little excursions in the neighbourhood, and thus added largely to my collections.
On
the morning of the 24th of September, after having taken leave of my
kind friends at Morro Velho, we again resumed our journey. There is a
direct road from this place to the city of Ouro Preto, the capital of
the province of Minas, through which I wished to pass, but part of my
luggage having been sent on from Cocaes to a village called San
Caetano, situated about three leagues below the city of Marianna, I was
obliged to proceed there first. It was my intention to return to Gongo
Soco by the way I had come, but the day before we left, information
reached Morro Velho, that the wooden bridge over the Bio das Velhas, at
Bapoza, had fallen down. We were therefore obliged to return by the way
of Sahara, which increased the journey about two leagues. We passed
through Sahara without halting, and arrived in the afternoon at the
Cuiaba mine, where we spent the night with Mr. Richards, and started
again next morning after breakfast, reaching Gongo Soco between five
and six o'clock in the afternoon. Almost the whole of the country
between the two places, with the excepÂtion of the Serra to the N.W. of
Gongo, consists of bare grassy hills, a few small woods only existing
in the hollows. Being then the end of the dry season, the hills had a
very arid and barren look, everything being burned up from the want of
rain. The roads were covered with fine yellow dust, the debris of
the clay slate of which the hills are formed; and we were nearly the
whole way enveloped in a dense cloud of it, rising up from the horses'
feet.
At
about half way between the two places, we passed through part of the
Villa de Caete, a miserable looking town of some size, situated in a
narrow shallow valley, running in a N.E. direction from the Serra de
Piedade, the "Villa itself being distant from it about two leagues.
This Villa, like many others in the mining districts, has all the
appearance of having seen better days, as it contains the ruins of many
fine houses, as well as one of the finest churches that exists in the
interior, and St. Hilaire doubts even if there is one in Bio de Janeiro
that may be compared with it.
