It was thought essential that the narratives concerning Spanish and Portuguese America should be kept quite separate; the countries themselves being as different in climate and productions, as the inhabitants are in manners, society, institutions, and government. Nothing can be more interesting than the actual situation of the whole of South America. While Europe was engaged in the great revolutionary war, that country was silently advancing towards the point at which longer subjection to a foreign dominion became impossible. Circumstances, not laws, had opened the ports of the South Atlantic and the Pacific. Individuals, not nations, had lent their aid to the patriots of the New World: and more warlike instruments and ammunition had gone silently from the warehouses of the merchant to arm the natives against their foreign tyrants, than had ever issued from the arsenals of the greatest nations. But, for a period, Brazil did not openly join in the struggle for independence. The Royal Family of Portugal took refuge there; and converted it, by that step, from a colony into the seat of government, from a state of slavery to one of sovereignty. Therefore, while the court continued to reside at Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilians had no inducement to break with the mother country. But it was very different when the King returned to Lisbon, and the Cortes, forgetting the change of men's minds produced by circumstances, endeavoured to force Brazil back to the abject state from which she had arisen. Then arose the struggle, some part of which it was the fortune of the writer to witness; and concerning which she was able to collect some facts which may serve as materials for future history. She trusts that if the _whole truth_ is not to be found in her pages, that there will be _nothing but the truth_. It is with no small anxiety that the Journal is sent into the world, in the hope that it may tend to excite interest for the country by making it better known. Perhaps the writer has over-rated her powers, in attempting to record the progress of so important an event as the emancipation of such an empire from the thraldrom of the mother country. The lighter part of her task, namely, the description of the country, its inhabitants, and the manners of the different classes, both of natives and foreigners, should have been fuller; but that want of health, and sometimes want of spirits, prevented her from making use of all the means that might have been within her reach of acquiring knowledge. She trusts, however, that there is no misrepresentation of importance; and that the Journal, the writing of which has to her beguiled many a lonely and many a sorrowful hour, will not give a moment's pain to any human creature. PLATES. PLATE I. Val Longo, or Slave Market at Rio _to front the Title Page_.