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
[Note 10: Anchieta was not only a man of extraordinary firmness of
mind and real piety, but a politician of no common cast, and his civil
services to the Portuguese government were equal to those of the
greatest captains, while his labours as a missionary and teacher were
beyond those of any individual of whom I have ever read. His merits as a
christian apostle and a man of literature, have disarmed even Mr.
Southey of his usual rancour against the Roman Catholic faith. That
excellent writer's book on Brazil is spoilt by intemperate language on a
subject on which human feeling is least patient of direct contradiction,
so that the general circulation of it is rendered impossible, and the
good it might otherwise do in the country for which it is written
frustrated. Oh, that Mr. Southey would remember the quotation which he
himself brings forward from Jeremy Taylor! "Zeal against an error is not
always the best instrument to find out truth."]
In 1553, the first school was established in Brazil, by Nobrega, in the
high plains of Piratininga, about thirteen leagues from the colony of
San Vicente. Anchieta was the school-master. The school was opened on
the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, and the establishment, and the
infant colony rising round it, received the name of the saint. St.
Paul's has since grown to be one of the most important towns in Brazil.
Its rich minerals, its iron-works, and other manufactures, but, above
all, the high and free spirit of its inhabitants, who have taken the
lead in every effort for the good of the country, distinguish it above
all the southern towns of Brazil.
Anchieta, while he taught Latin to the Portuguese and Mamalucos,[11] and
Portuguese to the Brazilians, learnt from these last their own tongue,
and composed a grammar and dictionary for them. He had no books for his
pupils, so that he wrote on separate leaves, in four different
languages, the daily lesson for each. He served as physician, as well as
priest and school-master, and practised and taught the most useful
domestic arts. But the colony had, like all the others, to fight for its
early existence; it was attacked by the Mamalucos of the neighbouring
settlement of St. André, who regarded the instruction of the Indians as
a step towards abolishing their slavery, and exclaimed against it as an
infringement of what they called their right to the services of the
natives. They engaged by other pretences some of the neighbouring tribes
to assist them, but they were met and defeated by those of St. Paul's.
[Note 11: Mamaluco. These were the Creole Portuguese, who had most
of them intermarried with the natives.]
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