Journal of a Voyage to Brazil | Page 7

and
Pereira contrived to engage some of the Indian tribes in his favour. The
war was but of short continuance, and nothing farther, except the
seizure of the little settlement of Garussa, in the woods and near the

creek which separates Itameraca from the main land, occurred to
impede the prosperity of the captaincy.
[Note 8: There is a note in the first volume of Southey's Brazil
concerning the name of Marino given to Olinda by Hans Staade. The
other Brazilians call the Pernambucans of Recife Marineros still. Is this
from the town or their nautical habits? or from the name of the Indian
village Marim which existed in the neighbourhood?]
The last colony which was founded during these ten eventful years was
that of Maranham. Three adventurers undertook this settlement jointly.
The most celebrated was Joam de Barros, the historian; the others were
Fernam Alvares de Andrada, father of the writer of the Chronicle, and
Aires da Cunha.
Aires da Cunha, Barros's two sons, and nine hundred men, sailed in ten
ships for their new possession, but were wrecked on the shoals of
Maranham; so that it was long before any success attended the
undertaking. Da Cunha was drowned, the sons of Barros slain by the
Indians, and the rest of the people with difficulty survived in a very
wretched condition.
Meantime the passage through Magellan's Straits had been discovered,
and the Spaniards, first under Sebastian Cabot, and afterwards under
Don Pedro de Mendoza, who founded Buenos Ayres, had begun to
settle on the shores of the Plata, not without opposition from the
Portuguese, and a more obstinate and fatal resistance from the Indians.
The tribes in this neighbourhood appear to have been more civilised
than those of the coast of Brazil, and consequently more formidable
enemies to the rising towns. Orellana had also made his daring voyage
down the mighty river that is sometimes called by his name. He had
afterwards perished in an attempt to make a settlement on its shores,
and nearly the same fate had attended Luiz de Mello da Silva, who
made a similar attempt on the part of Portugal.
Cabeza de Vacca had also made his adventurous overland journey from
St. Catherine's, and after settling himself in the government of
Assumption, had conducted various expeditions of discovery, always in

hopes of finding an easy way to the gold countries. In one of these he
found traces of the adventurer Garcia, a Portuguese, who, under the
orders of Martim Affonso de Souza, had, with five companions,
undertaken to explore the interior of South America. This man had by
some means so conciliated the Indians, that he was followed by a very
considerable army, and is said to have penetrated even into Tarija. He
is believed to have perished by the hand of one of his own followers,
but no particulars were ever known of his fate.
During the next ten years, nothing remarkable occurred with regard to
Brazil, except the founding of the city of St. Salvador's, by Thome de
Souza, the first Captain General of Brazil, who carried out with him the
first Jesuit missionaries. For the site of his new town De Souza fixed
upon the hill immediately above the deepest part of the harbour of
Bahia, which is defended at the back by a deep lake, and lies about half
a league from the Villa Velha of Coutinho and Caramuru.
The temporal concerns of the new colony, derived inestimable
advantage from the friendship and assistance of the patriarch Caramuru:
as to the spiritual, it was indeed time that some rule of faith and morals
should find its way to Brazil. The settlers had hitherto had no
instructors but friars, whose manners were as dissolute as their own,
and who encouraged in them a licentious depravity, scarcely less
shocking than the cannibalism of the savages. These latter are said to
have eaten the children born by their own daughters to their prisoners
of war,--a thing so unnatural, that it only gains credit because the
Portuguese sold as slaves even their own children by the native women.
The apostle of Brazil, as he may in truth be called, and chief of the six
Jesuits who accompanied Souza, was Nobrega, the cotemporary and
rival in the race of disinterested services to his fellow creatures of St.
Francis Xavier; and, with regard to his steady attempts to protect as
well as to convert the Indians, another Las Casas.
Brazil was becoming an object of importance to the crown of Portugal.
The new settlement of Bahia was established on the king's account, and
at his expense 1000 persons had been sent out the first year, 1549. In
four months there were 100 houses, six batteries, and a cathedral: a

college for the Jesuits, a palace, and a custom-house were