CHAPTER XI.

THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL.

THOUGH We now make our first inquiry into the conduct of the Portuguese towards the natives of their colonies, and enter upon so immense a scene of action as that of the vast empire of Brazil, our notice may happily be condensed into a comparatively small space, because the features of the settlement of Paraguay by the Spaniards, and that of Brazil by the Portuguese are wonderfully similar. The natives were of a like character, bold and warlike, and were treated in like fashion. They were destroyed, enslaved, given away in Encomiendos, just as it suited the purpose of the invaders; the Jesuits arrived, and undertook their defence and civilization, and were finally expelled, like their brethren of Paraguay, as pestilential fellows, that would not let the colonists "do as they pleased with their own."

Yanez Pinzon, the Spaniard, was the first who discovered the coast of Brazil, in A.D. 1500, and coasting northward from Cape Agostinho, he gave the natives such a taste of the faith and intentions of the whites as must have prepared them to resist them to

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the utmost on their reappearance.

Betwixt Cape Agostinho and the river Maranham, seeing a party of the natives on a hill near the shore, they landed, and endeavoured to open some degree of intercourse; but the natives not liking their appearance, attempted to drive them away, killed eight of them, wounded more, and pursued them with fury to their boat. The Spaniards, of course, did not spare the natives, and soon afterwards shewed that the natives were very much in the right in repelling them, for on entering the Maranham, where the natives did receive them cordially, they seized about thirty of these innocent people and carried them off for slaves.

Scarcely had Pinzon departed, when Cabral, with the Portuguese squadron, made his accidental visit to the same coast. In the following year Amerigo Vespucci was sent thither to make further discoveries, and having advanced as far southward as 52°, returned home. In 1503, he was sent out again, and effected a settlement in 18° S. in what was afterwards called the Captaincy of Porto Seguro. One of the very first acts of Portugal was to ship thither as colonists the refuse of her prisons, as Spain had done to her colonies, and as Portugal also had done to Africa and India; a horrible mode of inflicting the worst curses of European society on new countries, and of presenting to the natives under the name of Christians, men rank and fuming with every species of brutal vice and pestiferous corruption.

Ten years after the discovery of Brazil, a young noble, Diego Alvarez, who was going out on a voyage of adventure, was wrecked on the coast of Bahia, and was received with cordiality by the natives, and named

Caramuru, or the Man of Fire, from the possession of fire-arms. Here he married the daughter of the chief, and finally became the great chief himself, with a numerous progeny around him. Another man, Joam Ramalho, who also had been shipwrecked, married a daughter of the chief of Piratininga, and these circumstances gave the Portuguese a favourable reception in different places of this immense coast. In about thirty years after its discovery the country was divided into captaincies, the sugar-cane was introduced, and the work of colonization went rapidly on. The natives were attacked on all sides; they defended themselves with great spirit, but were compelled to yield before the power of fire-arms. But while the natives suffered from the colonists, the colonists suffered too from the despotism of the governors of the captaincies; a Governor-general was therefore appointed just half a century after the discovery, in the person of Thome de Sousa, and some Jesuits were sent out with him to civilize the natives.

Amongst these was Father Manoel de Nobrega, chief of the mission, who distinguished himself so nobly in behalf of the Indians. The city of Salvador, in the bay of All-Saints, was founded as the seat of government, and the Jesuits immediately began the work of civilization. There was great need of it both amongst the Indians and their own countrymen. "Indeed, the fathers," says Southey, "had greater difficulties to encounter in the conduct of their own countrymen than in the customs and disposition of the natives. During half a century, the colonization of Brazil had been left to chance; the colonists were almost without law and religion. Many settlers had never either

confessed or communicated since they entered the country; the ordinances of the church were neglected for want of a clergy to celebrate them, and the moral precepts had been forgotten with the ceremonies. Crimes which might easily at first have been prevented, had become habitual, and the habit was now too strong to be overcome. There were indeed individuals in whom the moral sense could be discovered, but in the majority it had been utterly destroyed. They were of that description of men over whom the fear of the gallows may have some effect; the fear of God has none. A system of concubinage was practised among them, worse than the loose polygamy of the savages. The savage had as many women as consented to become his wives-the colonist as many as he could enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma upon the Enropeans in their intercourse with those whom they treat as inferior races-there is a perpetual contradiction between their lust and their avarice. The planter will one day take a slave for his harlot, and sell her the next as a being of some lower species

-a beast of labour. If she be indeed an inferior animal, what shall be said of the one action? If she be equally with himself an human being and an immortal soul, what shall be said of the other? Either way there is a crime committed against human nature. Nobrega and his companions refused to administer the sacraments of the church to those persons who retained native women as concubines, or men as slaves. Many were reclaimed by this resolute and Christian conduct; some, because their consciences had not been dead, but sleeping; others, for worldly fear, because they believed the Jesuits were armed with

secular as well as spiritual authority. The good effect which was produced on such persons was therefore only for a season. Mighty as the Catholic religion is, avarice is mightier; and in spite of all the best and ablest men that ever the Jesuit order, so fertile of great men, has had to glory in, the practice of enslaving the natives continued."

Yet, according to the same authority, the country had not been entirely without priests; but they had become so brutal that Nobrega said, "No devil had persecuted him and his brethren so greatly as they did. These wretches encouraged the colonists in their abominations, and openly maintained that it was lawful to enslave the natives, because they were beasts; and then lawful to use the women as concubines, because they were slaves. This was their public doctrine! Well might Nobrega say they did the work of the devil. They opposed the Jesuits with the utmost virulence. Their interest was at stake. They could not bear the presence of men who said mass and performed all the ceremonies of religion gratuitously." Much less, it may be believed, who maintained the freedom of the natives.

Such were the people amongst which the Jesuits had to act, yet they set to work with their usual alacrity. Fresh brethren came out to their aid; and Nobrega was appointed Vice-provincial of Brazil. They soon ingratiated themselves with the natives by their usual affability and kindness. They zealously acquainted themselves with the language; gave presents to the children; visited the sick; but above all, stood firmly between them and the atrocities of their countrymen. When the Jesuits arrived, these atrocities had driven many