Forbes, James, 1749-1819, James Forbes letter, Rio de Janeiro, 1765 October 1, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Holdings:
- [Request]
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, Rio de Janeiro, 1765 October 1
- Date:
- copied between 1794 and 1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Part of Collection:
- volume 1, page 99-107
- Provenance:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Conditions Governing Access:
- The materials are open for research.
- Conditions Governing Use:
- The collection is the physical property of the Yale Center for British Art. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
- Scope and Content:
- Forbes frames his third letter as a “natural history of Brazil,” meant to detail the various plants and animals he encountered during his stay. Much of the text provides an overview of what one might find in the area of Rio de Janeiro, offering little more than a physical description of each fruit and comments on its taste or use. He describes the cultivation both of plants he finds exotic, and those he knows from England—he’s pleased to find that English crops do quite well in Brazil, and occasionally compares results. At times, Forbes’s commentary touches on the political, economic, or social dimensions of life in the Portuguese colony; the plantain, for example, is the “food of the poor,” and, while the commercial agricultural products include “sugar, rum, tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo, and other small articles,” Forbes speculates that “the gold and precious stones found here have rendered the Colonists averse to the labor of agriculture.” Forbes expresses wonder over many of the country’s indigenous creatures, in particular, the golden lion tamarin or “Lion-Monkey; a beautiful creature, less than the smallest monkey, and in miniature resembling the Lion: …it is soon rendered as familiar as a monkey; comes to table, drinks wine, and is often intoxicated.” Forbes mentions his correspondent’s special interest in birds, apologizing for his own inadequate descriptive abilities. He mentions making numerous purchases to aid in his descriptions—it is unclear precisely what or how. He spends a considerable amount of time describing the hummingbird, which, “tho’ the smallest of the feathered tribes, surpasses them all in loveliness.” He despairs at conveying their appearance: “how then can either my pen or pencil do justice to its beauty?” After a quick note about various venomous creatures, Forbes closes with a reference to the butterflies and fireflies that contribute to the enchantment of the Brazilian forest. The letter concludes with a quotation from Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) on Italy. Content is referenced briefly on page 7 of <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 1.
- Physical Description:
- 8 pages
- Genre:
- Correspondence , Botanical illustrations, Ornithological illustrations, Travel sketches, Maps, Watercolors (paintings), Drawings (visual works), Engravings (prints), and Portraits
- Subject Terms:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819. Descriptive letters and drawingsForbes, James, 1749-1819. Oriental memoirs
- Associated Places:
- EnglandItalyScotlandWales
- Associated People/Groups:
- East India CompanyForbes, James, 1749-1819
- Finding Aid Title:
- James Forbes archive
- Collection PDF:
- https://ead-pdfs.library.yale.edu/11734.pdf
- Archival Object:
- https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199267
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199267?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1