Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Perspectives on Landscape Change in Brazil

1984; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0022216x00004053

1469-767X

Roberta Marx Delson, John Dickenson,

Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management

The country is so well-favoured that if it were rightly cultivated it would yield everything. (Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, 1 May 1500.) It is a vast region with favoured terrain. On its soil grow all fruits; On its subsoil exist all treasures… Its fields give the most useful food; its mines the finest gold… It is an admirable country, rich in every respect, where prodigiously profuse nature sacrifices herself in fertile produce for the opulence of the monarchy and the benefit of the world. (J. da Rocha Pitta, 1724.)