Caravatahy, and other rivers.

About four leagues to the north-east of Portalegre, and not quite a mile from the right bank of the Caravatahy, in an elevated and fine situation, is the parish of Nosso Senhora dos Anjos, founded by the same governor, J. M. de Figueyredo, for the habitation of various Tappe Indian families, fugitives from the missions of the Uruguay. These Indians established a large fazenda for breeding cattle, in order that they might better sustain themselves; and who, notwithstanding they were freed from the capitation, and exempted from the rod and discipline under which they had been brought up, withdrew by degrees to various situations in the province. The river is very winding, its banks abounding with timber, stone, and fine potters’ clay.

A little more than thirty-five miles to the west of Portalegre is the considerable and delightful arraial of the new parish, near the mouth of the Tacoary. Its inhabitants raise wheat and cattle.

About eighteen miles to the north is the parish of St. Joze, with a large praca, or square, on which is the mother church. It was the source of the agriculture of this province, and its people are mostly descendants of the first settlers from the Azores; from whence Senhor Don Joze brought various families. They began to cultivate wheat and Indian corn according to the method of their own country, and which is at this day the occupation and support of their posterity.

Little more than three leagues to the west of the new parish, is situated the pleasant arraial of St. Amaro, also upon the northern margin of the Jacuhy, and ornamented with a magnificent church.

Eight leagues to the west of St. Amaro is the considerable town of Rio Pardo, at the mouth of the river from which it borrows the name, and has a church called Nossa Senhora do Rozario; also two chapels. It occupies four small eminences, and had its commencement with a fort dedicated to St. Lourenço, received the title of town in 1812, and that of a countship in 1815.

About two miles from it is the village of St. Nicoláu, with a hermitage of that name. The people who inhabit it are descended from the aborigines. About twelve leagues south of Rio Pardo is the arraial and chapel of St. Barbara da Encruzilhada, in an elevated and pleasant situation, and having most excellent waters. Ten leagues above Rio Pardo, upon the northern bank of the Jacuhy, is the considerable arraial of Cachoeirá, with a church of the Lady of Conceiçao. It has wide, straight, and clean streets, and possesses advantages for becoming much more considerable.

Twelve leagues to the south of Cachoeirá is situated the arraial of Cussapabá, upon a small hill near the source of the river St. Barbara, with the chapel of the Lady of Assumpçao.

North-east of Portalegre about fifteen leagues is the small town of St. Antonio da Patrulha, near the road, in an elevated country. Its inhabitants cultivate mandioca, sugar, and bananas, with other fruits.

To the north of Patrulha, in an extensive plain upon the General Serra, is the parish of Nossa Senhora do Oliveira. Cattle are its main commodity.

The peninsula formed by the ocean and the lake Patos is divided into three parishes. To the west of the lakes Patos and Mirim are the parishes of Espirito Santo, Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao de Piratinin, St. Francisco de Paulo, Nossa Senhora de Conceiçao de Canguçú, in the vicinity of the river Camapuan, and St. Sebastiam do Bajé, near the origin of that river; all in the diocese of Rio de Janeiro.

The following places are in the diocese of Buenos Ayres.

Monte Video, with the title of city, is situated in a pleasant plain at the extremity of a peninsula, which forms the eastern side of a bay almost two leagues long, and one wide at the entrance. It is fortified with various batteries towards the sea, and a citadel on the land side. It has a church dedicated to the apostles St. Filippi and St. Tiago, a convent of St. Franciscans, an hospital, good houses with flat roofs and parapets, and straight streets. The inhabitants enjoy a salubrious air, but are inconvenienced from the want of wood. They drink rain-water, collected in cisterns, which are formed in the inner courts common to the houses, and this water is pure and excellent. There are also pits dug near the sea-side, from whence water is brought in carts for the supply of the town. It is one hundred and thirty miles to the west of Cape St. Mary, and one hundred and twenty east of Buenos Ayres. Its port, at the extremity of which there is a small island fortified, has not sufficient depth of water in all parts for large vessels. The _pamperos_, which are furious tempests from the south-west, occasion at times very great injury, and the sea here is greatly subjected to the influence of these winds. It was taken by the English in June, 1807, and given up again at the end of some months. There are a few English establishments here, but the trade is trifling compared with that of Buenos Ayres. The suburbs are thickly inhabited, and have two parochials, both dedicated to Our Lady of Carmo. More distant there are two others, Pinheral and Pedras, and their parishioners are breeders of cattle.

Maldonado is a small town, but which, with much facility, might become very considerable, from the circumstances of its favourable situation upon a fine bay, bearing the same name, and the fertility of its adjacent district. It is adorned by the church of St. Carlos; and the inhabitants are chiefly descendants of the Portuguese. It is fifteen leagues west of Cape St. Mary.

Pueblo Novo, founded for the habitation of the Portuguese prisoners of Colonia do Sacramento, is two leagues to the north of Maldonado, and has a church called St. Carlos. Near twenty-five leagues to the north of Pueblo Novo is the parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao de Minas.

St. Domingos Suriano is a small town, well situated near the mouth of the river Negro, in a country abundant in corn and pastures, where large quantities of cattle are bred, which, with lime, are the principal exports. Eight leagues distant from St. Domingos Suriano is the parish of Nossa Senhora das Merces, near the margin of the Negro. About five leagues from the same place upon the St. Salvador, is the parish of Espenilho; and fourteen leagues from Espenilho, that of Viboras.

Nine leagues to the north-east of Monte Video is the parish of Nossa Senhora of Guadalupe de Canneloes. There are also the parishes of Perongos, which is in the central part of the district; of Hy, upon the river from which it takes the name; of St. Joze and of St. Luzia, near the rivers which bear their names; of Sacramento, where the Portuguese founded it; and of Pintado, along the sea. Serro Largo, with the title of a town, is delightfully situated near the place of the same name, and is the nearest to the Portuguese frontiers.

CHAP. VI.

PROVINCE OF PARANNA.

_Boundaries--Climate--Productions--Matte the most lucrative--First Discoverers--Proceedings of the Spanish Jesuits--Guarani Indians formed into Reduçoes, or Villages--Nature of those Missions--Expulsion of the Jesuits--Delivery of the Missions to other Ecclesiastics--their Decay--Mountains--Mineralogy--Rivers and Lakes--Phytology--Zoology--Towns, Parishes, &c.--Remaining Establishments of the Jesuitical Missions._

This province is bounded on the north by Matto Grosso, on the west and south by the Paraguay, and on the east by the Uruguay and the Paranna, which latter affords it the name, and divides it into two unequal parts, northern and southern. It is altogether situated in the temperate zone, between 24° and 33° 30′ south latitude, being six hundred and fifty miles long from north to south, and more than two hundred and fifty at its greatest width from east to west. The winter, which commences in May and lasts till October, is cold. The prevailing wind in this province is from the south-west. The climate is temperate and wholesome, with the exception of those marshy situations, and others which occasionally overflow, where the fever reigns periodically in certain months. This is a country almost universally low, with few mountains and hills, and these of inconsiderable elevation. The land is generally excellent, and adapted to almost all the productions of the torrid zone, as well as those of the temperate. Wheat and Indian corn are abundant, as are the plantations of cane, cotton, and mandioca. The most lucrative, however, are those of the _matte_. These productions do not prosper generally in all the districts; wheat rarely grows but in the southern parts, and matte in the northern. The peach tree is so prodigiously abundant in the southern islands of the Paraguay and the adjacent country, that they are frequently cut down in order to heat the oven with their branches. They are not met with to the north of St. Fé.

Sebastian Caboto and Diogo Garcia were the discoverers of this country, on advancing up the Paraguay in 1526.

The colony of Assumption was the first establishment in the province after the fort of St. Anna, and suffered much from the various neighbouring nations of barbarous Indians, principally the Guaycurus and Payagoas, who were as numerous as they were ferocious and brave. It was, however, rendered defensible by the augmentation of its settlers. Defective in gold and silver mines, which attracted so many people to Peru and Mexico, this fine country, so advantageously situated, remained for many years after its discovery almost unnoticed.

The middle and eastern parts were the conquests of the Jesuits, by the introduction of Christianity amongst their possessors, the Guaranis. These priests, knowing, from experience, the relaxation of European morals, and how much it prevailed amongst the American colonists, determined to catechize only those Indians who were at a distance from the Europeans, in order that the proselytes should not know practices contrary to the precepts to be taught. The perfection with which they soon spoke the Guaranitic idiom, and the docility of this tribe of Indians, concurred equally to carry into effect this wished-for object.

In a few years the Jesuits reduced the various hordes of this nation to a settled life, in large _aldeias_, or villages, denominated _reduçōes_, the number of which, in the year 1630, had arrived at twenty, with seventy thousand inhabitants. Those who had advanced to the Upper Paranna, with the intention of extending the spiritual conquest, were obliged, by eight thousand Paulistas, to fall back, in 1631, to the south of the Maracajú Serra. The Jesuit, Montoya, relates, that he and his colleagues retired from above to below the seven falls of the Paranna, with two thousand Indians, when the Paulistas invaded the Upper Paranna, and that the latter continued hostilely to visit the _reduçōes_ of the Lower Paranna; and that, in 1637, one hundred and forty Paulistas, with one thousand five hundred Indians, attacked the _reduçōes_ of Jesu Maria, St. Christovam, and St. Anna, and retired with seven thousand prisoners.

The Jesuits next reduced the Tappes to the eastward, and continued to civilize those two nations, by teaching them all the useful arts, thus forming the celebrated Guaranitic empire, which moderate calculators never raised to more than two hundred thousand inhabitants; and it is said they were able to carry into the field an army of forty thousand men. One authority states that between the rivers Uruguay and Paraguay was established a powerful republic, comprising thirty-one large villages, inhabited by one hundred thousand souls; but Guthrie raises the population of these missions to three hundred and forty thousand families, making a surprising and incredible population of thirteen hundred thousand inhabitants.

It is said the word _Guarrannis_ means _Guerreiros_, (warriors,) and that this people, in former times, wandered about, carrying destruction to every part within their reach, and obtaining many prisoners, thus acquiring greater numbers and power. Their language and name became common to divers tribes, whom these religious teachers introduced into their associations, from different parts, by which they greatly augmented the population of this republic. The exchequer of the catholic crown furnished annually forty to fifty thousand ducats to the missionaries employed in this conquest, inasmuch as the Indians did not render their agriculture and industry adequate to the expenditure and support of the country, the public receipts of which the Jesuits were the receivers and appropriators. When the villages and temples were completed, each man, from eighteen to fifty years, paid annually a capitation of two gold pieces. The captains (_caciques_) were exempted from this tribute as well as their first born, (_primogenitas_,) and twelve men more in each mission destined to the service of the church. In 1634, when there was already thirty _reduçōes_ with one hundred and twenty-five thousand Christian Indians, the number that paid tribute only amounted to nineteen thousand one hundred and sixteen. In 1649, with a view of gaining more subjects, and to avoid any desertion to the territory of the crown of Portugal, where there was no capitation, the Indians were alleviated from one-half of this tribute. Four years previously was conceded to them the power of exporting the _matte_, upon certain conditions, in order that they might become less chargeable to the capitation. The concession of this liberty was a means of feeding the cupidity of the Jesuits, by the intervention of the curates of the _reduçōes_ serving them as a cloak through the Indians, to carry on a great trade in this commodity, to the prejudice of the merchants at Assumption, whose complaints produced two decrees; the one apprizing the chief priest of Paraguay of the exorbitant quantity of _matte_ which its padres had traded in; the other prohibiting the Indians from carrying more than twelve thousand arrobas annually to that city.