duty of the forts, receiving the usual pay; but they were not liable to removal to any other post; and from their numbers the duty was easy, by which means they were enabled to have around them their wives and families, and to follow any trade to which they might have been brought up. Thus these men had something for which to fight, if the service required that they should act against any enemy of the State; they had homes to defend, they had comforts of which they might be deprived, they had ties which produced local attachments; but the regiments of the present day are filled up with vagabonds and unmarried men, who could not be expected to fight with the same ardour as those who had to provide for the safety of their families; and these unsettled men might perhaps follow him who gave the highest wages. The soldier of South America ought to be a being of far different stamp from the professed soldier of Europe. Any war which it might be necessary for Brazil to wage against a foreign invader should (indeed must) be carried on with a direct view to the peculiar advantages of the country; it would be a _guerilla_ war, a war under the cover of woods and hills. Therefore, although it may be as well to have a few disciplined soldiers who may be preserved, for the purpose of forming the basis of a large force, if circumstances should require it, still it is not by discipline that success will be ensured; it is through the affection which the soldiers feel for their government and for their country, that the result will be propitious or the contrary. But the limited population will not allow of considerable numbers of men (comparatively speaking) being cooped up uselessly in forts, without being of any service to the State, whilst the lands are covered with woods, and indeed whilst every branch of industry is requiring additional hands. Besides if you train a large force to military service, who by being so taught become superior to their countrymen, and yet form it of the worst of men; if you bring them up without any affection to the government, and without any hold upon the rest of the inhabitants, excepting that of being able to injure them; the likelihood is, that when you require their aid, they will be found wanting, and perhaps for higher pay may act against those whom they were expected to defend. If the soldier and the peasant can be combined usefully in the same person, it is in Brazil that such a system should be followed. The foundation of a church which was commenced at the expence of the _pês de castello_, as the fixed soldiers were called, are to be seen near to the town of Conception. The building was given up when the order arrived from the supreme government then at Lisbon, directing this change of system.