The coast from the _San Francisco_ river to the point of _Padram de Bahia_ was granted to Francisco Coutinho, a distinguished _Fidalgo_, to whom was likewise assigned that beautiful bay with its surrounding creeks and hundred islands. It may be mentioned, as showing the mixture of Portuguese and native blood which from the earliest settlement existed in the Brazilian race, that two of Coutinho’s followers married daughters of the first Portuguese settler, Diogo Alvarez, the mothers of whom were native women. A son of one of the neighbouring chiefs having been killed by the Portuguese, the savages attacked Coutinho, and after seven years of hostilities compelled him to abandon his settlement and retreat to the adjoining captaincy of the Isles. He was afterwards treacherously slain. One other captaincy was established about this time--that of _Pernambuco_, the chief town of which, from its lovely situation, received the suggestive name of _Olinda_. The tribe occupying the vicinity were called _Cahetes_, and have handed down to this day the remarkable wicker-work _catamarans_, which those who have landed at _Pernambuco_ are not likely to forget. From this savage tribe, Coelho, to whom the grant was assigned, had to conquer by inches what had been granted to him by leagues; he was even attacked and besieged in his town. By degrees, however, and by the aid of an alliance with another tribe, he at length established himself in his captaincy. The captaincy of _Maraham_ was assigned to John de Barros, the historian, who, dividing his grant with two others, undertook a scheme of conquest as well as of colonization, sending out from Portugal an expedition of nine hundred men. Fortune, however, did not smile upon the enterprise. The fleet was wrecked on some shoals, and the survivors escaped to the island which bears the above-mentioned name. It does not lie within the compass of this work to go into the condition of the native tribes in any part of South America previously to the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese. It will be sufficient to indicate the materials, whether European, native, mixed, or African, of which the several States of South America were composed at the period of their declaring themselves independent of Spain and Portugal, respectively. We therefore pass over much that is interesting, as told by the early writers, of the condition of the tribes as they were found by the settlers in _Brazil_, a _résumé_ of which may be found in the pages of Southey. There is not much of an active nature to relate in the history of the several captaincies at this period beyond a tale of successive little wars, in which the Portuguese were for the most part allied with some one native tribe against another. [Sidenote: 1549.]