Journal of a Voyage to Brazil | Page 3

the conquerors
encountered a people civilised and humane; acquainted with many of
the arts of polished life; agriculturists and mechanics; knowing in the
things belonging to the altar and the throne, and waging war for
conquest and for glory. But the savages of Brazil were hunters and
cannibals; they wandered, and they made war for food: few of the tribes
knew even the cultivation of the mandioc, and fewer still had adopted
any kind of covering, save paint and feathers for ornament. The
Spanish conquests were more quickly made, and appeared more easily
settled, because in states so far advanced in civilisation the defeat of an
army decides the fate of a kingdom, and the land already cultivated,
and the mines already known and worked, were entered upon at once
by the conquerors.
In Brazil the land that was granted by leagues was to be won by inches
from the hordes of savages who succeeded each other in incalculable
multitudes, and whose migratory habits rendered it a matter of course
for one tribe immediately to occupy the ground from which its
predecessors had been driven. Hence the history of the early settlers in
Brazil presents none of those splendid and chivalresque pictures that
the chronicles of the Corteses, and Pizarros, and Almagros furnish.
They are plain, and often pathetic scenes of human life, full of patience,
and enterprise, and endurance; but the wickedness that stains even the

best of them, is the more disgusting as it is more sordid.
But the very circumstances that facilitated the settling of the Spanish
colonies were also likely to accelerate their liberation. A sense and a
remembrance of national honour and freedom, remained among the
polished Mexicans and Peruvians. Their numbers indeed had been
thinned by the cruelties of the conquerors, but enough were left to
perpetuate the memory of their fathers, to hand down the prophecies
uttered in the phrenzy of their dying patriots; and the Peruvian, when
he visited Lima, looked round the chamber of the viceroys, as he saw
niche after niche filled up with their pictures, till the fated number
should be accomplished, with no common emotion[1]; and many a
dreamer on the Peruvian coast, when he saw the Admiral of the Chilian
squadron, was ready to hail him as the golden-haired son of light who
was to restore the kingdom of the Incas.[2]
[Note 1: The hall with the pictures of the viceroys was filled: there
would be no room in it for Lacerna.]
[Note 2: This prophecy was recorded by Garcelaço de la Vega; and it is
said, that the copies of his Incas were bought up, and an edition printed,
omitting the prophecy.]
But in Brazil, what was once gained was not likely to be lost by the
efforts of the natives, or at least by any recollection of their's, pointing
to a better or more glorious time. They have been either exterminated,
or wholly subdued. The slave hunting, which had been systematic on
the first occupation of the land, and more especially after the discovery
of the mines, had diminished the wretched Indians, so that the
introduction of the hardier Africans was deemed necessary: they now
people the Brazilian fields; and if here and there an Indian aldea is to be
found, the people are wretched, with less than Negro comforts, and
much less than Negro spirit or industry. Hence, while the original
Mexicans and Peruvians form a real and respectable part of the
assertors of the independance of their country, along with the Creole
Spaniards, the Indians are nothing in Brazil; even as a mixed race, they
have less part among the different casts than in the Spanish colonies;
and therefore jealousies among the Portuguese themselves could alone

at this period have brought affairs to their present crisis. These
jealousies have taken place, and though they did not arise principally
out of the causes of the emigration and return of the Royal family, they
were at least quickened and accelerated by them.
In 1499, Brazil was discovered by Vicente Yañez Pinçon, a native of
Palos, and one of the companions of Columbus. He and his brothers
were in search of new countries, and after touching at the Cape de Verd
Islands, he steered to the south-west, till he came to the coast of Brazil,
near Cape St. Augustine, and coasted along as far as the river
Maranham, and thence to the mouth of the Oronoco. He carried home
some valuable drugs, precious stones, and Brazil wood; but had lost
two of his three ships on the voyage. He made no settlement, but had
claimed the country for Spain.
Meantime Pedro Alvarez Cabral was appointed by Emanuel, King of
Portugal, to the command of a large fleet, destined to follow the course
of Vasco de Gama in the