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
But the French had renewed their attempts, and under Rifault and his
successor De Vaux had succeeded in forming a settlement in the island of
Maranham, 1611. And shortly afterwards Henry IV. sent Daniel de la
Touche, Lord of La Rivardière[15], to examine the country, in order to
form a permanent colony. His report was favourable; and though on his
return to France Henry was dead, an expedition of three ships,
containing 500 men, was fitted out, and in 1612 they arrived on the
island, speedily conciliated the natives, and the colony promised to
thrive. But the court of Madrid quickly sent out orders to the governor
of Brazil to attack the intruders. Various accidents prolonged the
warfare, and it was not until 1618 that they were dislodged, and a
permanent Portuguese colony formed. Its distance from the seat of
government determined the court of Madrid to erect Maranham and Para
into a separate state, of which the capital was fixed at San Luiz, a
town and fort built by the French on the island.
[Note 15: In Barbosa Machado's curious collection of pamphlets, in
the library of Rio de Janeiro, is one by the Capt. Symam Estacio da
Sylveira, printed in 1624. He had been at the taking of Maranham from
the French, and his paper is evidently a decoy for colonists. He says,
that Daniel de la Touche was induced to go thither by Itayuba of the
_Iron arm_, a Frenchman who had been brought up among the Tupinambas. Is
this Mr. Southey's Rifault?]
Meantime the Dutch had formed a West Indian Company, trusting that they
would thereby be able to annoy the court of Spain in their American
possessions, as they had already done in the East Indies. In 1624, a
fleet under Jacob Willekins and the famous Peter Heyne was fitted out
for that purpose. The ships having been separated in a gale of wind,
Willekins made the Morro de San Paulo, about forty miles south of Bahia,
where he waited for the rest of the convoy. When it arrived he sailed
boldly into the reconcave, and St. Salvador was taken almost without a
struggle. Vandort, the Dutch general, immediately began to fortify the
place, and proclamations being issued promising freedom and redress of
wrongs to all who should submit, many Indians, negroes, and Jews
instantly joined him. But the Portuguese, who had hoped that the Dutch
had only come to plunder the city, seeing that they were sitting quietly
down as in a permanent establishment, roused themselves, and after some
little disagreement as to who should command them, pitched on the Bishop
Don Marcos Texeira. He fixed his head-quarters on the Rio Vermelho. The
Dutch were weakened by the departure of Willekins for Holland, and of
Peter Heyne for Angola, the plan of the West India Company being to
secure that settlement, in order to have a certain supply of slaves for
their new conquests in Brazil. Dort had been killed, and there was no
competent commander. The Bishop's troops harassed those of the city in
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