Esculent plants are grown in great profusion and variety. Here is a favorite bulbous root called the _Cará_, which is equal to the best potatoe, and even more farinaceous than many varieties of that plant; it grows to about seven inches in diameter, and affords excellent food, either boiled or roasted. Fine cabbages, sallad-herbs, turnips, cauliflowers, artichokes, and potatoes are in abundance; the latter, though very good, are little used: the sweet potatoe is in greater request among the natives. Maize, beans, green-peas, and every species of pulse florish amazingly. Fowls are cheap, we bought some at three-pence and sixpence each; small pigs from one to two shillings; and flitches of bacon, cured after the mode of the country, at about two-pence per pound. Turkies, geese, and ducks are abundant, and reasonable in price; the latter are of the Muscovy breed, enormously large, some weighing ten or fourteen pounds. Here is a singular breed of cocks; they resemble the common English in plumage and shape, but they crow very loud, and continue their last note for 15 or 20 seconds. When their voice is good, they are much esteemed, and are sent for as curiosities from all parts of Brazil. The cattle are in general good, considering that so little attention is paid to feeding them; when their pastures are full of grass, they are tolerably fat, but when otherwise they become lean. A drove may be bought at 24s. or 30s. a head; beef at about a penny or three-halfpence per pound. The curriers have a singular method of blackening cow-hides and calf-skins: when they have prepared them for that operation, they search for some mud-hole at the bottom of a ferruginous stratum, a ditch for instance; with the mud they cover that side of the skin required to be stained; and they prefer this material to the solution of copperas, probably with reason, as the sulphate of iron formed by the decomposed pyrites acts more mildly in this state than when applied in the common way.
The horses are very fine, and in general docile; when well trained they make excellent chargers. Their size is from twelve and a half to fourteen and a half hands, and they vary in price from three to twelve pounds. Mules, as we have before observed, are considered more useful beasts of burden. The breed of sheep is quite unattended to, and mutton is rarely or never eaten. Here is a very fine and large breed of goats, whose milk is generally used for domestic purposes. The dogs are very indifferent, and of no distinct race.