Journal of a Voyage to Brazil | Page 9

the colony had, like all the others, to fight for
its early existence; it was attacked by the Mamalucos of the
neighbouring settlement of St. André, who regarded the instruction of
the Indians as a step towards abolishing their slavery, and exclaimed
against it as an infringement of what they called their right to the
services of the natives. They engaged by other pretences some of the
neighbouring tribes to assist them, but they were met and defeated by
those of St. Paul's.
[Note 11: Mamaluco. These were the Creole Portuguese, who had most
of them intermarried with the natives.]
Meantime some disputes having arisen between the Governor and the
Bishop, the latter resolved to return to Lisbon, but was wrecked on the
coast at a place called the Baixos de San Francisco, and there seized,
and with one hundred other white persons put to death by the Cahetes.
The revenge of the Portuguese was horrible, the Cahetes were hunted,
slaughtered, and all but exterminated.
In the year 1557, Joam III. died. His appointment of Mem de Sa, before
his death, to the government of Brazil, prevented the country from
immediately feeling the evils which a regency generally entails even in
an established government, but which are sure to fall with tenfold
weight upon a rising colony.
Mem de Sa was a man of more enlightened mind, and more humane
principles than most of those to whom the government of the Brazilian
provinces had been intrusted. He arrived at Bahia in 1558, and
earnestly applied himself to learn the relations in which the Portuguese,
the Creoles, the Indians, and the mixed race stood to each other.
His first acts were directed towards reclaiming the allied Indians from
some of their most brutal practices, and to induce them to form
settlements near those of the Jesuits. The selfish planters, interested in
keeping up the feuds of the Indians, in order to procure slaves,
exclaimed against these proceedings as violations of the freedom of the

natives, and they were equally displeased at the orders issued, to set at
liberty all the Indians who had been wrongfully enslaved. One powerful
colonist alone refused to obey: Mem de Sa ordered his house to be
surrounded and instantly levelled with the ground. Such an act was
certainly calculated to inspire the Indians with confidence in his good
intentions towards them, at the same time that his vigorous measures to
punish them for any infraction of their engagements kept them in awe.
Meantime an adventurer of no ordinary stamp, had formed a settlement
in the finest harbour of Brazil, namely, that of Rio de Janeiro. Nicholas
Durand de Villegagnon was a native of Provins en Brie, and a Knight
of Malta. In 1648, he had been employed by Mary of Guise, at the
entreaty of the French court, to convey her daughter the young Queen
of Scots to France: in 1651 he was engaged in the defence of Malta,
against the Pacha Sinan and the famous Dragut Reis, and two years
afterwards published an account of that campaign. Having visited
Brazil in 1558, Villegagnon could not be insensible to the advantages
that must arise to France from having a settlement there; and, on his
return to Europe, he made such representations at court of these
advantages, that Henry II. gave him two vessels, each of 200 tons, and
a store ship of 100 tons, to convey the adventurers who might wish to
leave France, and who at that time were numerous. Villegagnon,
wishing to make use of Coligny's interest, gave out that the new
settlement was to be a refuge for the persecuted Hugonots, and this
answered the double purpose of securing the Admiral's friendship, and
gaining a number of respectable colonists. With these he reached Rio
de Janeiro, and made his first settlement in a low rock at the mouth of
the harbour, where there is now a small fort called the Laje, but finding
it not sufficiently elevated to resist the high tides, he pitched on an
island within the harbour, where there is only one landing place, and
whose form and situation is singularly adapted for safety, especially
against such enemies as the Indians. Those, however, of the Rio had
been long accustomed to trade with the French, who, if they had not
taught them, had at least encouraged them, to hate the Portuguese,
whom Villegagnon flattered himself that he should be able to keep
aloof by the assistance of the Savages.

Meantime Coligny had exerted himself to send out assistance of every
kind; provisions, recruits[12], and protestant ministers. But
Villegagnon now imagined himself secure in his colony, and threw off
the mask of toleration. He behaved so tyrannically that many of the
Hugonots were obliged to return to France, and of them he made