Between the rivers Pomba and Parahiba, about six miles distant from the angle of their confluence, the parish of St. Antonio de Padua was erected, in 1812, in a district well adapted to the culture of various branches of agriculture.
The dwellers of the northern margin of the Parahiba are diocesans of Rio de Janeiro.
CHAP. V.
PROVINCE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL.
Colonization—Boundaries—Climate—Aspect and Productions—Contests between Spaniards and Portuguese—Divisionary Line between these two Powers—Opposition by the Indians of the Seven Missions—Their Defeat—Revived Contests between Spaniards and Portuguese—Mountains—Rivers—Lakes—Capes and Ports—Islands—Mineralogy—Phytology—Zoology—Large Fazendas for breeding Cattle—Mode of Management—Sheep-Flocks—Use of the Laço and Balls—Towns, Nature of Exports, Villages, &c. including those of the District of Monte Video.
This province, which includes the major part of the territory to the south of the capitania of St. Amaro, either had no donatories when John III. divided the coast, or from some other cause it was not colonized. Neither was its colonization accomplished by Viscount D’Asseca, nor his brother, John Correa de Sa, at the period of the great distributions of land which Peter II. granted to them in the territory denominated St. Gabriel, adjacent to the river Plate.
The names by which this capitania was sometimes, although seldom, designated, of D’El Rey and St. Pedro, are supposed to have been given when it was first annexed to the crown lands.
About the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, some Vincentistas removed their establishments to the vicinity of lake Dos Patos, and their descendants extended themselves to the south and west, as the Indians gradually relinquished the country.
The capitanias of the brothers Souzas, could not be enlarged beyond their prescribed limits, although the adjoining districts of land were devoluta, or without donatories; yet the first settlers there from these capitanias were always considered their people, and known as Vincentistas and Paulistas, until those districts were erected into this province. It is the most southern one in the Brazil, very extensive and important, lying between twenty-eight and thirty-five degrees of south latitude, and is bounded on the north by the province of St. Catharina (from which it is separated by the river Manbituba) and the province of St. Paulo; on the west it is skirted by the river Uruguay and the province of that name; on the south by the river Plate; and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; being upwards of five hundred miles long and four hundred wide.
The climate is temperate, participating almost equally of heat and cold, and the air is pure and healthy. Winter begins in May and lasts till October. The prevailing wind is from the south-east. The longest day of the year, in the most southern part of the province, is about fourteen hours, or rather more. Frost occasionally prevails from the month of July till September. The greatest part of this province is flat, having extensive plains, watered with numerous torrents, or rapid streams, and with lakes. No other district possesses such abundant pastures. In its southern parts the soil is well adapted to a profitable diversity of productions; to wheat, rye, barley, Indian corn, rice, peas, beans, water-melons, melons, onions, as well as to all that arises from Spanish horticulture; also, some cotton, mandioca, and the sugar-cane. Hemp and different qualities of flax grow in great abundance. Fruit-trees of the south of Europe prosper here better than between the tropics, and none multiply so prodigiously as the peach. The vine flourishes in profusion and perfection; but the absence of a spirit of industry and improvement still retards the manufacture of wine, of which the grape here would afford an excellent quality.
D. Peter de Mendonça, sent by Charles V. with eight hundred men, in order to form a colony in the river Plate, in 1535, established himself in the place where the city of Buenos Ayres now stands, in the country of the Maracotos, by whose hands he lost his life, and a great part of his followers, in 1539. The rest had, in the preceding year, advanced up the Paraguay, and already begun the city of Assumption. D. Pedro Ortez de Zarate, governor of that city, re-established the colony of Mendonça at Buenos Ayres, and took up his residence there in 1580, in order to supply the want of a port to the city of Assumption, which they could not obtain on the opposite margin of the Plate.