The Arraial de San Caetano, which is small, and evidently poor, is situated on the acclivity of a low hill on the north bank of a small stream which empties itself into the Rio Doce. It contains only one church, which if finished on the scale it has been begun, would be a great ornament to the place, standing, as it does, on a height which overlooks the village. Gold washing in the bed of the stream, and along its banks, seems once to have been the chief occupation of its inhabitants, but that source of gain being now exhausted, they have mostly taken to the cultivation of the soil much of which in the neighbourhood is well adapted for the growth of coffee, Indian corn, &c.
The tropeiro not being able to start for some days after my arrival, and making objections to go round by Ouro Preto, which I had a great desire to see, I determined to make a hurried visit to that city alone. I therefore hired a guide, and started on the morning of the 5th of October. A journey of three leagues through a hilly and thinly-wooded country, brought me to the city of Marianna, the situation and appearance of which pleased me very much; it stands on the S.W. side of a broad level valley, on the gentle declivity of a rising ground which skirts the base of the range of the Serra de Itacolumi. It is more compactly built than the towns I have generally seen in Brazil, and as there are several fine and handsome churches, and the houses are mostly large and white-washed, the city has altogether a very noble appearance. In the suburbs, and even in the city itself, many of the houses have gardens attached to them, planted with bananas, oranges, and the round-headed Jaboticabeira, which with their different shades of green, contrast well with the white-washed walls of the houses; in passing through the town, it appeared so quiet, that I could almost have fancied it deserted. In some of the principal streets, I saw a few shopkeepers leaning listlessly over their counters, and on the stairs in front of the prison a few soldiers keeping guard; these and an occasional black urchin squatted at a door, were all that gave an idea of life in the city, which is said to contain about 5,000 inhabitants. It is more a clerical than a commercial city, being the residence of the bishop and the seat of a theological college.
The imperial city of Ouro Preto, formerly Villa Rica, is about two leagues distant from Marianna in a south west direction. The road, which is very good, gradually rises towards Ouro Preto; in many places along the side of it there are planted at irregular distances wild fig trees, natives of the country, which have grown up, and not only give a good shade, but recall to a European the roads of his native country. Near the entrance to the city, where the road has been hollowed out of the solid rock, many galleries are to be seen entering the hills; these are gold workings which have long been abandoned, and some of which are now made use of as pig-styes, by the poor people who live in their vicinity. About half way between the two cities, the road passes through the Arraial de Passagem, a small village, the inhabitants of which formerly subsisted by gold washings, but the mines being now exhausted, they occupy themselves with the cultivation of provisions, for which they find a ready market in Ouro Preto.
During my short stay in the Imperial city, I lived in the house of Senhor José Peixoto de Souza, having carried letters to him from Morro Velho. He is the principal merchant in the province of Minas, and possesses the finest house in the city; the erection of it cost him about £4,000 sterling, a great sum for a house in the interior of Brazil. He is a man of a very kind and obliging disposition, and being agent for all the English mining companies, his house is the place where the officers belonging to them put up at in passing through the city, there being no respectable inn in the whole place; nor is it only Englishmen who make his house a rendezvous, his own countrymen sharing in like manner his hospitality. During the three days I remained there, so many guests arrived and departed, that it had more the appearance of an inn than the dwelling of a private individual. He began life as a simple washer of gold (faiscador), and is now the principal gold merchant in the province.
The country around the city is hilly in the extreme, and the rocks consist of clay-slates, soft micaceous iron schist, commonly called Jacutinga, and that hard iron slate rock, now known by the name of Itacolumite, all disposed in layers that are much inclined; the country round is auriferous, and many workings exist in the neighbourhood. In the narrow valley, on one side of which the city stands, runs a small stream, called the Riberão de Ouro Preto, which takes its rise in the neighbourhood; the bed of this brook consists of a soft kind of gravel, and in it the poorer part of the inhabitants gain a scanty subsistence by washing for gold. The operation is called Mergular, or diving, and the people who work in this manner are called faiscadores; they are generally half-naked, and after raking away the larger stones from the place which they select in the bed of the stream, they fill their flat wooden plate (Bateia) with the fine gravel and sand, which is purified by washing in a peculiar manner, till at last the gold dust remains in the bottom of the vessel, from which it is transferred to a small leathern bag which is suspended from their middle; they are not able to make more than about a shilling a day. The time they prefer is after heavy rains have caused a strong current in the stream.
Although the city of Ouro Preto is much larger than that of Marianna, it has not the same imposing appearance, not for the want of large buildings, but from the irregularity of its site. The greater part of it is built upon the side of the Serra de San Sebastião, which forms the N.W. boundary of a deep narrow valley. It is naturally divided into an upper and lower town, the upper being by far the finer; it contains a number of handsome buildings, such as the palace of the provisional government, which is a large and well-built stone edifice, standing on one side of a square of considerable size, the opposite side of which is formed by the town house and prison, which is also a fine building. A little below these stand the barracks, which are the best I have seen in the interior; the treasury is also a good substantial stone building, but the low situation, and the narrow street in which it is built, do not allow of its being seen to advantage. The city contains six large churches, the finest of which, Nossa Senhora do Carmo, stands in the upper town, not far from the prison house; the city is abundantly supplied with water of an excellent quality, a fountain existing in almost every street.
The population of the city is said to amount to about 8,000 souls; it contains many good shops, but not one devoted to the sale of books. It boasts, however, of two printing offices, and four newspapers, two of which are ministerial, and two belong to the opposition. They are of small folio size, and their contents are almost entirely of a political nature. In the beginning of the year 1840, a college, a preparatory one, was established by a law passed in the provincial assembly, in which Latin, French, English, philosophy, mathematics, and pharmacy, are taught by as many different professors.
About a mile from the city there is a Botanic Garden, which is maintained by government, and principally intended for the propagation of useful exotic plants, to be given gratis to those who may apply for them. I found the plants principally cultivated here to be the Tea plant, Cinnamon, the Jaca, Bread-fruit, Mango, &c. Several acres are devoted to the cultivation of tea, of which a considerable quantity is manufactured yearly, and sold in the city at about the same price as that which is imported from China. The avenue leading to the garden, as well as several others which surround it, are planted with the Brazilian pine (Araucaria Brasiliana), which adds greatly to the beauty of the grounds; these trees were about thirty years of age, and bore abundance of their large cones yearly.