Bahia was the queen city of Brazil from 1549, when Thomé de Souza was sent out as Captain-General and made this the administrative and political head of the country, until 1762, when Rio de Janeiro became the Vice-regal Capital; she also was a fighting city, seized and sacked now and again but successful in getting rid of her foes in the end, and she was the centre of tobacco cultivation from early days. When gold and diamonds were discovered in the interior valleys and serras the Bahianos played a plucky part in exploration and opening, as well as charting, regions of forest and sertão hitherto unseen by white men. To the men of Bahia, as well as to the courageous legions of Pernambucanos led by the Albuquerque family, Brazil owes much: but the great pioneers, the unsurpassed confronters of hardship, the men who made Brazil the huge country that she is instead of the strip upon the Atlantic seaboard that she might have remained, were the _bandeirantes_ of São Paulo. When the gallant Martim Affonso de Souza, sailing first to Cananea, eventually built his modest mud and palm leaf town at S. Vicente, he was saved from the hostility of the Tamoyo Indians by the friendliness of Ramalho, father of many children by a daughter of Chief Tibiriça. The Tamoyos as a rule gave a great deal of trouble to the Portuguese, although the French in their numerous attempts at settlement along the Brazilian littoral always managed to make fast friends of this tribe. To anyone who knows the São Vicente of today, it is difficult to imagine on what the first settlers lived; the shore is hot, sandy, backed by mangrove swamps, producing beans, maize, mandioca and sugar. Small wonder that an early chronicler said that to live in these colonies it was necessary to forget all European habits of life, to begin a new existence upon new food, with all old ideas of comfort and even necessity thrown aside. When a company of Jesuit priests, headed by José de Anchieta, came to S. Vicente, they found their ministrations thrown away on a disorderly and undisciplined band of settlers. Conceiving their duty to be here, as the Padre de las Casas and many of his cloth conceived it in Mexico and Central America, the Christianizing of the natives, Anchieta decided to leave the coast (where Braz Cubas had now built his little chapel and hospital on the island where Santos stands today) and seek converts in the uplands. The mountain barrier was climbed, and on January 25, 1554, an altar was set up on the green and well-watered plains of the interior, and mass was said on a site named São Paulo de Piritininga, in honour of the saint whose day it was. The habit of early missionaries and discoverers of naming new places with the Roman calendar in their hands has helped the historian to fix many a doubtful date.