The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

FEENANDO NOEONHA. 151
favourably situated for trade than Maceio, the present capital. Small steamers
ply regularly on the creeks and the neighbouring Lake Manguaba between the
towns of Maceio and Pilar. At the latter place they ship the cotton brought to
the coast from the surrounding plantations.
Fernando Noronha, which belongs administratively to the State of Pernambuco,
is a natural dependency of the north-eastern provinces of Brazil. It has no towns
or any colony of free settlers, being entirely set apart by the federal government as
a convict station. The island is so infested by rats and mice that the convicts,
who are employed at certain times in hunting them down, sometimes kill as many
as 20,000 in a single day. In the year 1893 a project was brought forward to
establish a quarantine and a signal station on the island. The deposits of phos-
phates have not yet been worked, although some guano has been collected on
some of the neighbouring rocks and islets.