It is followed, at a distance of about eighteen miles by the St. Cruz, something smaller, and navigable by canoes. It took this name after the inhabitants of the town of St. Cruz removed to its margin, then called the Joam de Tyba. They formed the first colony in its vicinity. It is stored with the same fish as the preceding one.
The St. Antonio, the waters of which are muddy, with an inconsiderable course, is a few leagues north of the preceding.
The lake Juparana, deep, abounding with fish, interspersed with small islands, and about fifteen miles in circuit, bordered with fine woods, growing upon an uneven and fertile country, is twenty miles from the sea, has an outlet into the river Doce by a narrow and deep channel five miles in length, and receives a river called Cachoeira, which is said to be navigable.
Between the mouth of the Doce and the St. Mattheus is the lake Tapada, of considerable length from east to west but very narrow.
The lake of Medo, (Fear,) very small, is in the proximity of the origin of St. Antonio and communicates with the Belmonte.
The lake Braco, long and narrow, prolongs itself with the coast, between the Belmonte and the Mugiquissaba, which is small, and enters the ocean about eighteen miles south of the first.
The Belmonte, so called after the town of the same name was founded near its mouth, is formed in Serro do Frio, one of the comarcas of Minas Geraes, by the waters of the Jiquitinhonha and Arassuahy. When it traverses the cordillera of Aimores it is contracted between two mountains of unequal elevation; the northern one, called St. Bruno, is the highest, and on a sudden descends from a height of more than forty yards into a whirlpool, whose evaporation exhibits an eternal cloud, and the loud murmuring of its falling waters is heard sometimes twelve and fifteen miles off. Continuing for the space of fifteen miles to the east between rugged margins to a cachocirinha, (a little fall,) it flows through a flat and woody country to the sea, describing various windings, with a current rapid and wide but of little depth. Its fish called tubarõe is of an enormous size, and the cacoe is the smallest of its finny inhabitants. It has many flat islands within its margins, and does not receive any considerable stream after it descends the fall.
The Piauhy, which unites the Belmonte below this fall, is the most abundant amongst those which it receives, after commencing to serve as a limit to this province.
Cabralia Bay, (where the armada of Cabral anchored,) fifteen miles to the north of Porto Seguro, and four to the south of St. Cruz, is the only port of the province where large vessels can enter.
The bay of Concha, near the Mugiquissaba, is a roadstead which might be rendered capable of receiving vessels of large burden.