The first sensible effect of the arrival of the royal family in Brazil was the opening of its numerous ports[27]; and in the very first year (1808) ninety foreign ships entered the single harbour of Rio, and a proportional number, those of Maranham, Pernambuco, and Bahia. The effect of the residence of the court was soon felt in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was before 1808 confined to little more than the ground it occupied when attacked by Duguay Trouen in 1712; and the beautiful bays above and below it, formed by the harbour, were unoccupied, except by a few fishermen, while the swamps and morasses which surrounded it rendered it filthy in the extreme. A spot near the church of San Francisco de Paulo had been cleared for a square, but scarcely a dozen houses had risen round it, and a muddy pond filled up the centre, into which the negroes were in the habit of throwing all the impurities from the neighbourhood. This was now filled up. On one side of the square a theatre was begun, not inferior to those of Europe in size and accommodation, and placed under the patronage of St. John; several magnificent houses rose in the immediate neighbourhood, the square was finished, and another and much larger laid out beyond it, on one side of the city, while on the other, between the foot of the mountain of the Corcovado, with its surrounding hills, and the sea, every station was occupied by delightful country-houses, and the beautiful bay of Boto Fogo, where there were before only fishermen and gipsies, soon became a populous and wealthy suburb. [Note 27: 28th January, 1808.] It is not in my power to give a detailed account of all the transactions of this important year. The trade had naturally rapidly increased; the money brought by the emigrants from Portugal, had called forth greater exertions and speculations in commerce; and in October a public bank was chartered in Rio, with a capital of from seventy to eighty thousand pounds sterling. The establishment of a regular gazette naturally took place, for the speedier dissemination of whatever tidings might arrive from Portugal, where lay the possessions and the interest of the court and the new people of Brazil; and though the press, of course, did not boast of much freedom, nor indeed would its freedom at that time have been of any consequence, it formed the first step towards awakening rational curiosity and that desire for reading, which has become not only a luxury, but even a necessary, in some countries, and which makes a rapid and daily progress here.