Sketches of Brazil

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 Excerpt: ...I now proceed to the evidence afforded by the suburb of Bomfim. Description Of Bomfim.--Bomfim adjoins the city of Bahia to the northward. It may be described as extending about a mile and a-half from the Agua de Meninas, along a broad and well-paved causeway, passing through the centre of an extensive morass, and terminated by a gentle eminence, on which stands the beautiful and, in Brazil, celebrated chapel of Nossa Senhora do Bomfim.' Along this causeway is interspersed an almost uninterrupted succession of houses and gardens, with patches of cultivated ground, gained from the wide-spreading morass which surrounds them. The morass, in the midst of which stands the populous suburb of Bomfim, is bounded to the west by the Bay of Bahia, and to the northward and eastward, or windward, by a high ridge of hills, which form an imperfect semicircle, separating the morass from the South Atlantic Ocean. It is partially subject to the influence of the tide, and consequently exposed to those deleterious effects which are believed to result from the intermixture of salt and fresh MAliSHES. 239 water, together with immense quantities of vegetable and animal matter, exuviae, &c, constantly acted on by the powerful influence of a tropical sun. Now, Gentlemen, in the course of my somewhat eventful professional career, I have visited the malarious localities of the Peninsula, and the more deadly shores of Africa and the West Indies; I have bivouacked with the British army amidst the dreary swamps of Louisiana, and have traversed the more classic Pontine marshes near Rome; and I can safely assure you, that in none of these do the elements commonly deemed necessary for affording to marsh effluvia their most concentrated and deadly degree of intensity, so plentifu...