"Lords of the conquest and commerce of India." The land was neglected and left like a common to whoever chose to traffick there, and even when its value was better understood, the government of Lisbon was long more anxious to exclude the French from its commerce, than to profit by the possession themselves. Almost all which has been done in Brazil has been effected by private exertion. At first, a trade was carried on with the Indian inhabitants in the same manner, and for nearly the same commodities as that now maintained by the English and Americans with the savages of Polynesia.

By degrees, occasional adventurers, thrown by shipwreck on the coast, or led by idleness and aversion to restraint, united themselves with the natives, and became interpreters or supercargoes. Of these, one of the first and most remarkable, was Diogo Alvarez, a young Portuguese, whose story might supplant Philip Quarl or Robinson Crusoe in the nursery, and set many an ardent boy on fire for voyages and discovery.

"He was wrecked upon the shoals on the north of the bar of Bahia. Part of the crew were lost; others escaped this death

to suffer one more dreadful; the natives seized and eat them. Diogo saw that there was no other possible chance of saving his life, than by making himself as useful as possible to these cannibals. He therefore exerted himself in recovering things from the wreck, and, by these exertions, succeeded in conciliating their favour. Among other things he was fortunate enough to get on shore some barrels of powder, and a musket, which he put in order at his first leisure, after his masters were returned to their village; and one day when the opportunity was favourable, brought down a bird before them. The women and children shouted Caramuru ! Caramuru! which signified a man of fire! and they cried out that he would destroy them: but he told the men, whose astonishment had less of fear mingled with it, that he would go with them to war, and kill their enemies.

"Caramuru was the name which, from thenceforward, he was known by. They

marched against the Tapuyas; the fame of this dreadful engine went before them, and the Tapuyas filed. From a slave, Caramuru became a sovereign. The chiefs of the savages thought themselves happy if he would accept their daughters to be his wives; he fixed his abode upon the spot where Villa Velha was afterwards erected, and soon saw as numerous a progeny as an old patriarch's rising round him. The best families in Bahia, trace their origin to him."-P. 30, 31.

Caramuru, however, and persons in the same condition with himself, were not the only colonists. Many individuals founded little factories in different parts of the country; and small forts and establishments, resembling nearly those at present scattered along the coast of Guinea, appear, though this stage of Brazilian history is not very clearly told, to have been founded by government; yet the persons sent out to these feeble garrisons, were, of all others, least adapted to serve the real interests of their country, or to contribute to the advantage of the natives, a docile race, whom a wiser policy might have soon reclaimed.

A majority, at least, of these colonists were criminals, not sent as prisoners or labourers, like our convicts in New South Wales, but employed as soldiers, or as free settlers, and sometimes even as commanders and governours. But if the system of Port Jackson be erroneous, and tend to immorality, what must have been the effect of sending the same description of characters in responsible and important situations? Was there Portuguese gentleman whose vices were intolerable in his mother country? He was sent with arms in his hands to prey upon the wretched Americans. Was there an Indian governour, whose lust and cruelties had forced themselves on the notice of government? he was punished by the permission to tyrannize, with still less restraint upon his actions, in Brazil. For many generations this extraordinary policy was the curse of the South Ameri

a

can colonies; but at first when the settlers were almost all of this description, released from the restraints of European laws and decency, and thinly scattered amid numerous tribes of savages, it is evident that the wicked passions of each party would grow worse by their mutual example. We have seen, in the present day, how much harm has been done by the runagate sailors in Polynesia, and in Brazil the consequences appear to have been equally pernicious.

"Each made the other worse; the cannibals acquired new means of destruction, and the Europeans new modes of barbarity. The Europeans were weaned from that human horrour at the bloody feasts of the savages, which, ruffians as they were, they had at first felt, and the natives lost that awe and veneration for a superiour race, which might have been improved so greatly to their own advantage."

For thirty years after the discovery of Brazil, things remained in this neglected state; but by degrees, the fertility of the soil and the excellence of the climate were known, and the renown of Cortez and Pizarro, with the treasures they had acquired, conferred a sort of fashion on America, which induced noble adventurers of capital and influence to try their fortune there. Here, too, the system pursued was singular; to encourage such enterprises, the country was partitioned by Joan the third, into large lots, under the name of captaincies, each extending over fifty leagues of coast, and each committed to the absolute and hereditary government of the fidalgo who undertook to subdue and settle it. This was the plan least expensive to government, and the administration of the colonies was thus intrusted to those who had the deepest interest in their prosperity; but there were many and serious attendant evils. Individuals might, indeed, possess sufficient means to settle and cultivate the small, uninhabited islands in the Atlantick; but in Brazil there were savages to be sub

dued, and a vast extent of coast to occupy; and the distance of these captaincies from Portugal, and from each other, rendered it impossible to obtain assistance, when assistance was required. Many captains were ruined with their colonists, by the expenses of setting out; others overpowered by the natives, or reduced to the most horrible distresses by famine, from their ignorance of the business of a settler, and their neglect of a previous stock of provi. sions. Even in those districts which had better fortune, the system proved itself to be radically mischievous. Human nature is not made for absolute and uncontrolled authority; the captains abused their powers, and not only the wretched Indians, but the European settlers, were driven to despair and insurrection.

Twenty years after the measure was first resorted to, its consequences were become intolerable. Joam revoked the powers of the hereditary captains, and subjected the whole of Brazil to a governour, appointed by the crown.

While the Portuguese were thus employed in exploring and settling the coasts and creeks of Brazil, they had little opportunity, and apparently few inducements to penetrate far into the interiour. One Garcia, an extraordinary character, whose ge nius and achievements are overlooked in the imperfect histories of his countrymen, with five Europeans, one mulatto, and an army of Indians, undertook, indeed, a journey, of which we know no more, than that its extent and boldness was almost unparalleled; but the result does not appear to have encouraged others to similar attempts; and though vague reports prevailed of gold and diamond mines, the treasures which now distinguish Brazil were then inviolate.

In the mean time, however, the Castilians were proceeding in a very different manner to the north, south, and westward. As early as 1508,

Juan Diaz de Solis had discovered a prodigious river to which he gave his own name, and where he was killed and eaten by an ambush of savages.

In 1525, Cabot, following the track of Magalhaens, arrived at the same stream, and explored it as high as the Paraguay. A little gold and silver which had been obtained from the natives, raised his opinion of the importance of the country; the river was named Rio de la Plata, and many an adventurer was lured to his destruction by this deceitful title. In 1534, the towns of Assumpcion and Buenos Ayres were founded. Both these were far removed from the sea, an extraordinary circumstance in an infant colony, but not without a parallel, as we believe the settlement of Canada was effected in a similar manner. In both cases the superiour fertility of the interiour, and the facility of communication afforded by a noble river, were sufficient inducements; but the Spaniards threw their head quarters as far west as possible, because, to the eastward they found no traces of gold or silver. The few specimens which Cabot had met with, were not the product of the country, but brought from a distance. This the invaders soon discovered; but it was for gold they came, and in search of gold they had traced within a few years the course of the river, from the Atlantick to the Andes; while, at the same time, and with equal difficulties, Orellana proceeded down the Maranon in the contrary direction. The Castilians were a more adventurous race than the Portuguese; or, to speak more properly, the spirit of Portuguese adventure had taken its direction eastward.

The invaders of Paraguay and Guiana, though of all men least adapted to colonize a country profitably, were still admirably qualified to explore it widely. Disinclined to domestick labour, they bore, with patience, the severest toil, and miVOL. V

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sery the most intolerable, wherever their wild or wicked schemes of adventure led them. Irritated at not finding the treasures they expected, they tortured, in some instances, the wretched Indians, to force them to point the way to scenes of wealth which had no existence; and every tale of wonder, which fear or igno rance produced, was eagerly caught at and credited. It was thus that their avarice was inflamed by tales of El Dorado, the gilded monarch of an imaginary, inland Peru; or their lust and curiosity, stimulated by the report of a nation of fair, and warlike, and wealthy women. With objects like these before them, hunger and thirst, and pestilential cli mates; and all the plagues of beasts, and reptiles, and insects, were cheerfully encountered. Wading by day breast deep in putrid water, and fixing by night their wretched hammocks amid the branches of trees; making the fire to dress their provisions on wicker frames, guarded by a little clay; their wounds festering for want of help, or healed, as they sometimes fancied, by repeating a few verses of the psalms; on they went, for weeks together, through marshes and thickets, exposed to all the dreadful plagues of a rank and neglected soil, a prey to continual inundations, and fruitful in every deformed, and abominable, and poisonous production of nature. In reading, indeed, a fair and homely statement of the horrours and difficulties which attended such expeditions as those of Yrala, Ayolas, Cabeza de Vaca, &c. there is nothing which excites so much wonder as that men should be found in endless succession, not only to survive, but to repeat these dangerous experiments. Of the wild beasts, indeed, but little mention is made; but the snakes were enormous; and alligators, and the more dangerous palometa, a small, but most voracious river shark, abounded in every stream. The vampires and mosqui

toes were the plagues of the air; and on the dry ground, where such existed, the ants, whose regular and multitudinous march resembled the noise of an army, were, at uncertain intervals, the devourers of every green, and every living thing The chiggers laid their eggs beneath the nails of the feet and hands, and produced wounds or mortification in whatever joint they assaulted; and, amid these more dreadful visitations, frogs, toads, and scorpions were too common and too inconsiderable to be worth the mention.

Of the tales which led on to ruin so many adventurers, from Cabeza de Vaca down to the gallant Raleigh, Mr. Southey justly rejects, as apocryphal, the story of the city of Manoa, whose Inca was dressed every day in a fresh suit of gold dust, glued with a paste of spices, on his naked body, and whose meanest utensils were "plates of gold a foot broad." With great plausibility he accounts for such a story exist ing in Guiana, from the wealthy and populous kingdoms of Peru and Bogota, situated on the opposite sides of the continent.

It is, indeed, a curious circumstance, and has led to many errours when not attended to, that the geographical knowledge of savages reaches farther than we at first suppose. The people of Peru told of a mighty kingdom far to the east; the Bogotas sent their conquerors west, ward; and the Spaniards were long in discovering that the two nations only spoke of each other. It is thus that English credulity has been mocked in North America by tales of white men far to the west, with beards, and mounted on horses; and instead of recognising, in this description, the Spaniards of New Mexico, has sought for the descendants of Madock on the banks of the Mississippi, or the sources of the Rio Colorado.

To the accounts of the Amazons, Mr. Southey is more indulgent; and,

in truth, the strange correspondence and consistency of the stories delivered by so many unconnected tribes of Indians, and related by so many authentick travellers, may well be sufficient to induce us not hastily to reject a statement, which, however extraordinary, contains nothing in itself impossible. These warlike ladies, the Cougnantainsecouima, or women without husbands, should seem, at a period subsequent to the colonization of South America, to have emigrated from Paraguay, where the Spaniards first heard of them, to the shores of the river to which they have given a name; and from thence to have past by the Rio Negro to the northward. The lies of Orellana, who fought with them in his passage down the river, are altogether unworthy of notice. But the testimony of Condamine and Acunha is certainly more to the purpose; and their accounts, as well as those obtained in Venezuela, agree in assigning the Amazons a seat in the heart of Guiana, the only part of America which no European has yet explored. Ornaments of green jad, a favourite decoration with many savage nations, were said to have been brought from their country, and they had regular pairing seasons with a neighbouring tribe. The boys produced from this intercourse, were destroyed; the girls became members of the commonwealth. After all, there is nothing miraculous in the story.

"The lot of women is usually dreadful among sayages; the females of one horde may have perpetrated what the Danaides from a stronger provocation; and if, as is are said to have done before them, but not unfrequent, they had been accustomed to accompany their husbands to battle, there is nothing that can even be thought improbable in their establishing themselves as an independent race, and securing, by such a system of life, that freedom for their daughters, which they had obtained for themselves." p. 609.

Another phenomenon which Mr.

Southey seems disposed to rescue from the gripe of Palæphatus, is the mermaid; for be it remembered, that the male of this species is as little noticed as the husbands of the Cougnantainsecouima. On this point we do not find our faith so vivid as his appears to be; the Upupiara of Brazil, which drowns the Indians, appears to us to be of the same genus with the manati of the Canadians, the Scottish kelpie, the nych of Scandinavia, and our English fit of the cramp. Stedman's evidence is rather contrary. De Lery is, however, no bad authority; and we have a circumstantial description of a similar animal, in the same latitude as Brazil, and on the opposite side of the Atlantick, in a work entitled, "Istorica Descrizione de' trè Regni di Congo, Matamba ed Angola." [Milan 1690.] This work, we believe, is scarce in its original form, though it has been pretty generally circulated in the French translation of Labat, and the author (a Capuchin missionary, il Padre Antonio Cavazzi) professes himself an eye witness; for, in describing some of the peculiarities of the "Pesce Donna," he says, "per quanto potei vedere." A hideous engraving is given, opposite to which, in the copy now before us, a French manuscript note is inserted, with some filthy circumstances respecting the same animal, from the account of one Jean Moquet. But small reliance is to be placed on this engraving, since, by the missionary's own admission, "non è stato possibile darlo ad intendere precisamente a chi ne fece l'imagine;" but a little fancy might easily make a Pesce Donna out of some species of seal, and such, we apprehend, is the foundation for most of the stories which have been circulated.

While the Spaniards were wasting their time and strength in endless and unprofitable wanderings, and quarrelling with each other in all the bitterness which misery, dis

appointment, and dissolute habits could produce; the Portuguese, restricted by their situation to agriculture and commerce, were, in despite of a faulty government, by the natural effects of a fertile soil, and a salubrious climate, increasing rapidly in wealth and numbers. They had their share, indeed, of the noxious productions to which all hot climates are liable; but the bounties of nature far surpassed her inconveniences. Of the native trees the magnificent acayaba was the principal, valuable for boat building, for dieing, for fruit, for a species of flower, for a medicinal gum, and a liquor capable of fermentation. Tea was indigenous, and coffee and ginger were soon introduced with success. Sugar was cultivated to a considerable extent. Saltpetre was abundant, and the sea (besides the mermaid) teemed with innumerable species of fish. Nor were even the interminable wastes of the interiour devoid of objects adapted to relieve and delight the traveller. Amid all the horrours of the desert were found occasionally meadows spotted with tortoise eggs; forests thronged with birds and monkies, and tangled with the luxuriant folds of creeping plants, applicable to many important uses, and yielding when wounded a cool and wholesome water, which amid desert and stinking marshes, was a relief most necessary and seasonable. In the eastern Cordillera, where the Jesuits established a convent, are found all the mingled products of tropical and temperate climates, and that pure air and majestick scenery which distinguish the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. The Jesuits chose their station well; but it is most unjust to accuse them of interested views. Their arrival and labours were indeed a blessing to Brazil. They were sent by Joam the third, and seem, with greater talents, more extensive views of policy, and, unfortunately, a far worse religion, to have been inspired, in no small degree,