[Illustration]
[Transcriber's note: The spelling of the original has been retained.
This includes a few apparent mis-spellings and varied spellings of the
same words and names.]
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.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN,
PATERNOSTER-ROW;
AND J. MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
1824.
LONDON:
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.
PLATE I. Val Longo, or Slave Market at Rio _to front the Title Page_.
II. Represents the Great Dragon Tree of Oratava, of which Humboldt has
given so interesting an account. He saw it in all its greatness; I drew
it after it had lost half its top _to face Page 85_
III. View of Count Maurice's Gate at Pernambuco, with the Slave Market
107
IV. Gamella Tree at Bahia 135
V. Larangeiras 163
VI. View from Count Hoggendorp's Cottage 170
VII. View of Rio from the Gloria Hill 169
VIII. Corcovado, from Botofogo 220
IX. Palace of San Cristovaõ 246
X. Dona Maria de Jesus 292
XI. English Burial Ground 307
VIGNETTES.
I. That at the head of the Journal, page 77, represents two young Dragon
Trees; that with a single head is twenty years old, and had not, when I
saw it, been tapped for the Dragon's Blood. The other is about a century
old, and the bark is disfigured by the incisions made in it to procure
the gum _to face Page 77_
II. Part of Pernambuco, seen from Cocoa-nut Island, within the Reef 97
III. Slaves dragging a Hogshead in the Streets of Pernambuco 131
IV. Cadeira, or Sedan Chair of Bahia 133
V. Church and Convent of Sant Antonio da Barre at Bahia, as seen from
the Roça 157
VI. The Sugar-loaf Rock, at the Entrance to the Harbour of Rio de
Janeiro 158
VII. The End of an Island in the Harbour of Rio de Janeiro, drawn for
the sake of the variety of Vegetation 201
VIII. Convicts carrying Water at Rio de Janeiro 217
IX. Stone Cart at Rio de Janeiro 321
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]
[Note 1: The hall with the pictures of the viceroys was filled:
there would be no room in it for Lacerna.]
[Note 2: This prophecy was recorded by Garcelaço de la Vega; and it
is said, that the copies of his Incas were bought up, and an edition
printed, omitting the prophecy.]
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.
[Note 3: This cannot be Bahia; for they say, that after coasting 260
leagues they were in 18°S.; now Bahia is in 12° 40', or nearly; the
difference being 120 leagues; it must therefore be a port to the
northward.]
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.
[Note 4: Pearl islands, in the bay of Panama. The sand of the beach
of those islands is iron, and is as easily attracted by the loadstone as
steel filings.]
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.
[Note 5: I suppose that off St. Antonio da Barre.]
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."
[Note 6: Pedro Fernandez Sardinha, the first bishop of Brazil.]
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]
[Note 7: I hope the following tale is not true, though my authority
is good. In this very captaincy, within these twenty years, an Indian
tribe had been so troublesome, that the Capitam Môr resolved to get rid
of it. It was attacked, but defended itself so bravely, that the
Portuguese resolved to desist from open warfare; but with unnatural
ingenuity exposed ribands and toys infected with smallpox matter in the
places where the poor savages were likely to find them: the plan
succeeded. The Indians were so thinned, that they were easily overcome!]
_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.
[Note 8: There is a note in the first volume of Southey's Brazil
concerning the name of Marino given to Olinda by Hans Staade. The other
Brazilians call the Pernambucans of Recife Marineros still. Is this from
the town or their nautical habits? or from the name of the Indian
village Marim which existed in the neighbourhood?]
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.
[Note 9: In the Historia da Provincia Sancta Cruz, by Pero de
Magalhaens de Gandano, 1576, there is an account sufficiently tallying
with that which Southey has compiled from Hans Staade and De Lery. But
it is far from being so disgusting. There is a copper-plate representing
the dragging the prisoner with cords, and felling him with a club. The
author gives a short account of the then known plants and animals of
Brazil, and concludes with the hope that the mines believed to exist may
speedily be found.--See the collection of tracts by Barbosa Maehado.]
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.
[Note 10: Anchieta was not only a man of extraordinary firmness of
mind and real piety, but a politician of no common cast, and his civil
services to the Portuguese government were equal to those of the
greatest captains, while his labours as a missionary and teacher were
beyond those of any individual of whom I have ever read. His merits as a
christian apostle and a man of literature, have disarmed even Mr.
Southey of his usual rancour against the Roman Catholic faith. That
excellent writer's book on Brazil is spoilt by intemperate language on a
subject on which human feeling is least patient of direct contradiction,
so that the general circulation of it is rendered impossible, and the
good it might otherwise do in the country for which it is written
frustrated. Oh, that Mr. Southey would remember the quotation which he
himself brings forward from Jeremy Taylor! "Zeal against an error is not
always the best instrument to find out truth."]
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.
[Note 11: Mamaluco. These were the Creole Portuguese, who had most
of them intermarried with the natives.]
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
high tides, he pitched on an island within the harbour, where there is
only one landing place, and whose form and situation is singularly
adapted for safety, especially against such enemies as the Indians.
Those, however, of the Rio had been long accustomed to trade with the
French, who, if they had not taught them, had at least encouraged them,
to hate the Portuguese, whom Villegagnon flattered himself that he
should be able to keep aloof by the assistance of the Savages.
Meantime Coligny had exerted himself to send out assistance of every
kind; provisions, recruits[12], and protestant ministers. But
Villegagnon now imagined himself secure in his colony, and threw off the
mask of toleration. He behaved so tyrannically that many of the Hugonots
were obliged to return to France, and of them he made the most malicious
complaints, and concluded by saying, that they were heretics worthy of
the stake.
[Note 12: Among these was Jean de Lery.]
But nothing is so short-sighted as wickedness. Villegagnon's treachery
was the cause of the ruin of his enterprise. Ten thousand protestants
were ready to embark for Coligny, as the island, now called Villegagnon,
was then named: but the report of those who had returned, stopped them,
and the colony was left in a defenceless state.
At length the attention of the court of Lisbon had been drawn towards
the French settlement, and orders were sent to the Captain General to
examine into its state first, and then, if possible, to take it.
Accordingly, Mem de Sa, accompanied by Nobrega and two other Jesuits,
attacked it in January, 1560, while Villegagnon was absent in France,
and demolished the works, but had not sufficient force to attempt
forming a settlement; and had Villegagnon succeeded in returning with
the recruits he expected, he would have found it easy to re-establish
and perhaps revenge himself. But his bad faith deterred the Hugonots
from joining him, the civil war prevented the government from assisting
him, and the French colony was lost.
In 1564, Estacio de Sa, nephew of Mem, was sent out from Portugal to
form a settlement in Rio, but finding his means inadequate to contend
with the Indians, led on by the few remaining French, he went to San
Vincente for reinforcements; these, however, only enabled him to keep up
the war, and to maintain himself in a post he had fortified[13], not far
from the entrance of the harbour, and near the Sugar-loaf mountain, a
bare and inaccessible rock, which, from a base of about four hundred
feet, shoots up to a thousand in perpendicular height, on the west side
of the bar. He therefore applied to his uncle for succour, who,
collecting what force he could, led them in person, and arrived in the
harbour on the 18th of January, 1567. On the 20th, St. Sebastian's day,
the Indians and French were attacked in their strongest hold, then
called Uraçumiri, and having obtained a decisive victory, the French
embarked in the four ships they still possessed, and fled to the coast
of Pernambuco, where they attempted to form a settlement at Recife, but
were dislodged by the Portuguese of Olinda.
[Note 13: Mr. Southey says this spot is called Villa Velha. But
there is no place existing in the neighbourhood of that name, nor could
I find any person at Rio de Janeiro who remembered such a place. It was,
however, most probably on the site of the present St. Juan, or of the
fort of Praya Vermelha, which answers exactly to the description.]
Mem de Sa now founded the city of St. Sebastian, more commonly called
the city of Rio; and for its security the Jesuits, with their Indians,
fortified both sides of the entrance to the harbour, which is about four
miles distant from the city across the bay. Before these works, however,
or the walls of the town were completed, the French made a vigorous
effort to disturb the rising colony; but it ended in their defeat, and
their guns were made use of to fortify the mouth of the harbour.
Driven from Rio, the French attempted to form a settlement at Paraiba
the next year; but the Indians, with the Jesuits at their head, and a
very few troops, under the commander Martim Leytam, expelled them.
Under Mem de Sa the state had been so prosperous, that though he had
been Captain-general far beyond the term of his original appointment,
Don Sebastian, on assuming the crown, continued him in office for two
years longer, and then named Luiz de Vasconcellos to succeed him. That
nobleman never reached Brazil. With him sailed a fleet of seven ships,
bearing, besides the governor, sixty-nine Jesuit missionaries, and a
number of orphan girls, whose parents had died of the plague, and whom
the government was sending out to settle in Brazil. The fleet, in
different divisions, fell in with French and English ships, and the
Jesuits, save one, to use their own expression, received the crown of
martyrdom, and the new governor was killed in action off Tercera. As
soon as his death was known at Lisbon, Luiz de Brito de Almeida was
appointed to his vacant office; and Mem de Sa just lived long enough to
witness the arrival of his successor. Nobrega, who had begun that
system, on which the singular government of the Jesuits in Paraguay was
conducted, had died a few months before, so that Brazil was deprived
nearly at once of the two ablest men that had yet been concerned in its
government.
But Luiz de Brito did not succeed to the government of all Brazil. It
was judged proper to divide the colony into two captaincies, Rio de
Janeiro being the capital of the southern division, which included Porto
Seguro and every thing to the south of it; while Bahia remained the
capital of the northern districts. There Luiz de Brito fixed his
residence, and Doctor Antonio Salerna was appointed governor of the
south. But this division was soon found inconvenient, and the two parts
were re-united[14] about 1578, the year in which a new governor, Diego
Laurenço da Viega, arrived.
[Note 14: When the Historia da Provincia de Sancta Cruz, by Pero
Magalhaēs de Gadano, was printed, 1575, they were still separate; but
Southey's MS. of 1578 says they had been re-united.]
This was the year when the loss of Don Sebastian in Africa threw
Portugal into the hands of Spain. King Philip, eager to annex that
kingdom for ever to his crown, offered Brazil, with the title of King,
to Braganza if he would give up his claim to the crown of Portugal. But
it was reserved for his descendant to achieve the independence of
Brazil, and he refused it.
The colony was at this period most flourishing, though not altogether
able to do without occasional supplies from the mother country. But
already the original mud-cottages, supported by frame-work and thatched
with palm-leaves, of the first settlers, had given way to well built and
handsome houses of stone and brick, covered with tiles as in Europe. The
reconcave of Bahia had sixty-two churches, and upwards of seventy
sugar-works: the land was well stocked with cattle, all the kinds of
orange and lime trees introduced by Europeans had flourished. The
country abounded in excellent native fruits, and the mandioc furnished
never-failing stores of bread. Olinda partook of all these advantages,
and was itself the best built and most populous town in Brazil. Rio de
Janeiro had become a place only inferior in importance to the other two,
its natural advantages being still greater, and the climate milder; nor
were the other captaincies less prosperous.
But the transfer of the crown into foreign hands changed the aspect of
affairs in Brazil. Inferior to the Spanish American countries in mines,
it was considered only of consequence as being occupied by Spanish
subjects, and so forming a barrier against the intrusion of other
nations.