Journal of a Voyage to Brazil And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823

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Title: Journal of a Voyage to Brazil

And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823

Author: Maria Graham

Release Date: April 22, 2007 [EBook #21201]

Language: English

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Slave Market at Rio Janeiro.

JOURNAL

OF A

VOYAGE TO BRAZIL,

AND

RESIDENCE THERE,

DURING PART OF THE YEARS 1821, 1822, 1823.

———

By MARIA GRAHAM.

———

ONCE MORE UPON THE WATERS, YET ONCE MORE,

AND THE WAVES BOUND BENEATH ME AS A STEED

THAT KNOWS HIS RIDER.

———

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN,

PATERNOSTER-ROW;

AND J. MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.

1824.

Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode, New-Street-Square.

PREFACE.

Although the Journal of a voyage to Brazil, and of a residence of many months in that country, was not written without a view to publication at some time; yet many unforeseen circumstances forced the writer to pause before she committed it to press, and to cancel many pages recording both public and private occurrences.

Perhaps there is even yet too much of a personal nature, but what is said is at least honest; and if the writer should suffer personally by candour, the suffering will be cheerfully borne.

As to public events, all that can be new in the Journal is the bringing together facts which have reached Europe one by one, and recording the impression produced on the spot by those occurrences which might be viewed in a very different light elsewhere. Some have, no doubt, been distorted by the interested channels through which they have reached the public; some by the ignorance of the reporters; and most by the party spirit which has viewed either with enthusiasm or malignity the acquisition of freedom in any quarter of the globe.

The writer does not pretend to perfect impartiality, for in some cases impartiality is no virtue; but knowing that no human good can be attained without a mixture of evil, she trusts that a fair picture of both has been given, although it has cost some pain in the writing.

Of the natives of the country, or of those engaged in its service, what is said, whether of those still employed or of those no longer in the empire, was written under the impression of the moment; and the writer's confidence in the good sense and justice of the Brazilian government and people is such, that she leaves the passages as they stood at the moment of writing.

The events of the last three years in Brazil have been so important, that it was thought best not to interrupt the account of them, by continuing what may be called the writer's personal narrative after she reached Chile; therefore the two visits to Brazil are printed together, along with an Introduction containing a sketch of the history of the country previous to the first visit, and a notice of the public events of the year of her absence, to connect it with the second.

The Journal of a visit to Chile will form the subject of a separate volume.

It was thought essential that the narratives concerning Spanish and Portuguese America should be kept quite separate; the countries themselves being as different in climate and productions, as the inhabitants are in manners, society, institutions, and government.

Nothing can be more interesting than the actual situation of the whole of South America. While Europe was engaged in the great revolutionary war, that country was silently advancing towards the point at which longer subjection to a foreign dominion became impossible. Circumstances, not laws, had opened the ports of the South Atlantic and the Pacific. Individuals, not nations, had lent their aid to the patriots of the New World: and more warlike instruments and ammunition had gone silently from the warehouses of the merchant to arm the natives against their foreign tyrants, than had ever issued from the arsenals of the greatest nations. But, for a period, Brazil did not openly join in the struggle for independence. The Royal Family of Portugal took refuge there; and converted it, by that step, from a colony into the seat of government, from a state of slavery to one of sovereignty. Therefore, while the court continued to reside at Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilians had no inducement to break with the mother country. But it was very different when the King returned to Lisbon, and the Cortes, forgetting the change of men's minds produced by circumstances, endeavoured to force Brazil back to the abject state from which she had arisen. Then arose the struggle, some part of which it was the fortune of the writer to witness; and concerning which she was able to collect some facts which may serve as materials for future history. She trusts that if the whole truth is not to be found in her pages, that there will be nothing but the truth.

It is with no small anxiety that the Journal is sent into the world, in the hope that it may tend to excite interest for the country by making it better known. Perhaps the writer has over-rated her powers, in attempting to record the progress of so important an event as the emancipation of such an empire from the thraldrom of the mother country. The lighter part of her task, namely, the description of the country, its inhabitants, and the manners of the different classes, both of natives and foreigners, should have been fuller; but that want of health, and sometimes want of spirits, prevented her from making use of all the means that might have been within her reach of acquiring knowledge. She trusts, however, that there is no misrepresentation of importance; and that the Journal, the writing of which has to her beguiled many a lonely and many a sorrowful hour, will not give a moment's pain to any human creature.

PLATES.

VIGNETTES.

INTRODUCTION.

SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL.

I judged it necessary to prefix the following sketch of the history of Brazil to the journal of my voyage thither, in order that the political events to which I was an eye-witness might be the better understood.

The early part of the history is almost entirely taken from Mr. Southey. It would have been easy for me to have referred to the Portuguese authors, as I have read nearly all that are to be found in print of Mr. Southey's authorities, and some that he does not mention; but Mr. Southey had been so faithful as well as judicious in the use he has made of his authors, that it would have been absurd, if not impertinent, to have neglected his guidance. From the time of the King's arrival in Brazil, or rather of his leaving Lisbon, I am answerable for all I have stated: it is little, but I hope that little is correct.

The circumstances of Spanish and Portuguese America were very different in every stage. In Mexico, in Peru, in Chili, the conquerors encountered a people civilised and humane; acquainted with many of the arts of polished life; agriculturists and mechanics; knowing in the things belonging to the altar and the throne, and waging war for conquest and for glory. But the savages of Brazil were hunters and cannibals; they wandered, and they made war for food: few of the tribes knew even the cultivation of the mandioc, and fewer still had adopted any kind of covering, save paint and feathers for ornament. The Spanish conquests were more quickly made, and appeared more easily settled, because in states so far advanced in civilisation the defeat of an army decides the fate of a kingdom, and the land already cultivated, and the mines already known and worked, were entered upon at once by the conquerors.

In Brazil the land that was granted by leagues was to be won by inches from the hordes of savages who succeeded each other in incalculable multitudes, and whose migratory habits rendered it a matter of course for one tribe immediately to occupy the ground from which its predecessors had been driven. Hence the history of the early settlers in Brazil presents none of those splendid and chivalresque pictures that the chronicles of the Corteses, and Pizarros, and Almagros furnish. They are plain, and often pathetic scenes of human life, full of patience, and enterprise, and endurance; but the wickedness that stains even the best of them, is the more disgusting as it is more sordid.

But the very circumstances that facilitated the settling of the Spanish colonies were also likely to accelerate their liberation. A sense and a remembrance of national honour and freedom, remained among the polished Mexicans and Peruvians. Their numbers indeed had been thinned by the cruelties of the conquerors, but enough were left to perpetuate the memory of their fathers, to hand down the prophecies uttered in the phrenzy of their dying patriots; and the Peruvian, when he visited Lima, looked round the chamber of the viceroys, as he saw niche after niche filled up with their pictures, till the fated number should be accomplished, with no common emotion[1]; and many a dreamer on the Peruvian coast, when he saw the Admiral of the Chilian squadron, was ready to hail him as the golden-haired son of light who was to restore the kingdom of the Incas.[2]

But in Brazil, what was once gained was not likely to be lost by the efforts of the natives, or at least by any recollection of their's, pointing to a better or more glorious time. They have been either exterminated, or wholly subdued. The slave hunting, which had been systematic on the first occupation of the land, and more especially after the discovery of the mines, had diminished the wretched Indians, so that the introduction of the hardier Africans was deemed necessary: they now people the Brazilian fields; and if here and there an Indian aldea is to be found, the people are wretched, with less than Negro comforts, and much less than Negro spirit or industry. Hence, while the original Mexicans and Peruvians form a real and respectable part of the assertors of the independance of their country, along with the Creole Spaniards, the Indians are nothing in Brazil; even as a mixed race, they have less part among the different casts than in the Spanish colonies; and therefore jealousies among the Portuguese themselves could alone at this period have brought affairs to their present crisis. These jealousies have taken place, and though they did not arise principally out of the causes of the emigration and return of the Royal family, they were at least quickened and accelerated by them.

In 1499, Brazil was discovered by Vicente Yañez Pinçon, a native of Palos, and one of the companions of Columbus. He and his brothers were in search of new countries, and after touching at the Cape de Verd Islands, he steered to the south-west, till he came to the coast of Brazil, near Cape St. Augustine, and coasted along as far as the river Maranham, and thence to the mouth of the Oronoco. He carried home some valuable drugs, precious stones, and Brazil wood; but had lost two of his three ships on the voyage. He made no settlement, but had claimed the country for Spain.

Meantime Pedro Alvarez Cabral was appointed by Emanuel, King of Portugal, to the command of a large fleet, destined to follow the course of Vasco de Gama in the east. Adverse winds, however, drove the expedition so far to the westward, that it fell in with the coast of Brazil, and the ships anchored in Porto Seguro on Good-Friday of the year 1500. On Easter-day the first Christian altar was raised in the new continent under a large tree, and mass was performed, at which the innocent natives assisted with pleased attention: the country was taken possession of for the crown of Portugal by the name of the land of the Holy Cross, and a stone cross was erected to commemorate the event. Cabral dispatched a small vessel to Lisbon to announce his discovery, and then, without making any settlement, proceeded to India.

On the arrival of the news in Europe, the King of Portugal invited Amerigo Vespucci from Seville, and sent him with three ships to explore the country. After a long and distressing voyage they arrived, and very early in their intercourse with the natives they discovered that they were cannibals, but nevertheless they established a friendly intercourse with some of the tribes; and after coasting along South America as far as lat. 52°, finding neither port nor inhabitants, and suffering from intolerable cold, they returned to Lisbon in 1502.

Early in the next year Amerigo sailed again with six ships; but having stood too near the coast of Africa, after passing the Cape de Verds by the orders of the commander, four of the vessels were lost, but Amerigo with the other two reached a port which they called All Saints.[3] There they remained five months, in friendship with the natives, with whom some of the party travelled forty leagues into the interior. They erected a small fort, and left twelve men with guns and provisions, and having loaded their two ships with Brazil wood, monkeys, and parrots, they returned to Lisbon early in 1504.

But as Brazil, as it now began to be called, did not promise that ample supply of gold which the Spaniards had discovered in their new countries, and which the Portuguese gained with less hazard from Africa, and from the East, the country ceased for a time to excite the attention of government, and the first actual settlements were made by private adventurers, who, on account of their trade, were desirous of having some kind of agents among the people. The first persons employed for this purpose were criminals, a sort of settlers that may do well in an unpeopled country, where there is nothing to do but to reclaim the land, but that must do ill where there are many and savage natives, because they either become degraded to the savage level themselves, if they continue friends, or, if not, they are apt to practise such cruelties and injustice as disgust the natives, render colonisation difficult, and if they teach any thing, it is all the worst part of the life of civilised nations.

But in 1508, Amerigo Vespucci having returned to the service of Spain, the King resolved to take possession of the new land which had been discovered; and founding his claims on the grant of Alexander VI., he sent Vincent Yañez Pinçon and Juan Diaz de Solis to assert them. They made Cape St Augustine's, which Pinçon had discovered, and coasted along to lat. 40° south, erecting crosses as they went; but some disputes having arisen between them, they returned to Spain: and it appears that the remonstrances of Portugal against the voyage, as an interference with her discoveries, had some weight, for it was not until 1515 that Solis was dispatched on a second voyage, and then it was with the avowed purpose of seeking a passage to the Great Pacific Sea, which had been sought and seen by Balboa in 1513.

That extraordinary but unfortunate man was the first European whose eyes rested on the broad Pacific. He had heard from the Indians of its existence, and resolutely set out to discover it, well aware of the dangers and difficulties he had to encounter. After twenty-five days of suffering and fatigue, he saw the South Sea; he heard of Peru, its mines, and its llamas, its cities and its aqueducts, and he received pearls[4] from the islands that lay in front of St. Miguel's bay, where he walked sword in hand up to his middle into the water and took possession for the King of Spain. No one in Europe now doubted that the western way to the East Indies was discovered.

Great hopes were therefore entertained from the expedition of Solis. That able navigator made the coast of Brazil far to the southward of Cape St. Augustine, where he had been with Pinçon; and on the 1st of January 1516 he discovered the harbour of Rio de Janeiro; thence he sailed still to the southward, and entered what he hoped at first would be a sea, or strait, by which he might communicate with the ocean; but it was the river La Plata, where Solis and several of his followers were murdered and devoured by the natives. The ships then put back to St. Augustines, loaded with Brazil wood, and returned to Spain.

But the King Don Emanuel claimed these cargoes, and again remonstrated against the interference of Spain so effectually, that three years afterwards, when Magalhaens touched at Rio de Janeiro, he purchased nothing but provisions.

Meantime several French adventurers had come to Brazil, and had taken in their cargoes of Brazil wood, monkies and parrots, and sometimes plundered some of the weaker Portuguese traders. In 1616, two of these adventurers entered the bay of All Saints, and had begun to trade with the Indians, when the Portuguese commander, Cristovam Jaques, sailing into the port, and examining all its coves, discovered them, and sunk the ships, crews, and cargoes. About the same time, a young Portuguese nobleman, who had been wrecked on the shoal off the entrance of the harbour[5], and who had seen half his companions drowned, and half eaten by the Indians, had contrived to conciliate the natives. He had saved a musket and some powder from the wreck, and having taken an opportunity of shooting a bird in the presence of the inhabitants, they called him Caramuru, or the man of fire; and, as he accompanied them on an expedition against their enemies the Tapuyas, he became a favourite, married at least one Indian wife, and fixed his residence at the spot now called Villa Velha, near an excellent spring, and not far from the entrance to the bay.

Caramuru, however, felt some natural longing to see his native land, and accordingly seized the opportunity afforded by the arrival of a French vessel, and taking his favourite wife, he went with her to France, where they were well received by the court, the king and queen standing sponsors at the baptism of the Brazilian lady, whose marriage was now celebrated according to the Christian form. Caramuru, however, was not permitted to go to Portugal; but by means of a young Portuguese student at Paris[6], he communicated his situation to the King Joam III., and pressed him to send an expedition to the bay of All Saints. Shortly afterwards, Caramuru returned to Bahia, having agreed to freight two ships with Brazil wood as the price of his passage, of the artillery of the ships, and of the articles necessary for trading with the natives.

Still, however, as Brazil furnished neither gold, nor that rich commerce which the Portuguese derived from their Indian trade, it was pretty much left to itself for the first thirty years after its discovery; and then the regulations adopted by the court were not, perhaps, the most advantageous for the country. The coast was divided by Joam III. into captaincies, many of which extended fifty leagues, and each captaincy was made hereditary, and granted to any one who was willing to embark with sufficient means in the adventure; and to these captains an unlimited jurisdiction, both criminal and civil, was granted.

The first person who took possession of one of these captaincies was Martim Affonso de Souza, in 1531, who sometimes claims the discovery of Rio de Janeiro as his, although it had been named by Solis fifteen years before. Souza was probably deterred from fixing on the shores of that beautiful bay, by the number and fierceness of the Indian tribes that occupied them. He therefore coasted towards the south, naming Ilha Grande dos Magos on twelfth-day, when

"Three kings, or what is more, three wise men went

Westward to seek the world's true orient."

St. Sebastian's on the 20th, and St. Vincent's on the 22d; but having proceeded as far south as the La Plata, he returned to the neighbourhood of San Vincente, where he ultimately founded his colony, and whence he named the whole captaincy.

Martim Affonso de Souza was no ordinary man: his cares for his colony did not relax even after he had been recalled, and sent as governor-general to India, where he had before highly distinguished himself. He introduced the sugar-cane from Madeira into his colony, and in it also the first cattle were bred. Thence they have spread all over the continent of South America, and have proved of more real value to it than its mines.

Pero Lopes de Souza, the brother of Martim Affonso, had his fifty leagues of coast in two allotments; one part, St. Amaro, was immediately to the north of San Vincente, and the other was Tamaraca, between Pernambuco and Paraiba.

About the same time the Fidalgo Pedro de Goes attempted a settlement at Paraiba do Sul; but after two years tolerable prosperity, he was attacked by the native tribe of Goaytacazes, and five years of warfare reduced him to the necessity of sending to Espirito Santo for vessels to remove his colonists.

Vasco Fernandez de Coutinho began to settle Espirito Santo in the same year (1531) in which the former colonies had been begun. He had amassed a great fortune in the East, and expended most of it in collecting volunteers for his new colony; sixty fidalgoes and men of the royal household accompanied him. The adventurers had a prosperous voyage. On their arrival they built a fort, which they called N. S. da Victoria, and established four sugar-works. Coutinho returned to Lisbon for recruits and implements for mining, the settlers having now obtained some indications of gold and jewels to be found in the country.

The adjoining captaincy of Porto Seguro was given to Pedro de Campo Tourinho, a nobleman and a navigator. He sold his possessions at home, and raised a large body of colonists, with which he established himself at Porto Seguro, the harbour where Cabral had first taken possession of Brazil. The history of the settlement of Porto Seguro, like that of all the others, is stained with the most atrocious cruelties; not such as soldiers in the heat of war commit, but cold calculated cruelties, exterminating men for the sake of growing canes, so waiting patiently for the fruit of crime.[7]

Ilheos, so called from its principal river, which has three islands at the mouth, was settled by Jorge de Figueredo Correa, who had a place in the treasury, under Joam III., between 1531 and 1540, and speedily became flourishing, being remarkably favourable to the sugar cultivation.

Bahia de Todo os Santos was, with its adjacent territory, given to Francisco Pereira Coutinho, a fidalgo who had made himself a name in India. He fixed his abode at Villa Velha, where Caramuru had formed his little settlement, and two of his followers married the daughters of Caramuru.

The bay, or reconcave of All Saints, is a magnificent harbour: the entrance appears to be a league in breadth; but on the right hand, on entering, there is a shoal dangerous to large vessels, called that of St. Antonio da Barre; and on the left, coral reefs running off from Itaporica. The country that surrounds it is so fertile, that it must always have been an object of desire whether to savage or civilised inhabitants; and it is not surprising that three revolutions, that is, three changes of indwellers, driven out by each other, should have been, in the memory of the Indians, before the settlement of Coutinho.

That nobleman, whose early life had been passed in the East-Indian Portuguese wars, imprudently and cruelly disturbed the peace of the rising settlement, by the murder of a son of one of the chiefs. The consequence was, that after a most disastrous warfare, in the course of which the already flourishing sugar-works were burnt, he and Caramuru were both obliged to abandon the settlement and retire to Ilheos. Soon afterwards, however, he made peace with the Indians; but on his return to the Reconcave, he was wrecked on the reef off Itaporica, where the natives murdered him, but spared Caramuru, who returned to his old dwelling.

In the settlement of Pernambuco, the first donatory, Duarte Coelho Pereira, was opposed not only by the natives, but by numbers of French, who having carried on a desultory though profitable trade on the coast, now joined the Indians in retarding those regular settlements which were likely to put an end to their commerce. The colony, however, had been planted at Olinda,[8] a situation as strong as it is beautiful, and Pereira contrived to engage some of the Indian tribes in his favour. The war was but of short continuance, and nothing farther, except the seizure of the little settlement of Garussa, in the woods and near the creek which separates Itameraca from the main land, occurred to impede the prosperity of the captaincy.

The last colony which was founded during these ten eventful years was that of Maranham. Three adventurers undertook this settlement jointly. The most celebrated was Joam de Barros, the historian; the others were Fernam Alvares de Andrada, father of the writer of the Chronicle, and Aires da Cunha.

Aires da Cunha, Barros's two sons, and nine hundred men, sailed in ten ships for their new possession, but were wrecked on the shoals of Maranham; so that it was long before any success attended the undertaking. Da Cunha was drowned, the sons of Barros slain by the Indians, and the rest of the people with difficulty survived in a very wretched condition.

Meantime the passage through Magellan's Straits had been discovered, and the Spaniards, first under Sebastian Cabot, and afterwards under Don Pedro de Mendoza, who founded Buenos Ayres, had begun to settle on the shores of the Plata, not without opposition from the Portuguese, and a more obstinate and fatal resistance from the Indians. The tribes in this neighbourhood appear to have been more civilised than those of the coast of Brazil, and consequently more formidable enemies to the rising towns. Orellana had also made his daring voyage down the mighty river that is sometimes called by his name. He had afterwards perished in an attempt to make a settlement on its shores, and nearly the same fate had attended Luiz de Mello da Silva, who made a similar attempt on the part of Portugal.

Cabeza de Vacca had also made his adventurous overland journey from St. Catherine's, and after settling himself in the government of Assumption, had conducted various expeditions of discovery, always in hopes of finding an easy way to the gold countries. In one of these he found traces of the adventurer Garcia, a Portuguese, who, under the orders of Martim Affonso de Souza, had, with five companions, undertaken to explore the interior of South America. This man had by some means so conciliated the Indians, that he was followed by a very considerable army, and is said to have penetrated even into Tarija. He is believed to have perished by the hand of one of his own followers, but no particulars were ever known of his fate.

During the next ten years, nothing remarkable occurred with regard to Brazil, except the founding of the city of St. Salvador's, by Thome de Souza, the first Captain General of Brazil, who carried out with him the first Jesuit missionaries. For the site of his new town De Souza fixed upon the hill immediately above the deepest part of the harbour of Bahia, which is defended at the back by a deep lake, and lies about half a league from the Villa Velha of Coutinho and Caramuru.

The temporal concerns of the new colony, derived inestimable advantage from the friendship and assistance of the patriarch Caramuru: as to the spiritual, it was indeed time that some rule of faith and morals should find its way to Brazil. The settlers had hitherto had no instructors but friars, whose manners were as dissolute as their own, and who encouraged in them a licentious depravity, scarcely less shocking than the cannibalism of the savages. These latter are said to have eaten the children born by their own daughters to their prisoners of war,—a thing so unnatural, that it only gains credit because the Portuguese sold as slaves even their own children by the native women. The apostle of Brazil, as he may in truth be called, and chief of the six Jesuits who accompanied Souza, was Nobrega, the cotemporary and rival in the race of disinterested services to his fellow creatures of St. Francis Xavier; and, with regard to his steady attempts to protect as well as to convert the Indians, another Las Casas.

Brazil was becoming an object of importance to the crown of Portugal. The new settlement of Bahia was established on the king's account, and at his expense 1000 persons had been sent out the first year, 1549. In four months there were 100 houses, six batteries, and a cathedral: a college for the Jesuits, a palace, and a custom-house were begun; the whole was defended by a mud wall. The next year supplies of all kinds arrived from Lisbon, and the year after that several female orphans, of noble family, were sent out as wives for the officers, with dowries in negroes, kine, and brood-mares.

About this time, a Spanish expedition destined for the river Plata miscarried; one of the ships was wrecked off St. Vincent's, and to Hans Staade, one of the crew who survived and after various adventures fell into the power of the Indians, we are indebted for the most authentic and particular account of the Brazilian Savages.[9] It is curious that the Indians of the new world, should so very far exceed all the savage tribes of the old in barbarity. But it is certain that no authentic accounts of cannibals have ever been brought from Africa; whereas, none of the early writers on Brazil and its inhabitants have failed to dwell upon their love of human flesh, as characteristic of the people.

The year 1552 is distinguished by the arrival of the first bishop in Brazil. His see was fixed at St. Salvador's, or, as it is generally called, Bahia. In the next year, Thome de Souza retired from his government, and was succeeded by Don Duarte da Costa, who was accompanied by seven jesuits, among whom was the celebrated Anchieta.[10] The chief of the order, Loyola, was still alive, he erected Brazil into a new province, and appointed Nobrega and Luis de Gran, who had been principal at Coimbra, joint provincials. From that moment the labours of the fathers for the real good of the country commenced. And whatever may be the opinions entertained, as to their politics and ultimate views, there is not a doubt but that the means they employed to reclaim and civilise the Indians, were mild, and therefore successful; that while they wrought their own purposes, they made their people happy; and that centuries will not repair the evil done by their sudden expulsion, which broke up the bands of humanised society which were beginning to unite the Indians with their fellow creatures.

In 1553, the first school was established in Brazil, by Nobrega, in the high plains of Piratininga, about thirteen leagues from the colony of San Vicente. Anchieta was the school-master. The school was opened on the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, and the establishment, and the infant colony rising round it, received the name of the saint. St. Paul's has since grown to be one of the most important towns in Brazil. Its rich minerals, its iron-works, and other manufactures, but, above all, the high and free spirit of its inhabitants, who have taken the lead in every effort for the good of the country, distinguish it above all the southern towns of Brazil.

Anchieta, while he taught Latin to the Portuguese and Mamalucos,[11] and Portuguese to the Brazilians, learnt from these last their own tongue, and composed a grammar and dictionary for them. He had no books for his pupils, so that he wrote on separate leaves, in four different languages, the daily lesson for each. He served as physician, as well as priest and school-master, and practised and taught the most useful domestic arts. But the colony had, like all the others, to fight for its early existence; it was attacked by the Mamalucos of the neighbouring settlement of St. André, who regarded the instruction of the Indians as a step towards abolishing their slavery, and exclaimed against it as an infringement of what they called their right to the services of the natives. They engaged by other pretences some of the neighbouring tribes to assist them, but they were met and defeated by those of St. Paul's.

Meantime some disputes having arisen between the Governor and the Bishop, the latter resolved to return to Lisbon, but was wrecked on the coast at a place called the Baixos de San Francisco, and there seized, and with one hundred other white persons put to death by the Cahetes. The revenge of the Portuguese was horrible, the Cahetes were hunted, slaughtered, and all but exterminated.

In the year 1557, Joam III. died. His appointment of Mem de Sa, before his death, to the government of Brazil, prevented the country from immediately feeling the evils which a regency generally entails even in an established government, but which are sure to fall with tenfold weight upon a rising colony.

Mem de Sa was a man of more enlightened mind, and more humane principles than most of those to whom the government of the Brazilian provinces had been intrusted. He arrived at Bahia in 1558, and earnestly applied himself to learn the relations in which the Portuguese, the Creoles, the Indians, and the mixed race stood to each other.

His first acts were directed towards reclaiming the allied Indians from some of their most brutal practices, and to induce them to form settlements near those of the Jesuits. The selfish planters, interested in keeping up the feuds of the Indians, in order to procure slaves, exclaimed against these proceedings as violations of the freedom of the natives, and they were equally displeased at the orders issued, to set at liberty all the Indians who had been wrongfully enslaved. One powerful colonist alone refused to obey: Mem de Sa ordered his house to be surrounded and instantly levelled with the ground. Such an act was certainly calculated to inspire the Indians with confidence in his good intentions towards them, at the same time that his vigorous measures to punish them for any infraction of their engagements kept them in awe.

Meantime an adventurer of no ordinary stamp, had formed a settlement in the finest harbour of Brazil, namely, that of Rio de Janeiro. Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon was a native of Provins en Brie, and a Knight of Malta. In 1648, he had been employed by Mary of Guise, at the entreaty of the French court, to convey her daughter the young Queen of Scots to France: in 1651 he was engaged in the defence of Malta, against the Pacha Sinan and the famous Dragut Reis, and two years afterwards published an account of that campaign. Having visited Brazil in 1558, Villegagnon could not be insensible to the advantages that must arise to France from having a settlement there; and, on his return to Europe, he made such representations at court of these advantages, that Henry II. gave him two vessels, each of 200 tons, and a store ship of 100 tons, to convey the adventurers who might wish to leave France, and who at that time were numerous. Villegagnon, wishing to make use of Coligny's interest, gave out that the new settlement was to be a refuge for the persecuted Hugonots, and this answered the double purpose of securing the Admiral's friendship, and gaining a number of respectable colonists. With these he reached Rio de Janeiro, and made his first settlement in a low rock at the mouth of the harbour, where there is now a small fort called the Laje, but finding it not sufficiently elevated to resist the