When the ships arrived on the coast, in latitude 5 deg. S., there was a party of natives discovered on a hill near the shore. Two sailors volunteered to go ashore, and several days passed without their return. At length the Portuguese landed, sent a young man to meet the savages, and returned to their boats. The _women_ came forward to meet him, apparently as negociators. They surrounded him and seemed examining him with curiosity and wonder. Presently there came down another woman from the hill, having a stake in her hand, with which she got behind him, and dealt him a blow that brought him to the ground. Immediately the others seized him by the feet, and dragged him away, and then the Indian men, rushing to the shore, discharged their arrows at the boats. The boats finally escaped, but the men had to witness the horrid sight of their poor comrade destroyed by the ruthless savages. The women cut the body in pieces, and held up the mutilated limbs in mockery; then, broiling them over a huge fire, which had been prepared, as it seemed, for that purpose, with loud rejoicings, they devoured them in presence of the Portuguese. The Indians also made signs that they had eaten the two sailors![1] It will not be pleasant or useful to give any more minute accounts of the practice of cannibalism. Suffice it to say, that the tribes inhabiting the southern part of South America, appear to have been in the grossest ignorance and most deplorable state of vice and misery to which human beings can be reduced. They were more like tigers and serpents than men; for they used poisoned arrows, deadly as the “serpent’s tooth,” in battle; and they tore and devoured their enemies with the voracity of beasts of prey. The Europeans who first settled in Brazil, had to gain all their possessions by the sword; and few would go voluntarily to such a place; the Portuguese settlers were mostly convicts, banished for their crimes. As might be expected, this class of men, rendered desperate by their situation, and often hardened in crime, were not very merciful to the natives, who showed them no mercy. The bloody conflicts and atrocities on both sides were awful; yet we cannot feel the same sympathy for the cannibal Indian as for the gentle Peruvian, when his country is laid waste by the invader. It was about fifty years from the time of the first landing of the Portuguese, before a regular government was established, and a governor appointed by the king of Portugal. Then the Jesuits established themselves in Brazil, and began their labor of Christianizing the savages. Several tribes had entered into alliance with the colonists, and these Indians were, by the governor, forbidden to eat human flesh. To conquer this propensity, was the great aim of the Jesuits; but finding they could not reclaim the old ones, they set themselves to instructing the children.