Rio de Janeiro had enjoyed a greater degree of tranquillity during the eighty years since its foundation than any other settlement, and its trade had increased together with its population; but the southern part of its jurisdiction was little more peaceable than Maranham, and not at all more inclined to listen to the remonstrances of the friends of the Indians. The Paulistas were the most difficult of all to manage; they had been the most active and daring of all that hunted either for slaves or for mines, and they were not willing to participate with others, far less to resign the advantages they had gained by unwearied labour and great sacrifices. Their conduct on the restoration of Portugal had evinced a desire of more than the freedom of a colony, and their neighbours were little less disposed for independence than themselves. Santos, and even Rio, had joined them, and had shewn a disposition to depose the governor appointed by the crown; and nothing but the unimpeachable character and firm conduct of Salvador Correa de Sa e Benevides (1658) prevented him from falling a sacrifice to that disposition. Bahia continued to be the capital of the Brazilian states, and its inhabitants proceeded to beautify it with churches, and convents, and nunneries, while they defied the spirit of Christianity by the importation of African, as well as the kidnapping Indian slaves. Pernambuco was still undergoing the miserable effects of the long and desultory war it had sustained; all the bands of government had been loosed during that disastrous period; law and justice had fallen into disuse; and had there not been a redeeming virtue in the free spirit that lived on in spite of the evils among which it had sprung, its very emancipation from a foreign power might have been regretted. The negroes who had escaped to the Palmares, and whose depredations had been disregarded in comparison with the evils of a foreign government, had become a real source of ill to the Pernambucans. Although they cultivated maize, and mandioc, and plaintains, they wanted every other supply. They therefore robbed the Creoles of their cattle, their sugar, their manufactured goods, and even of their Mulatto daughters and female slaves; till at length the government resolved to free the country of them, and called in the aid of a Paulista regiment for the purpose. Ten thousand of the negroes bearing arms had assembled in their chief city, which was surrounded by wooden walls, leaving the lesser ones uninhabited. But their enemies had the advantage of cannon against them, and of supplies of every kind; yet once the negroes beat off their assailants. But numbers overpowered them, and being weakened by famine, their city was forced, and the inmates seized as slaves. Zombi, however, and the most resolute of his followers, threw themselves from a high rock when they perceived their condition desperate. The Portuguese abused their victory, and murdered the rest.