A contemporary unpublished and unrecorded Portuguese manuscript describing the Paraguay River and the lands, rivers and territories adjoining, including the location of former Jesuit Missions. It is written within the context of the Portuguese-Spanish dispute over the frontier between Portuguese Brazil and the Spanish colonies and focuses in particular on the upper reaches of the river, which at that time still remained relatively unknown.
The Portuguese, under the governorship of Luis de Albuquerque (1739-97), had recently, in 1778, established the towns of Albuquerque (today Corumbá), Laredo, Villa María (today Cáceres), Casalvasco and Salinas. These new establishments and their locations on the Paraguay River are mentioned here. The terms of the 1777 Treaty of San Ildefonso between Portugal and Spain directed that a Portuguese-Spanish delegation be sent to the Paraguay River region to determine a definitive border between the territories.
The Spanish delegation arrived in 1781 under the command of the military officer and naturalist, Félix Manuel de Azara (1746-1821), and waited in Asunción (in Paraguay) for the Portuguese. The latter, in the end, never arrived but the Spanish delegation remained in the region until the 1790s (Azara until 1801) exploring and measuring the region as well as handling the ongoing disagreements with the Portuguese over the demarcation.
This Portuguese description of the River Paraguay is undoubtedly connected to these ventures though whether it is a contemporary translation into Portuguese of a Spanish survey or a survey of the river carried out by the Portuguese themselves is uncertain. It is, however, the only known copy of an unpublished description of the River Paraguay and it describes in detail the little-known upper regions of the Paraguay River.
With a crossed-out annotation on the title-page, the title-page and the last blank leaf are somewhat water stained. The paper is otherwise uniformly toned and showing some occasional foxing, the edges of the leaves are somewhat frayed, slightly affecting the text at the head of each page. Overall in good condition.