Note 61 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Joam IV. sent over one Bartholomew Barreiros de Ataide with three miners, one a Venetian and the other two French, to search for gold and silver. After two years’ search up the Amazons they returned to Maranham, and offered to supply the people with iron at a cruzado, about 2s. 4d., per quintal, 128 lbs. weight, if the state would engage to take all that they should produce at that price. The people were afraid to enter into any such contract. The island was so rich in this ore that foreign cosmographers called it the ilha do ferro in their maps, and all who came there with any knowledge of the subject said that it was ore of the best quality. A thing of great importance to Portugal, which bought all its iron, and yet this discovery was neglected.—From a Memoir of Manoel Guedes Aranha, Procurador from Maranham, 1685, in the 6th Vol. Pinheiro Collection of MSS. in the possession of Mr. Southey.