Journal of a Voyage to Brazil: And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823Callcott, Maria, Lady
History
Journal of a Voyage to Brazil: And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823
Callcott, Maria, Lady
Brazil -- Description and travel
Cabeza de Vacca had also made his adventurous overland journey from St.
Catherine's, and after settling himself in the government of Assumption,
had conducted various expeditions of discovery, always in hopes of
finding an easy way to the gold countries. In one of these he found
traces of the adventurer Garcia, a Portuguese, who, under the orders of
Martim Affonso de Souza, had, with five companions, undertaken to
explore the interior of South America. This man had by some means so
conciliated the Indians, that he was followed by a very considerable
army, and is said to have penetrated even into Tarija. He is believed to
have perished by the hand of one of his own followers, but no
particulars were ever known of his fate.
During the next ten years, nothing remarkable occurred with regard to
Brazil, except the founding of the city of St. Salvador's, by Thome de
Souza, the first Captain General of Brazil, who carried out with him the
first Jesuit missionaries. For the site of his new town De Souza fixed
upon the hill immediately above the deepest part of the harbour of
Bahia, which is defended at the back by a deep lake, and lies about half
a league from the Villa Velha of Coutinho and Caramuru.
The temporal concerns of the new colony, derived inestimable advantage
from the friendship and assistance of the patriarch Caramuru: as to the
spiritual, it was indeed time that some rule of faith and morals should
find its way to Brazil. The settlers had hitherto had no instructors
but friars, whose manners were as dissolute as their own, and who
encouraged in them a licentious depravity, scarcely less shocking than
the cannibalism of the savages. These latter are said to have eaten the
children born by their own daughters to their prisoners of war,--a thing
so unnatural, that it only gains credit because the Portuguese sold as
slaves even their own children by the native women. The apostle of
Brazil, as he may in truth be called, and chief of the six Jesuits who
accompanied Souza, was Nobrega, the cotemporary and rival in the race of
disinterested services to his fellow creatures of St. Francis Xavier;
and, with regard to his steady attempts to protect as well as to convert
the Indians, another Las Casas.
Brazil was becoming an object of importance to the crown of Portugal.
The new settlement of Bahia was established on the king's account, and
at his expense 1000 persons had been sent out the first year, 1549. In
four months there were 100 houses, six batteries, and a cathedral: a
college for the Jesuits, a palace, and a custom-house were begun; the
whole was defended by a mud wall. The next year supplies of all kinds
arrived from Lisbon, and the year after that several female orphans, of
noble family, were sent out as wives for the officers, with dowries in
negroes, kine, and brood-mares.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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