Brazil

This botanical study of meridional Brazilian flora was conducted in 1929. Written in Portuguese, it is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photographs. Frederico Carlos Hoehne (1882-1959) was a Brazilian botanist associated with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro and the Institute of Botany in São Paulo. He surveyed the botany of Brazil’s interior and published numerous studies and articles on the local flora.

In 2015, media outlets were abuzz with the news of the discovery of a sunken slave ship near the coast of South Africa. The Portuguese slave ship Sao José Paquete de Africa (often shortened to Sao José) began its journey in 1794 from Mozambique, heading to the cotton and rice plantations of Brazil with a cargo of roughly 500 African captives. The ship never reached its destination—as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope, it was ripped apart by high winds and sank just off the coast. Although the crew survived, 212 of the slaves drowned.

Author John Mawe, a dealer and expert in gems and minerals, was the first to reveal the full range of Brazil’s mineral wealth, which the Portuguese government kept closed to Europeans. Briefly detained as a spy in Montevideo, he reached Brazil and was given access to the inland mining districts, including Minas Geraes. There he recorded the localities, processes, and tools of the industry, along with a great deal of general information about the land and people of Brazil. His book was a bestseller, ultimately published in many editions and translations.