The Nova Lima and Rio Acima quadrangles to the east and southeast of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, were an important source of gold in the 19th and 20th centuries.

There are many small abandoned gold mines and explorations, some worked before the second half of the 19th century, often with no surviving records.

[5] It obtained a lease to work the São João del-Rei mines in Minas Gerais from the owners, three British merchants and a German physician.

[4] The Morro Velho mine had been worked for perhaps 50 years before the Saint John Company acquired it, at first as an open pit operation.

[7] An 1879 report opened by saying, "One of the last acts of injustice and inhumanity which one would naturally expect from an enlightened and just people would be an illegal retention of freedmen in Slavery by Englishmen.

[10] The Morro Velho mine is in a low valley near Nova Lima, about 12 miles (19 km) from Belo Horizonte.

The company encouraged British miners to come to work in Brazil, and employed slaves until they were emancipated in the late 19th century.

[4] At one time the Morro Velho mine was the deepest in the world, as 2,545 metres (8,350 ft) below the entrance adit.

[4] Systematic exploration of the area around the Raposos mines to the east of Morro Velho seems to have started shortly before 1910.

[15] The company drove an exploration adit in the Bicalho mine in 1925, and seems to have opened a lode before halting operations.

The company bought the Fernan Paes estate to the west of Honorio Bicalho around 1863 and began working the Gaia and Gabirobas mines.

The company started to drive an adit known locally as the Gaia tunnel from the west side of the Rio das Velhas at Honorio Bicalho in 1934, running in a west-southwest direction.