Leaving Varzea de vaca about seven o’clock on the following morning, and travelling about two leagues, we halted at a fazenda called Angicas; I intended to proceed further without stopping, but as it was raining very heavily I remained here till the afternoon, when the weather having cleared up, we went on two leagues further to San Gonsalvo, which we reached about sunset. The country between Varzea da vaca and Angicas is flat and sandy, being one of those tracts called Taboleiras; in some places it is covered with a low shrubby vegetation, while in others are seen numerous large kinds of Cactus. Among the many beautiful plants met with on this journey, was one particularly worthy of notice: it is a species of Echites,[8] growing abundantly on the open sandy places; it is not more than six inches high, with subulate leaves and pink-coloured blossoms not unlike those of Phlox subulata; it is called by the inhabitants of the Sertão, Cauhy, and the tuberous root, which is the size and colour of a large black turnip-radish, is eaten by them when cooked, and is said to be very palatable; in the raw state it tastes not unlike a turnip. This root is also a favourite food of the peccary (Dycoteles torquatus, Cuv.), which is very expert at digging them up with its snout, the sand being in many places full of the holes they had made for that purpose. About half a league beyond Angicas, a small lake is seen, which forms the boundary between the provinces of Ceará and Piauhy. There are two houses at San Gonsalvo both belonging to cattle farmers, father and son; at the end of the last rains they possessed conjointly about three hundred head of cattle, but the severe drought that occurred previous to the setting in of the present rainy season, had left them only about forty, all the remainder having perished from the want of water and grass.
Next morning after travelling three leagues and a half through a rather level and tolerably well-wooded country, we arrived towards mid-day at a place consisting of three houses called Campos; the tree most abundant on the road was the Imbuzeira, the fruit of which, called Imbú, was observed in such great plenty that the ground beneath them was completely yellow; we ate abundantly of it, and found it very grateful. About a league from Campos the country abounds with an arboreous species of Jatropha, with small white flowers, and sinuate leaves not unlike those of the holly, only larger; the footstalks of the leaves are furnished with a few long pointed prickles, and without being aware of their nature, I laid hold of a branch to collect a few specimens, but had no sooner done so than my whole hand felt as if it had been dipped into boiling oil, caused by the venom of the prickles which in many places had punctured the skin, and it was intolerably painful for several hours; on my next attempt I was more cautious, and succeeded in obtaining a few specimens. This plant is called by the inhabitants Favella, and in the dry season they scrape down the bark and the wood, which they put into the pools where the large pigeons and other birds resort; after having drunk of this poisoned water they either die or become very much stupified, and in this state are taken and eaten by the people. On this journey we saw a great many Maccaws (Araras) but they would not allow me to come within shot of them.
In the afternoon we made another journey of about a league and a half, through a flat sandy country, which yielded me several novelties, and remained for the night at a large cattle fazenda, called Lagoa Comprida. This house was one of the largest we had seen since leaving Brejo Grande; it is situated on the margin of a lake about four hundred yards long, from which it takes its name; no rivulet empties itself into the lake, which becomes filled during the rainy season, and if the rains have been heavy, it does not dry up before the next wet season. By the proprietor I was informed, that on the previous year very little rain fell, and that in consequence of this, and of the very great drought afterwards, the lake dried up before the setting in of the present rains, the result of which was the death of nearly all the cattle belonging to the fazenda. The people were still in an almost starving state, and although both at Campos and here I endeavoured to purchase some provisions for our own use, nothing was to be had, neither fowls, sheep, goats, pigs, nor beef; money I found to be of no use. Our next stage was one of three leagues, and brought us to another fazenda, called Corumatá. The country was undulating but not hilly, and in many places it was covered with immense blocks of granite; so large and square are some of these blocks, that at a distance we mistook a cluster of them for a large village. Two circumstances occurred to detain us a long time on the road. Having dismounted to collect some specimens, my horse ran off into the woods, and it was nearly an hour before he could be taken; and a little further on, in passing over a sandy piece of ground abounding in ant-hills, the road gave way while a loaded horse was passing over one of their large excavations, and as he was more than half-buried in the sand, it was a long time before we could extricate him. Shortly afterwards, we descended by an exceedingly bad road, consisting of large blocks of granite, into a valley through which a small river runs, immediately after crossing which we arrived at Corumatá. The owner of this farm does not reside on it, the charge of it being given to a cowherd (vaqueiro). Here again we could obtain nothing to purchase, but the vaqueiro presented me with a small piece of dried beef, and abundance of excellent milk; the fazenda, he told me, produces yearly about two hundred calves; the cattle go at large in the woods and fields, but at this season, which is the one in which the calves are produced, the vaqueiro and his assistants, who are generally slaves, are constantly on the look out for such as may have calved. The calves are then brought to the house, and put into a large enclosure called a curral, and as a matter of course the mother follows. In this enclosure the cows and the calves are shut up together at night, but during the day, the cows are turned out to feed; this is a very necessary precaution in such a wild country, to prevent the mothers straying into the woods; a little milk is taken from each cow in the morning before being turned out, at night they are not milked at all; of part of the milk they make a soft kind of cheese, which is much relished by all classes of society. They had not commenced making it here generally, but in the evening, one of the herds came to offer a large one for sale, which I was glad to purchase for the sake of my men. Shortly after we arrived at this place, a tremendous thunder-storm passed over us from the westward, followed by torrents of rain, and in a short time the small river became so much swollen as to be impassable; as the road to Canabrava, our next stage, passed over this stream, we were obliged to remain here till the following afternoon, when, on attempting to cross it, we found it still so deep, that all the loads had to be taken off the horses, and carried over on the heads of the men. Here a curious natural object presents itself: on a bare conical-shaped hill about 800 feet high, being the termination of a ridge, called Serra Grande, there is a stone of immense size placed on the top of another much smaller, and the point on which it rests appears to be so small, that one is led to think that a very slight breeze would upset it. Keeping along the margin of the river, we arrived towards sunset at a place where the road crosses it twice, occasioned by a sudden bend, but we were informed at Corumatá, that there was a bye-path in the woods, which would render this unnecessary. It was now night, and although the moon shone very brightly, we had some difficulty in finding this path; when we did, it was so much overgrown with bushes, from being little frequented, that we had much labour in driving the horses along it with the loads. After toiling about an hour in this labyrinth, much to our joy we reached the road leading from the river to the fazenda of Canabrava, where we arrived in about a quarter of an hour. This is a very large fazenda, and when we asked for accommodation to pass the night, we were shown to an old shed, the roof of which, in many places, was much decayed; as soon, however, as the proprietor learned from my men who I was, he invited me into the house, and prepared an excellent supper, of which we partook with much relish.
As we left Canabrava early next morning, we expected to reach our next stage, Boa Esperança, about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, but in this anticipation we were sadly disappointed. The river runs in a zigzag direction along a valley which stretches between these two places, and as the road passes through the centre, we had to cross the stream no less than eight times in this short distance, although a road might be made with very little labour, to avoid the river altogether. It is seldom, however, that travellers are annoyed so much as we were, for during the arid season the bed of the river is altogether dry. In four of the passages it was necessary to take all the loads off the horses, and carry them across on the heads of the men, but in the others, we managed to avoid this trouble, with the exception of the bundles of paper containing specimens, which I always caused to be carried over by one of the men. As we were all obliged to assist in this work, we were exposed during the greater part of the day to the burning rays of the sun, nearly in a state of nudity. My legs were very much burned, as were those of Mr. Walker, so much so, that on the following day they were completely blistered, and so greatly swollen that I was laid up for nearly two days. This taught me a lesson to be more cautious in future; but on this occasion, I thought that as the blacks did not hesitate to expose themselves to the sun, I might do so also; their skin, however, I found to my cost, was made of tougher material than mine. By the time we had crossed the river, for the eighth and last time, it was about five o’clock in the afternoon, and in ten minutes after, we arrived at the fazenda of Boa Esperança, in an almost exhausted state, from the excessive fatigues of the day. We were cheered, however, by the kind reception we received from its excellent and learned proprietor, the Reverend Padre Marcos de Araujo Costa, and his adopted son Dr. Marcos de Macedo, who had only a short time before returned from a visit to France and England, whither he had been sent at the expense of the Government to study the manufacture of porcelain, and whose acquaintance I had made a few weeks before at Crato, his native place. On this journey I added but little to my botanical collections, but in a moist meadow by the side of the river, I killed a beautiful boa constrictor, about seven feet long. Although these reptiles are frequently met with in the dry country, called the Sertão, they are neither so numerous nor so large as those found in the swampy plains of Piauhy and Goyaz.
The fazenda of Boa Esperança is one of the largest I had yet visited in Brazil, giving pasture to upwards of 5,000 head of cattle, and several hundred sheep. Although like all others in the Sertão, it is occasionally exposed to long droughts, yet there is an abundant supply of water all the year round, even should no rain fall for more than twelve months. The river passes at a little distance from the house, and although it only contains water in the wet season, an abundant supply is obtained at all times, by means of a high and very strong dam thrown across it at a place where its banks are somewhat high, and rocky on each side. This dam, notwithstanding that it has been built more than fifty years, is still as effective as when first constructed, a circumstance not a little astonishing in a country like Brazil, where works of this nature are in general so badly executed. The house is built on a slight eminence, and as there are about thirty smaller houses behind it belonging to the slaves, the place has all the appearance of a small village; near the house the Padre has erected a neat chapel, in which he says mass every morning to his people.
The country in which this fazenda is situated, (as indeed, the whole of the eastern portion of Piauhy, and nearly the whole of the province of Ceará) is called by the inhabitants of the Sertão, Mimoso, in contradistinction to the central and western portions of Piauhy, to which the term Agreste is applied. The vegetation of the Campos Mimosos is characterized in the first place, by the forests being of that nature called Catinga; these are the forests which I have already spoken of as losing their leaves in the dry season; it is remarkable that they form buds like other deciduous trees, but should no rain fall they can remain for several years without producing foliage. In the second place, as has been very correctly remarked by Von Martius, the general vegetation of the Campos Mimosos is distinguished by the tenderness of fibre, rigidity of leaves, the presence of hairs, stings, or prickles, small flowers, and thick and frequent milky juice. The grasses of the pastures are for the most part annual, and generally of a brighter green colour, and have more tender and pliant leaves than those of the Campos Agrestes, of which I shall hereafter speak. The cattle reared in the Mimoso country very soon get fat after the rains have set in, and their flesh is much more esteemed than that of those which have been fed on the coarse pastures of the Agreste districts.
Padre Marcos de Araujo Costa is well known throughout the north of Brazil, not only for his intelligence and learning, but for his excellent moral character and benevolent disposition; and during the eight days that I lived in his house I had ample opportunities of verifying the truth of these accounts. If all the priests in the country were only half as active, well-informed, and as anxious for the diffusion of education as he is, the condition of Brazil would soon become very different from what it now is, and what I fear it will long continue to be, in the present state of things: the activity of this old man, for he was then upwards of sixty years of age, was quite surprising, and his philanthropy was not less so. As the means of education in this large and thinly-populated country come only within the reach of a very few, he has regularly for many years past been in the habit of boarding and educating in his house, free of expense, twenty boys, till they have acquired a tolerable knowledge of the Latin language, and the elements of philosophy and mathematics; he is himself an excellent scholar, and possesses a pretty extensive library of classical and philosophical books; of botany and natural history he knew enough to render these subjects an amusement to him; in his library I found nearly all the works of Linnæus, those of Brotero, and the rare one of Vandelli on the plants of Portugal and Brazil, which latter he kindly presented to me. He holds no living in the church, contenting himself with the quiet and retired life of a cattle farmer, and devoting his leisure hours to the education of his pupils. During my stay at Boa Esperança I made several short excursions in the neighbourhood, accompanied by the old Padre and Dr. Marcos de Macedo, and added many novelties to my collections.
Two days before we left, Senhor Francisco de Souza Martins, one of the deputies from the province of Piauhy, and nephew to the President of the province, arrived on his way to Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by his brother Major Clementino Martins. They came by way of San Bento, which is the first stage from this place on the road to Oeiras, the capital of the province. This was our proposed route, but they gave us so bad an account of the roads, in consequence of the swelling of the rivulets, that I determined by their advice, to take a different road, which though more circuitous was said to be much better. The Major and one of the blacks who accompanied him, were laid up with the ague from continued exposure to the rains.
On the third of March we made preparations for leaving the residence of the good old Padre. During our stay we fared most sumptuously, as every day in the year a fat ox is killed for his use and that of his establishment; a day or two before our departure one was killed, and the flesh dried for our use on the journey, so that with other presents I received from him, our provision boxes were so well filled that we required little in addition till we reached the city of Oeiras.
After an early breakfast I parted with my kind host, who on account of his other visitors did not accompany me far, but Dr. Marcos rode with me for upwards of a league and a half, when we parted with mutual regret, it being so seldom that one who has a taste for the study of nature, meets with a kindred spirit in those distant regions; since my return to England we have kept up a correspondence, and he has sent me specimens of objects in natural history, many of which are different from those which my limited stay enabled me to obtain. At the very outset of our journey, we met with an accident that did not give us a very favourable idea of the state of the road. At about two leagues from Boa Esperança, three of the cargo horses plunged up to the middle in a swamp; the surface was covered with grass, and appeared perfectly solid, but the soil beneath had become so saturated with water, that it was quite a mass of tenacious mud. It was with no small difficulty that the animals were extricated; in leading them across they often sank again; all the loads had to be carried over, and as we had to lend a hand at this work, we shared the same fate as the horses, being frequently up to the middle in the mud. These spots are called Atoleiras by the Brazilians, and are very much dreaded, as horses are occasionally lost in them; during the day we had to pass three more quagmires, but none so bad as the first.