Mineralogy.—Granite, limestone, potters’ earth, crystals, and gold in the western district of the province.
Phytology.—Amongst medicinal plants are found ipecacuanha, alcacuz, contrayerva, (used against poisons,) butua, jesuits’ bark, jalap, tamarind, milhomens, or basil root, curucu, barbatimao, curcuma, or turmerick, betony. The gum trees are gum-copal, dragons’ blood, angelem, and mastick. Amongst the trees of good timber for building are macaranduba, tapinhuan, vinhatica, loiro, jinipapo, itapicuru, cedar, pilia, hybicuhyba, sassafras, angico, gonsalo-alves, bow wood, oil wood, iron wood, violet wood, sucupira, sapucaya, caixete, coroçao de negro, (negro’s heart,) and Brazil wood. There are also trees of cupahiba, suma-uma, cajue-nut, jabuticaha, mangaba, the goyaba, araticu, and a diversity of palms. The Asiatic cocoa-nut tree is very abundant in the proximity of the shore. The piassaba tree, common in the woods, furnishes a lucrative branch of commerce in its flax for cables; of its nut various turnery articles are made. The nayha tree, as large as the first, grows in the interior, and sustains with its nuts a variety of birds, principally the arrara, and quadrupeds; they are little inferior to the cocoa, the inside being very sweet.
Zoology.—All parts of the comarca are generally deficient in domestic animals; hogs, which are the most numerous, fly to the mountains, in certain moons, and do not re-appear till after some days. In the woods are the deer, anta, boar, and other game. The wild dog has been known in this district only a few years. The mutun, jacu, macuco partridge, and tucano are common; as well as the arraponga, and various sorts of the turtle-dove. The cayrua is of the size of a blackbird, blue on the back, with the breast purple, the wings and tail black, the beak short and broad; the feathers of the breast, when placed before the heat of a fire, assume the colour of gold; but the Author of Nature has not destined this bird, so esteemed for its plumage, to delight the ear. Various species of bees produce honey spontaneously, some in the cavities of the trunks of trees, others in little hives of wax which they form in the twigs.
The Tupininquin tribe, who possessed the sea-coast when the colonists established themselves in this comarca, (ci-devant capitania,) have been partially Christianized for many years; and, having intermarried with the Europeans, a portion of the population exhibit a mixture of the Tupininquin physiognomy.
In the certam there existed for some ages two nations, denominated Patachos, or Cotochos, and Mongoyos; the former is at present unknown.
The Mongoyos, reduced in the year 1806, are divided into six or seven aldeias, thinly peopled in their vicinity, and to the north of the river Patype. Each family lives in its cabana. They cultivate various sorts of roots, besides excellent mandioca, and water-melons. They are very extravagant of honey in their method of taking it from the hives. They clear away all the wax, as well as the bees, which they find in the cells, and strain the whole through a sort of sifter; the wax and bees are subsequently distilled in a certain portion of water, which ferments and produces a beverage, which when taken copiously leads them on from intoxication to fury. They make even a more spirituous drink from a sort of potato, and the root of mandioca pounded, and infused to the point of fermentation. The fathers give names to their new-born sons without any ceremony whatever. They weep over the dead, and inter them seated in a naked state. They dance and sing to the sound of an instrument as simple as inharmonious, and in the form of a bow with a slender cord. The women wear a well made cotton fringe, which reaches almost to the knees; the men a girdle made of palm leaves, and have no other covering upon their well proportioned bodies. They spend a great portion of their time wandering in the woods, hunting, and gathering fruits. The manufacture of earthen vessels is the only handicraft which they exercise. They use the skins of deer for bags. The dog is the most useful domestic animal in their estimation, and the only one which they breed for the purpose of hunting. They covet nothing so much of the Christians as instruments of iron. Their medicine consists in plasters of pounded herbs, baths, and beverages of others boiled; all derived from the experience or tradition of their ancestors. The bow and arrow are their only arms, both for war and hunting; those who have been catechised prefer the gun.
Rivers and Lakes.—The most considerable is the river Contas, primarily called Jussiappe. It originates and receives its first confluents in the comarca of Jacobina. The streams that incorporate with it in this comarca, by the northern margin, are the Preto, Pedras, Manageru, the small Area, Pires, Agua Branca, (White Water,) and the Orico Guassu, which generally traverse extensive forests, exhibiting few signs of colonization or cultivation. It receives by the southern bank the Grugungy, little inferior to it, the principal branch of which is the Salina. The Patacho Indians are masters of its adjacent territory. Below this confluence is the situation called Funis, where the river runs with divided rapidity, almost hid amongst stones, and discharges itself thirty-five miles south of Point Mutta, and about the same distance north of the Ilheos. Sumacas proceed fifteen miles up it to the first fall, where there is a populous aldeia, with a hermitage.
The Patype, which has its source in the comarca of Serro Frio, and there has the name of Pardo, runs through a stony bed, with numerous falls, which renders it unnavigable. Its mouth is ten miles to the north of the river Belmonte, with which it communicates in two places by the channels of Jundiahy and of Salsa, which latter, about twenty-eight miles from the sea, divides its waters between the Patype and the Belmonte.
About five miles from the Salsa is the deep and circular lake of Antimucuy, abounding with fish, and having two outlets into the Belmonte.
Ten miles north of the Patype is the Poxim, and about the same distance from the latter the Commandatuba.