“January 13, 1866.—We have just returned this day from Lençoes, taking five days to make the trip there and back, forty or more miles, to avoid crossing a belt of country fifty miles wide, in which the chills prevail unusually severe. In going to and returning from Lençoes, not on the same road both ways, we were never off good land, and the most of it first quality terra rocha. Corn was certainly the best I ever saw, and not a plough in all the country. Coffee trees, none of which are over four years old, loaded down with fruit. Cotton, little planted, but that little very fine. Grasses in abundance; and stock, mules, horses, cattle and hogs as fine as any country can grow.
“I have visited the fine stockgrowing portions of Kentucky and Tennessee, but this beats all ever seen before.
“In addition to growing grain, coffee, sugar and cotton grow as finely here as in any other part of the province. Farms can be purchased in this and the adjoining district, with good improvements in the shape of dwellings, sugar-mills, grist-mills, &c., for $2.50 per acre and less, that being the highest price asked, and $1.50 per acre being the usual price asked for lands as good as lands can be.
“The best information as to depth of soil is, that it averages about thirteen (13) feet deep. From the best information we can get, the good land extends fifty or sixty miles in length and ten or twelve in breadth. It is not uncommon to see trees seven (7) feet in diameter here.
“The people here treat us with great hospitality, and are exceedingly anxious for our people to come amongst them, offering inducements the most substantial, provisions, &c. If this country is ever peopled by an industrious and progressive race it will soon be a paradise on earth.
“I have thus tried to describe this immensely fertile tract of country, but the description is poor in comparison to the reality. It is the most desirable I ever expected even to see.
“I have changed my mind in regard to the expense of settling in this country. When it was said by Mr. Street that we must not expect to use ploughs the first few years here, I laughed at him. But he is right.
“A single man can here clear and fence and plant ten acres of land in two months.
“Five acres will make him at least two hundred and fifty bushels of corn, the other five will make him as much cotton as he can pick, without other culture than the hoe. So that not only a support may be made the first year, but also money may be saved.”
In connection with this communication, it is proper to state that there are large numbers of uncivilized Indians near that region, and that “not long since the neighboring district of São João Baptista was the victim of an outbreak of these savages,” as is stated in the public prints. Facts are important guides to us.