Of course there were rapacious traders who tried to exact too much from the natives, but a salutary check against their tyranny was soon provided by the Jesuits. These enthusiastic and energetic followers of Loyola have left a deep and abiding mark on nearly all the South American communities. They built churches, founded schools, and taught the Indians the arts of agriculture, and all that they asked in return was obedience and conformity with the rites of the Church. The “Paulistas,” as the lay settlers were termed, saw in Jesuit influence an obstacle to their own domination over the supply of native labour, and conflicts between the religious and secular powers lasted for more than a century, the mother country sometimes siding with one faction and sometimes with the other. But the priests persisted with that zeal which is the traditional mark of their order, and suffered persecution, privation, and even death, rather than relinquish their mission. Vestiges of their work are still to be found in many parts of Brazil and neighbouring States, notably in the place-names, which are often derived from the saints, symbols, and sacraments of the Church. In the welter of South American politics Brazil has suffered those frequent changes of government which have been the fate of every republic existing in the sub-continent to-day. The first European country to contest the claim of Portugal to this vast territory was France. But although an island in the Bay of Rio was occupied by some French troops in 1515, the danger of permanent French rule was never a strong probability, and it was not long before the invaders were dislodged. A more serious phase of its history was when, in the year 1581, Philip II of Spain united the two kingdoms in the Peninsula, and the affairs of the Brazilian colony were directed from headquarters at Madrid. It was the Dutch who next had a shot for the prize of supremacy in Brazil, and a very successful shot it was. Spain had by this time passed the zenith of her prosperity, and was “hasting to her setting.” Holland was becoming a predominant maritime power in Europe, and her companies and adventurers were resolutely determined to establish empires both in the Orient and the Western Hemisphere, and some of the settlements which they founded in those vigorous years own allegiance to the Dutch flag to-day.