Brazil benefited from her lack of wealthy cities offering loot. As a consequence of that lack she was not flooded, as were Mexico and Peru, with gold-seeking, brutal adventurers, but was instead slowly colonized by genuine settlers. Some of them did not come willingly, for Portugal used certain tracts spasmodically as penal settlements, but in the Middle Ages severe punishment was frequently dealt out for offences that would today be considered light, and many of the convicts thrust across the Atlantic turned out to be good citizens: good or bad, they were the stuff of which bold pioneers are made, and to their extraordinary hardihood and that of their tireless descendants of mixed blood the conquest of interior Brazil was due. Portugal delayed occupation of Brazil until other European countries began to establish themselves along different parts of the neglected shore. In 1515 the mouth of the Rio de la Plata had been discovered by Juan de Solis, and Spanish settlements were set up south of the Portuguese claims—still indefinite. In 1540 the Spanish captain Orellana made his wonderful journey from Peru over the Andes and down the Amazon, and roused the interest of Europe, but long before then the Dutch were trying to establish outposts on northerly Amazonian tributaries, and the French had settled a little colony at Pernambuco. Of these the Portuguese made short shrift, a fleet being sent from Lisbon specially for their expulsion, but the settlement made by royal orders on the same spot met with no better fate, for in 1527 French raiders sacked the infant colony, to be followed a few months later by an English raiding party under Hawkins. The Portuguese Government, forced to take measures, determined on a plan which had already given good results on the island of Madeira. Instead of assuming the burden of colonization on the account of the government, large grants of land were made to Portuguese of high standing or wealth; on them fell the burden of settlement, but on the other hand to them would accrue the chief rewards of tropical adventure and industry. The Crown attained several objects at one stroke—the colonizing of a difficult country, the rewarding of many noblemen whose claims were apt to be troublesome, while at the same time an outlet was provided for the adventurous and turbulent. The waning of her power in India left Portugal with a surging class of stout-hearted folk upon her hands: she sent them to Brazil, and suffered as Brazil benefited.