The following places are in the diocese of Buenos Ayres.
Monte Video, with the title of city, is situated in a pleasant plain at the extremity of a peninsula, which forms the eastern side of a bay almost two leagues long, and one wide at the entrance. It is fortified with various batteries towards the sea, and a citadel on the land side. It has a church dedicated to the apostles St. Filippi and St. Tiago, a convent of St. Franciscans, an hospital, good houses with flat roofs and parapets, and straight streets. The inhabitants enjoy a salubrious air, but are inconvenienced from the want of wood. They drink rain-water, collected in cisterns, which are formed in the inner courts common to the houses, and this water is pure and excellent. There are also pits dug near the sea-side, from whence water is brought in carts for the supply of the town. It is one hundred and thirty miles to the west of Cape St. Mary, and one hundred and twenty east of Buenos Ayres. Its port, at the extremity of which there is a small island fortified, has not sufficient depth of water in all parts for large vessels. The pamperos, which are furious tempests from the south-west, occasion at times very great injury, and the sea here is greatly subjected to the influence of these winds. It was taken by the English in June, 1807, and given up again at the end of some months. There are a few English establishments here, but the trade is trifling compared with that of Buenos Ayres. The suburbs are thickly inhabited, and have two parochials, both dedicated to Our Lady of Carmo. More distant there are two others, Pinheral and Pedras, and their parishioners are breeders of cattle.
Maldonado is a small town, but which, with much facility, might become very considerable, from the circumstances of its favourable situation upon a fine bay, bearing the same name, and the fertility of its adjacent district. It is adorned by the church of St. Carlos; and the inhabitants are chiefly descendants of the Portuguese. It is fifteen leagues west of Cape St. Mary.
Pueblo Novo, founded for the habitation of the Portuguese prisoners of Colonia do Sacramento, is two leagues to the north of Maldonado, and has a church called St. Carlos. Near twenty-five leagues to the north of Pueblo Novo is the parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao de Minas.
St. Domingos Suriano is a small town, well situated near the mouth of the river Negro, in a country abundant in corn and pastures, where large quantities of cattle are bred, which, with lime, are the principal exports. Eight leagues distant from St. Domingos Suriano is the parish of Nossa Senhora das Merces, near the margin of the Negro. About five leagues from the same place upon the St. Salvador, is the parish of Espenilho; and fourteen leagues from Espenilho, that of Viboras.
Nine leagues to the north-east of Monte Video is the parish of Nossa Senhora of Guadalupe de Canneloes. There are also the parishes of Perongos, which is in the central part of the district; of Hy, upon the river from which it takes the name; of St. Joze and of St. Luzia, near the rivers which bear their names; of Sacramento, where the Portuguese founded it; and of Pintado, along the sea. Serro Largo, with the title of a town, is delightfully situated near the place of the same name, and is the nearest to the Portuguese frontiers.
CHAP. VI.
PROVINCE OF PARANNA.
Boundaries—Climate—Productions—Matte the most lucrative—First Discoverers—Proceedings of the Spanish Jesuits—Guarani Indians formed into Reduçoes, or Villages—Nature of those Missions—Expulsion of the Jesuits—Delivery of the Missions to other Ecclesiastics—their Decay—Mountains—Mineralogy—Rivers and Lakes—Phytology—Zoology—Towns, Parishes, &c.—Remaining Establishments of the Jesuitical Missions.
This province is bounded on the north by Matto Grosso, on the west and south by the Paraguay, and on the east by the Uruguay and the Paranna, which latter affords it the name, and divides it into two unequal parts, northern and southern. It is altogether situated in the temperate zone, between 24° and 33° 30′ south latitude, being six hundred and fifty miles long from north to south, and more than two hundred and fifty at its greatest width from east to west. The winter, which commences in May and lasts till October, is cold. The prevailing wind in this province is from the south-west. The climate is temperate and wholesome, with the exception of those marshy situations, and others which occasionally overflow, where the fever reigns periodically in certain months. This is a country almost universally low, with few mountains and hills, and these of inconsiderable elevation. The land is generally excellent, and adapted to almost all the productions of the torrid zone, as well as those of the temperate. Wheat and Indian corn are abundant, as are the plantations of cane, cotton, and mandioca. The most lucrative, however, are those of the matte. These productions do not prosper generally in all the districts; wheat rarely grows but in the southern parts, and matte in the northern. The peach tree is so prodigiously abundant in the southern islands of the Paraguay and the adjacent country, that they are frequently cut down in order to heat the oven with their branches. They are not met with to the north of St. Fé.
Sebastian Caboto and Diogo Garcia were the discoverers of this country, on advancing up the Paraguay in 1526.