I Had Neuhoff's Account Of Brazil On Board, And From All The Enquiry And
Observation I Could Make, I Found His Description Of The Country, With
Its Animals And Productions, To Be Just.
I particularly enquired
respecting the monster called the liboya, or roebuck-serpent, thinking
it fabulous; but the Portuguese governor
Assured me that they are
sometimes found thirty feet long, and as big round as a barrel, being
able to swallow a roebuck at one morsel, whence it has its name; and he
told me that one of these enormous serpents had been killed near the
town, a short time before our arrival. The principal products of Brazil
are red wood, bearing the name of the country; sugar, gold, tobacco,
snuff, whale oil, and various kinds of drugs; and the Portuguese build
their best ships in this country. Brazil has now become very populous,
and the people take great delight in arms, especially about the gold
mines, to which people of all kinds resort in great numbers, especially
negroes and mulattoes. Only four years ago [in 1704] these people
endeavoured to make themselves independent, but have now submitted. Some
men of repute told me that the gold mines increase fast in
productiveness, and that the gold is got much easier in them than in any
other country.
The indigenous Brazilian women are very fruitful, and have easy labours,
on which occasion they retire into the woods, and bring forth alone, and
return home after washing themselves and their child; the husbands lying
a-bed for the first twenty-four hours, being treated as if they had
endured the pains of child-birth.
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