dulge them with impunity, and consider the indulgence as meritorious. This system was immediately extended to Brazil:-the first Europeans who were left ashore there were two convicts. In Africa or in India the exile was sent to bear arms with his countrymen, who would not regard him as disgraced, because they were obliged to associate with him. To be degraded to Brazil was a heavier punishment; the chance of war could not enrich him there, and there was no possibility of returning home with honour for any signal service. They were in one point of view better disposed of, inasmuch as in new colonies ordinary men are of greater value than they can be elsewhere, but they became worse subjects. Their numbers bore a greater proportion to the better settlers; and they were therefore more likely to be encouraged in iniquity than reformed by example; to communicate evil than to learn good. Their intercourse with the savages produced nothing but mischief: 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 horror 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 superior race which might have been improved so greatly to their own advantage.

"The first settler in Bahia was Diogo Alvarez; who with that spirit of enterprize which was then common among his countrymen, embarked to seek his

fortune in strange countries. 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 fled. 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.

"At length a French vessel came into the bay, and Diogo resolved to take that opportunity of once more seeing his native country. He loaded her with brazil, and embarked with his favourite wife Paraguazu,-theGreat River. The others could not bear this abandonment, though it was only to be for a time; some of them swam after the ship in hopes of being taken on board, and one followed it so far, that before she could reach the shore again her strength failed her and she sunk. They were received with signal honour at the court of France. Paraguazu was baptised by the name of Catharina Alvarez, after the queen, and the king and queen were her sponsors. Her marriage was then celebrated. Diogo would fain have proceeded to Portugal, but the French would not permit him to go there. These honours which they had shown him were not to be gratuitous, and they meant to make him of use to them in his own dominions. By means however of Pedro Fernandez Sardinha (then a young man who had just completed his studies in Paris, and afterwards the first bishop of Brazil) he sent the information to Joam III. which he was not permitted to carry, and exhorted him to colonize the delightful province in which his lot had been so strangely cast. After some time he covenanted with a wealthy merchant to take him back, and leave him the artillery and ammunition of two ships, with store of such things as were useful for traffic with the natives, in return for which he undertook to load both vessels with brazil. The bargain was fairly performed, and

Diogo having returned to his territories, fortified his little capital.

"Butthe Portuguese government, wholly occupied with the affairs of India, thought little of a country in which, whatever profits were to be acquired, must come from agriculture, not from commerce with the inhabitants; for commerce was what they sought as eagerly as the Spaniards hunted for gold. Brazil was left open like a common, and all the care which the court bestowed upon it was to prevent the French from trespassing there, by representations of their ambassador at Paris, that were never regarded, and by treating them as enemies whenever they met them. Individuals meantime being thus left to themselves, settled in the harbours and islands along the coast; and little towns and villages were growing up."

We shall not trouble our readers with the dates or succession of the other different settlements, or the particulars of their first founders: for these we refer them to the work itself, which will amply repay the perusal. It may be observed, however, that thirty years elapsed after the discovery and settlement of Brazil, before the Portuguese government bestowed any serious attention on its colonies in the western world. At length, this country became of sufficient importance "to obtain some consideration at court, and in order to forward its colonization, the same plan was adopted which had succeeded well in Madeira, and in the Azores,—that of dividing it into hereditary cap. taincies, and granting them to such persons as were willing to

embark adequate means in the adventure, with powers of jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, so extensive as to be in fact unlimited. This method was thought to be the easiest, and least expensive to government. The difference between desert islands and a peopled continent, had not been considered. The captains of the islands might easily settle lands in which there could be no opposition, and easily at any time assist each other with supplies; if the means failed they could even borrow from Portugal, those places being so near that they were re garded almost as things within the country. But when Joam divided the coast of Brazil into great captaincies, each extending along fifty leagues of coast, large tribes of savages were in possession of the country; Portugal was far distant, and the settlements so far asunder, that one could not possibly afford assistance to another."

The consequences of this injudicious plan were such as might easily have been foreseen. Numbers of the grantees were ruined by the expenses of fitting out, while many others found themselves unable to maintain their widely-extended properties against the disadvantages incident to their situation; and all of them, with the view of repairing their exhausted fortunes, and making the most of their dearly purchased estates in the least possible period, adopted and exercised a system of the most vexatious tyranny over their subject settlers. The governor of every captaincy exercised uncontrolled authority; the property, honour, and lives of

the colonists were at the mercy of their lords; and the people groaned under their intolerable oppres→ sion. At length their complaints reached the king; who, in 1549, revoked the powers of the several captains, leaving them in the possession of their proprietary grants; and constituted Don Thome de Sousa, governor-general, withviceregal authority. For this high and important situation he was every way qualified: he founded the city of St. Salvador in the Bay of All Saints, in April 1549, and took out with him six Jesuits, as missionaries for the conversion and civilization of the Brazilians.

Previously to his narrating this event, Mr. Southey, in conformity with the plan announced in his preface, has interrupted the series of his history of Brazil, in order to give minute and highly interesting details of the discovery of the river Plata, of the first settlements formed on its banks, by the Spaniards, and also on the banks of the rivers Paraguay and Parana. In these details our limits forbid us to follow him; as well as in his interesting account of the voyage of Orellana down the river of Amazons, for which we must refer the reader to Mr. Southey's volume.

We now return to the principal object of this work-the History of Brazil. It will be recollected that Don Thome de Sousa took out with him a small number of Jesuits: these had difficulties to encounter of no common kind, with a savage race of cannibals; yet, notwithstanding the impediments that lay in their way, they did succeed in civilizing the bar

barians by methods which cannot fail to command our esteem. On this interesting topic Mr. Southey shall speak for himself. "They began by winning the affections of the children, giving them store of trifling presents; by this sort of intercourse they acquired some use of the language themselves, and soon qualified these little ones for interpreters. They visited the sick, and when they believed that every one they sprinkled at the hour of death was a soul rescued from the devil, the charitable services which accompanied such conversions were not lost upon the living. The Portuguese on their arrival in Brazil, had been welcomed by the natives as friends: but when the original possessors of the land perceived that their guests were becoming their masters, they took up arms, suspended their internal quarrels, and attempted to expel them. European fire-arms repulsed them, and European policy soon broke their short-lived union. But even peace with the Portuguese settlers afforded them no security; when it is permitted to reduce enemies to slavery, no friends can be secure. It was in vain that humane edicts were enacted in Portugal; while the atrocious principle is acknowledged, that man can by any circumstances lawfully be considered as the slave of man, all edicts and all formalities will be ineffectual protections against violence and avarice. Many tribes were in arms against this oppression when the Jesuits arrived; won first by the first report that men were come who were the friends and protectors of the Indians, and af

terwards by experiencing their good offices, they brought their bows to the governor, and solicited to be received as allies.

"These missionaries were every way qualified for their office. They were zealous for the salvation of souls; they had disengaged themselves from all the ties which attach us to life, and were therefore not merely fearless of martyrdom, but ambitious of it; they believed the idolatry which they taught, and were themselves persuaded that by the sprinkling a dying savage, and repeating over him a form of words which he did not understand, they redeemed him from everlasting torments, to which he was otherwise inevitably, and, according to their notions of divine justice, justly destined. Nor can it be doubted that they sometimes worked miracles upon the sick; for when they believed that the patient might be miraculously cured, and he himself expected that he should be so, faith would supply the virtue in which it trusted.

"Nobrega and his companions began to work with those hordes who were sojourning in the vicinity of St. Salvador; they persuaded them to live in peace, they reconciled old enemies, they succeeded in preventing drunkenness, and in making them promise to be contented with one wife; but the cannibalism they could not overcome: the delight of feasting upon the flesh of their enemies was too great to be relinquished. All efforts at abolishing this accursed custom were in vain. One day they heard the uproar and rejoicing of the savages at one of these sacrifices; they made way into the

area just when the prisoner had been felled, and the old women were dragging the body to the fire; they forced the body from them, and in the presence of the whole clan, who stood astonished at their cou rage, carried it off. The women soon roused the warriors to revenge this insult, and, by the time the Fathers had secretly interred the corpse, the savages were in search of them. The governor received timely intelligence, and sent in haste to call the Jesuits from the mud hovel which they inhabited, upon the spot whereon their magnificent college was afterwards erected. When the savages had searched here in vain, they were on the point of attacking the city; the governor was obliged to call out his whole force, and partly by the display of firearms, and partly by fair words, he induced them to retire. This danger over, the Portuguese them selves began an outcry against the Jesuits, saying, that their frantic zeal had endangered the city, and would soon make all the natives their enemies. Thome de Sousa, however, was not to be deterred by any such shortsighted policy from protecting and encouraging Nobrega: and it was not long before these very savages, remembering the true kindness which they had always experienced from the Jesuits, and that those fathers were indeed the friends of the Indians, came to solicit their forgiveness, and beseech the governor that he would command the Fathers to forgive them, and visit them as before; and they promised not to repeat these feasts. But the practice was too delightful to be laid aside at once, and

they continued it secretly. When the Fathers had obtained sufficient authority over them to make themselves feared, they employed the children as spies to inform against offenders.

"One of the Jesuits succeeded in effectually abolishing it among some clans by going through them and flogging himself before their doors till he was covered with blood, telling them he thus tormented himself to avert the punishment which God would otherwise inflict upon them for this crying sin. They could not bear this, confessed what they had done was wrong, and enacted punishment against any person who should again be guilty. With other hordes the Fathers thought themselves fortunate in obtaining permission to visit the prisoners and instruct them in the saving faith, before they were put to death. But the savages soon took a conceit that the water of baptism spoilt the taste of the meat, and therefore would not let them baptize any more. The Jesuits then carried with them wet handkerchiefs, or contrived to wet the skirt or sleeve of their habit, that out of it they might squeeze water enough upon the victim's head to fulfil the condition of salvation, without which they were persuaded that eternal fire must have been his portion. What will not man believe, if he can believe this of his Maker!

"Ifthe missionaries, overcoming all difficulties, succeeded in converting a clan at last, that conversion was so little the effect of reason or feeling, that any slight circumstance would induce the proselytes to relapse into their old