Thomas de Souza laboured diligently during the four years of his administration, fortifying posts, driving away contraband traders, dismissing incompetent officials, and even building jails and straightening streets where the local authorities had neglected them. He visited all the captaincies south of Bahia and entered Rio Bay, then the principal rendezvous for the French privateers and traders. He appreciated its strategic and commercial importance, and was only prevented by lack of means from establishing a strong post there. In Sao Paulo he prohibited the flourishing trade which had grown with the Spaniards in Paraguay and Buenos Aires. Duarte da Costa, his successor, was accompanied by a large re-enforcement of Jesuits. Among them was Anchieta, one of the most notable men in the history of the Order, whose genius, devotion, and pertinacious courage laid the foundations of Jesuit power so deeply in South America that its effects remain to this day. This remarkable man was born in Teneriffe, the son of a banished nobleman, who had married a native of the island. Educated at home, from his infancy he showed marvellous talents. At fourteen, his father, not daring to risk his son's life in Spain, sent him to the Portuguese University at Coimbra. His career was so brilliant, the reputation he acquired for profound and ready intelligence, his eloquence, and his pure and elevated ideals so remarkable, that he attracted the attention of Simon Rodrigues, John III.'s great Jesuit minister, who, like all the leaders of the Order, was on the watch for talented young men. The ardent youth was easily convinced that no career was so glorious as that of a missionary, and when only twenty years old he solicited and obtained permission to go to Brazil. Nobrega, the Provincial, selected him to go to Sao Paulo and establish a school to train neophytes and proselytes into evangelists. His own letter to Nobrega best tells what a life he found and what sort of man he was: "Here we are, sometimes more than twenty of us together in a little hut of mud and wicker, roofed with straw, fourteen paces long and ten wide. This is at once the school, the infirmary, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and store-room. Yet we covet not the more spacious dwellings which our brethren have in other parts. Our Lord Jesus Christ was in a far straiter place when it was His pleasure to be born among beasts in a manger, and in a still straiter when He deigned to die upon the cross."