In presenting an account of this extensive and important country, the only American monarchy, we shall, first, give a brief historical sketch of the progressive discovery of its coasts and interior, of its gradual settlement, and of the auspices under which its social institutions have developed themselves; secondly, a condensed view of its physical geography, meteorology, and natural products; and, thirdly, a similar view of its inhabitants, their form of government, moral and intellectual culture, and agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial industry.

I. History.—Brazil was discovered in 1499, by Vincent Yañez Pinçon, a companion of Columbus. He described the land near Cape St Augustine, and sailed along the coast as far as the river Amazon, whence he proceeded to the mouth of the Orinoco. He made no settlement, but took possession of the country in the name of the Spanish government, and carried home, as specimens of its natural productions, some drugs, gems, and Brazil wood. Next year the Portuguese commander Pedro Alvarez Cabral, appointed by his monarch to follow the course of Vasco de Gama in the east, was driven, by adverse winds, so far from his track, that he reached the Brazilian coast, April 24, and anchored in Porto Seguro (Lat. 16° S.) on Good Friday. On Easter-day an altar was erected, mass celebrated in presence of the natives, the country declared an appanage of Portugal, and a stone cross erected in commemoration of the event. Cabral despatched a small vessel to Lisbon, to announce his discovery, and, without forming any settlement, proceeded to India on the 3d of May.

On the arrival of the news in Portugal, Emanuel invited Amerigo Vespucci to enter his service, and despatched him with three vessels to explore the country. This navigator's first voyage was unsuccessful; but in a second he discovered a safe port, the site of which is not accurately known, to which he gave the name of All-Saints. He remained there five months, and maintained a friendly intercourse with the natives. Some of the party travelled forty leagues into the interior. Vespucci erected a small fort, and leaving twelve men, with guns and provisions, to garrison it, embarked for Portugal; having loaded his two ships with Brazil wood, monkeys, and parrots.

The poor and barbarous tribes of Brazil, and their country, the mineral riches of which were not immediately discovered, offered but few attractions to a government into the coffers of which the wealth of India and Africa was flowing. Vespucci's settlement was neglected. For nearly thirty years the kings of Portugal paid no further attention to their newly-acquired territory, than what consisted in combating the attempts of the Spaniards to occupy it, and dispersing the private adventurers from France, who sought its shores for the purposes of commerce. The colonization of Brazil was prosecuted, however, by subjects of the Portuguese monarchy, who traded thither chiefly for Brazil wood. It was convenient for these traders to have agents living among the natives; and adventurers were found who were willing to take up their abode with them. The government also sought to make criminals of some use to the state, by placing them in a situation where they could do little harm to society, and might help to uphold the dominion of their nation. The utter want of any legal check upon these earliest European settlers, combined with the ferocious characters of many of them, and the hardening influence of their feuds with the native cannibals, were anything but favourable to the morals of the infant empire.

The first attempt on the part of a Portuguese monarch to introduce an organized government into his dominions, was made by João III. He adopted a plan which had been found to succeed well in Madeira and the Azores; dividing the country into hereditary captaincies, and granting them to such persons as were willing to undertake their settlement, with unlimited powers of jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. Each captaincy extended along fifty leagues of coast. The boundaries in the interior were undefined.

The first settlement made under this new system was that of S. Vincente. Martim Afonso de Sousa, having obtained a grant, fitted out a considerable armament, and proceeded to explore the country in person. He began to survey the coast about Rio Janeiro, to which he gave that name because he discovered it on the first of January 1531. He proceeded south as far as La Plata, naming the places he surveyed on the way from the days on which the respective discoveries were made. He fixed upon an island, in latitude 24° south, called by the natives Guaiaba, for his settlement. The Guaiabazes, or prevailing tribe of Indians in that neighbourhood, as soon as they discovered the intentions of the new comers to fix themselves permanently there, collected for the purpose of expelling them. Fortunately, however, a shipwrecked Portuguese, who had lived many years under the protection of the principal chief, was successful in concluding a treaty of perpetual alliance between his countrymen and the natives. The good understanding thus happily established was long preserved. Finding the spot chosen for the new town inconvenient, the colonists removed to the adjoining island of S. Vincente, from which the captaincy derived its name. An unsuccessful expedition was made into the interior in search of mines. Nevertheless the colony prospered. Cattle and the sugar-cane were at an early period introduced from Madeira, and here the other captaincies supplied themselves with both. The founder of the colony was soon removed from the active superintendence of its progress, by being appointed governor-general of India; but on his return to Portugal he watched over its welfare, sending out supplies and settlers, and leaving it at his death in a flourishing condition to his son.

Pero Lopes de Sousa received the grant of a captaincy, and set sail from Portugal at the same time as his brother, the founder of S. Vincente. He chose to have his fifty leagues in two allotments. That to which he gave the name of S. Amaro adjoined S. Vincente, the two towns... being only three leagues asunder. The other division lay much nearer to the line between Paraíba and Pernambuco. He experienced considerable difficulty in founding this second colony, from the strenuous opposition of a neighbouring tribe, the Petigares; but at length he succeeded in clearing his lands of them; and not long afterwards he perished by shipwreck. The extreme proximity of his first settlement at S. Amaro to his brother's at S. Vincente was at first advantageous to both; but the former coming after his death into the hands of strangers, their interfering and contested boundaries gave rise to much trouble and litigation.

Rio Janeiro was not settled till a later period; and for a considerable time the nearest captaincy to S. Amaro, sailing along the coast northwards, was that of Espírito Santo. It was founded by Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, who having acquired a large fortune in India, sunk it in this scheme of colonization. He carried with him no less than sixty fidalgos. They named their town by anticipation, Our Lady of the Victory; but it cost them some hard fighting with the Goagnazes to justify the title. Having defeated these savages, the colonists carried on the building with spirit, planted canes, and established four sugar-works; and Coutinho seeing everything prosperous, returned to Lisbon to enlist more colonists, and to make preparations for an expedition into the interior in search of mines.

Pedro de Campo Tourinho, a nobleman and excellent navigator, received a grant of the adjoining captaincy of Porto Seguro. This, it will be remembered, is the spot where Cabral first took possession of Brazil. Tourinho and his associates fortified themselves on the place where the capital of the presidency still stands. The Tupiniquins at first offered some opposition; but having made peace, they observed it faithfully, notwithstanding that the oppression of the Portuguese obliged them to forsake the country. In this guilt Tourinho is not implicated. That he had influence enough with the natives to induce many of them to collect and settle in villages, is a proof that he dealt justly by them. Sugar-works were established, and considerable quantities of the produce exported to the mother country. It was found impossible, by reason of an endemic disorder, to rear kine in the province; but horses, asses, and goats, succeeded.

Jorge de Figueiredo, Escrivão da Fazenda, was the first donatory of the captaincy of Ilhéus. His office preventing him from taking possession in person, he deputed the task to Francisco Romeiro, a Castilian. The Tupiniquins, the most tractable of the Brazilian tribes, made peace with the settlers, and the colony was founded without a struggle. The son of the original proprietor sold the captaincy to Lucas Geraldes, who expended considerable wealth in improving it; and, in a short time, eight or nine sugar-works were established.

The coast from the Rio S. Francisco to Bahia was granted to Francisco Pereira Coutinho; the bay itself, with all its creeks, was afterwards added to the grant. When Coutinho formed his establishment, where Villa Velha now stands, he found a noble Portuguese living in the neighbourhood, who, having been shipwrecked, had, by means of his fire-arms, raised himself to the rank of chief among the natives. He was surrounded by a patriarchal establishment of wives and children; and to him most of the distinguished families of Bahia still trace their lineage. The regard entertained by the natives for Caramaru (signifying man of fire) induced them to extend a hospitable welcome to his countrymen; and for a time every thing went on well. Coutinho had, however, learned in India to be an oppressor, and the Tupinambás were the fiercest and most powerful of the native tribes. The Portuguese were obliged to abandon their settlement; but several of them returned at a later period, along with Caramaru, and thus a European community was established in the district.

A factory had, some time before the period at which these captaincies were established, been planted at Pernambuco. A ship from Marseilles took it, and left seventy men in it as a garrison; but being captured on her return, and carried into Lisbon, immediate measures were taken for reoccupying the place. The captaincy of Pernambuco was granted to Don Duarte Coelho Pereira as the reward of his services in India. It extended along the coast from the Rio S. Francisco, northward to the Rio de Juraze. Duarte sailed with his wife and children, and many of his kinsmen, to take possession of his new colony, and landed in the port of Pernambuco. To the town which was there founded he gave the name of Olinda. The Cabeces, who possessed the soil, were fierce and pertinacious; and, assisted by the French, who trailed to that coast, Coelho had to gain by inches what was granted him by leagues. The Portuguese managed, however, to beat off their enemies; and, having entered into an alliance with the Tobayanes, followed up their success. After this triumph the colony continued, with the exception of a brief interval, to enjoy peace, and to prosper during the life of its founder.

Attempts were made about this time to establish two other captaincies, but without success. Pedro de Goes obtained a grant of the captaincy of Paraíba between those of S. Vincente and Espírito Santo; but his means were too feeble to enable him to make head against the aborigines, and the colony was broken up after a painful struggle of seven years. João de Barros, the historian, obtained the captaincy of Maranhão. For the sake of increasing his capital, he divided his grant with Fernan Álvares de Andrada and Aires da Cunha. They projected a scheme of conquest and colonization upon a large scale. Nine hundred men, of whom one hundred and thirteen were horsemen, embarked in ten ships under the command of Aires da Cunha. But the vessels were wrecked upon some shoals about one hundred leagues to the south of Maranhão; and the few survivors, after suffering immense hardships, escaped to the nearest settlements, and the undertaking was abandoned.

By these adventurers, the whole line of Brazilian coast, from the mouth of La Plata to the mouth of the Amazonas, had become studded at intervals with Portuguese settlements, in all of which law and justice were administered, however inadequately. It is worthy of observation, that Brazil was the first colony founded in America upon an agricultural principle, for until then the precious metals were the exclusive attraction. Sufficient capital was attracted between the year 1531, in which De Sousa founded the first captaincy, and the year 1548, to render these colonies an object of importance to the mother country. Their organization, however, both in regard to their means of defence against external aggression and internal violence, was extremely defective. Portugal was distant, and the inhabited portions of each captaincy were too far asunder to be able to afford reciprocal assistance. They were surrounded by, and intermingled with, large tribes of savages. Behind them the Spaniards, who had an establishment at Assumption, had penetrated almost to the sources of the waters of Paraguay, and had succeeded in establishing a communication with Peru. Orellana, on the other hand, setting out from Peru, had crossed the mountains and sailed down the Amazonas. Nor had the French abandoned their hopes of effecting an establishment on the coast. But the want of internal organization in the Portuguese settlements was even worse than the inadequacy of their defensive force. The governor of every captaincy exercised uncontrolled authority; the property, honour, and lives of the colonists, were at the mercy of these feudal chieftains; and the people groaned under many oppressions.

The obvious remedy for these evils was to concentrate the executive power, to render the petty chiefs amenable History, to one tribunal, and to confide the management of the defensive force to one hand. In order to this the powers of the several captains were revoked, whilst their property in their grants was reserved to them. A governor-general was appointed, with full powers, civil and criminal. The judicial and financial functions in each province were vested in the Ouvidor, whose authority in the college of finance was second only to that of the governor. In levying the dues of the crown, he was assisted by the Juiz de Fora.

Every colonist was enrolled either in the Milicias or Ordenanzas. The former were obliged to serve beyond the boundaries of the province, the latter only at home. The Milicias were commanded by the Coroneis, the Ordenanzas by Capitães Mores. Both were immediately under the governor. The chief cities received municipal constitutions, as in Portugal. Thome de Sousa was the first person nominated to the important post of governor-general. He was instructed to build a strong city in Bahia and to establish there the seat of his government. In pursuance of his commission, he arrived at Bahia in April 1549, with a fleet of six vessels, on board of which were three hundred and twenty persons in the king's pay, four hundred convicts, and as many free colonists as swelled the number of adventurers to one thousand. Care had been taken for the spiritual wants of the provinces, by associating six Jesuits to the expedition.

Old Caramaru, who still survived, rendered the governor essential service, by gaining for his countrymen the good will of the natives. The new city was established where Bahia still stands. Within four months one hundred houses were built, and surrounded by a mud wall. Sugar plantations were laid out in the vicinity. During the four years of Sousa's government, there were sent out at different times supplies of all kinds; female orphans of noble families, who were given in marriage to the officers, and portioned from the royal estates; and orphan boys to be educated by the Jesuits. The capital rose rapidly in importance, and the captaincies learned to regard it as a common head and centre of wealth. The governor visited them, inspected their fortifications, and regulated the administration of justice. Meanwhile the Jesuits undertook the moral and religious culture of the natives, and of the scarcely less savage colonists. Strong opposition was at first experienced from the gross ignorance of the Indians, and the depravity of the Portuguese, fostered by the licentious encouragement of some abandoned priests who had found their way to Brazil. Over these persons the Jesuits had no authority; and it was not until the arrival of the first bishop of Brazil in 1552, that anything like an efficient check was imposed upon them. Next year Sousa was succeeded by Duarte da Costa, who brought with him a reinforcement of Jesuits, at the head of whom was Luis de Gran, appointed, with Nobrega the chief of the first mission, joint provincial of Brazil.

Nobrega's first act was one which has exercised the most beneficial influence over the social system of Brazil, namely, the establishment of a college on the then unclaimed plains of Piratininga. The spot selected by him for the site of this establishment is on the ridge of the Serra do Mar, ten leagues from the sea, and thirteen from S. Vincente. It was named S. Paulo, and has been at once the source whence knowledge and civilization have been diffused through Brazil, and the nucleus of a colony of its manliest and hardiest citizens, which has sent out successive swarms of hardy adventurers to people the interior. The mode of education pursued by the Jesuits at S. Paulo was the same as that observed in all their other missions. Their good intentions were in part frustrated by the opposition of Duarte the governor; and it was not until 1558, when Mem de Sa was sent out to supersede him, that their enlightened projects were allowed free scope. This great man, compr-

lending better than his predecessor the system of these missionaries, went hand in hand with the ecclesiastics during the whole of his government.

It has been observed above that Rio Janeiro was not colonized at the time when the rest of the coast was portioned out into captaincies. It was first occupied by French settlers. Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon, a bold and skilful seaman, having visited Brazil, saw at once the advantages which might accrue to his country from a settlement there. In order to secure the interest of Coligny, he gave out that his projected colony was intended to serve as a place of refuge for the persecuted Huguenots. Under the patronage of that admiral, he arrived at Rio Janeiro in 1558, with a train of numerous and respectable colonists. As soon, however, as he thought his power secure, he threw off the mask, and began to harass and oppress the Huguenots by every means he could devise. Many of them were forced by his tyranny to return to France; and ten thousand Protestants, ready to embark for the new colony, were deterred by their representations. Villegagnon, finding his force much diminished in consequence of his treachery, sailed for France, in quest of recruits; and during his absence the Portuguese governor, by order of his court, attacked and dispersed the settlement. For some years the French kept up a kind of bush warfare; but in 1667 the Portuguese succeeded in establishing a settlement at Rio.

Mem de Sa continued to hold the reins of government in Brazil upon terms of the best understanding with the clergy, and to the great advantage of the colonies, for fourteen years. On the expiration of his power, which was nearly contemporary with that of his life, an attempt was made to divide Brazil into two governments; but, this having failed, the territory was re-united in 1578, the year in which Diego Laurencio da Veiga was appointed governor. At this time the colonies, although not yet independent of supplies from the mother country, were in a flourishing condition; but the usurpation of the crown of Portugal by Philip II. changed the aspect of affairs. Brazil, believed to be inferior to the Spanish possessions in mines, was considered of importance merely as an outpost to prevent the intrusion of foreign nations. It was consequently abandoned to comparative neglect for the period intervening between 1578 and 1640, during which it continued an appanage of Spain. The population increased; and domestic enterprise and foreign invasion called forth the energies of the people; but, as far as legislation was concerned, nothing was done.

No sooner had Brazil passed under the Spanish crown, than English adventurers directed their hostile enterprises against its shores. In 1586 Witherington plundered Bahia; in 1591 Cavendish burned S. Vincente; in 1595 Lancaster took Olinda. These exploits, however, were transient in their effects. In 1612 the French attempted to found a permanent colony in the island of Marajó, where they succeeded in maintaining themselves till 1618. This attempt led to the erection of Maranhão and Para into a separate Estado. But it was on the part of the Dutch that the most skilful and pertinacious efforts were made for securing a footing in Brazil; and they alone of all the rivals of the Portuguese have left traces of their presence in the national spirit and institutions of Brazil.

The very imperfect constitution of the United Provinces was the cause why many of the executive functions were delegated to companies of mercantile adventurers. Among the offices properly appertaining to the government, the maintenance and defence of the Spice Islands had been intrusted to the East India Company. The success of that body suggested the establishment of a West India Company. Its charter secured to it a monopoly of the trade to America and the opposite coast of Africa, between the tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope. The company was taken bound to render an account of its proceedings every sixth year.

This body despatched in 1624 a fleet against Bahia. The town yielded almost without a struggle. The Dutch governor fortified his new acquisition; and his proclamation offering toleration and protection to all, collected around him a multitude of Indians, Negroes, and Jews. The fleet soon after sailed; a squadron being detached against Angola, with the intention of taking possession of that colony, in order to secure a supply of slaves. The Portuguese, in the meanwhile, who had fled at first in the hope of eluding what they conceived to be merely an incursion of pirates, began to collect for the purpose of expelling the permanent intruders; and the weakening of the Dutch force by the departure of the fleet inspired them with fresh courage. The descendants of Caramaru formed a link between the aborigines and the Portuguese which existed in no other part of Brazil. The consequence was, the hearty co-operation of all the natives against the invaders. The Dutch were obliged to capitulate in May 1625. The honours bestowed upon the Indian chiefs for their assistance in this war broke down in a great measure the barrier between the two tribes; and there is at this day a greater admixture of their blood among the better classes in Bahia than is to be found elsewhere in Brazil.

For some years the Dutch confined themselves to depredations upon the marine of Spain and Portugal. In 1630 they attempted again to effect a settlement; and Olinda yielded after a feeble resistance. They were unable, however, to extend their power beyond the limits of the town, until the arrival of Count Maurice of Nassau in 1630. His first step was to introduce a regular government among his countrymen; his second, to send to the African coast one of his officers, who took possession of a Portuguese settlement, and thus secured a supply of slaves. Nassau suffered repulses in several of his expeditions, and particularly in that which he undertook against Bahia. Nevertheless, in the course of four years, the limited period of his government, he succeeded in confirming the Dutch supremacy along the coast of Brazil from the mouth of the S. Francisco to Maranhão. He expended the revenues of the country, the booty obtained from the Portuguese, and a great part of his private fortune, in fortifying the mouths of rivers, building bridges to facilitate mercantile intercourse, and beautifying and repairing towns. He strictly observed the Dutch policy of tolerating all religions. He promoted the amalgamation of the different races, and sought to conciliate the Portuguese by the confidence he reposed in them. His object was to found a great empire; but this was a project at variance with the wishes of his employers—an association of merchants, who were dissatisfied because the wealth which they expected to see flowing into their coffers was expended in promoting the permanent interests of a distant country. Count Maurice was recalled in 1644. His successors possessed neither his political nor his military talents, and had to contend with more energetic enemies.

In 1640, the revolution which placed the house of Braganza on the throne of Portugal restored Brazil to masters more inclined to promote its interests, and assert its possession, than the Spaniards. It was indeed high time that some exertion should be made. The northern provinces had fallen into the power of Holland; the southern, peopled in a great measure by the hardy descendants of the successive colonists, who had issued on all sides from the central establishment of S. Paulo, had learned, from their habits of unaided and successful enterprise, to court independence. Adventurers had penetrated into those central mountains where the diamond is found. They had ascended the waters of the Paraguay to their sources. They had extended their limits southwards till they reached the Spanish settlements on La Plata. They had reduced to slavery numerous tribes of the natives. They were rich in cattle, and had commenced the discovery of the mines. While yet nominally subject to the crown of Spain, they had not scrupled on more than one occasion to wage war on their own account against the settlements of that country. When, therefore, the inhabitants of S. Paulo saw themselves about to be transferred, as a dependency of Portugal, from one master to another, they conceived the idea of erecting their country into an independent state. Their attempt, however, was frustrated by Amador Bueno, the person whom they had selected for their king. When the people shouted "Long live King Amador," he cried out "Long live João IV," and took refuge in a convent. The multitude, left without a leader, acquiesced, and this important province was secured to the house of Braganza.

Rio and Santos, although both evinced a desire of independence, followed the example of the Paulistas. Bahia, as capital of the Brazilian states, felt that its ascendancy depended upon the union with Portugal. The government, thus left in quiet possession of the rest of Brazil, had time to concentrate its attention upon the Dutch conquests. The crown of Portugal was, however, much too weak to adopt energetic measures. The tyranny of the successors of Nassau, by alienating the minds of the Portuguese and natives, drove them to revolt, before any steps were taken in the mother country for the re-conquest of its colonies. João Fernandes Vieyra, a native of Madeira, organized the insurrection which broke out in 1645. This insurrection gave birth to one of those wars in which a whole nation, destitute of pecuniary resources, military organization, and skilful leaders, is opposed to a handful of soldiers advantageously posted and well officered. But brute force is unable to contend with scientific valour, whilst the want of numbers prevents the intruders from reaching the enemy they always repulse. The struggle degenerates into unceasing skirmishes and massacres, conducing to no result. Vieyra, who had the sense to see this, repaired to the court of Portugal, and discovering the weakness and poverty of the executive, suggested the establishment of a company similar to that which in Holland had proved so successful. His plan, notwithstanding the opposition of the priests, was approved of, and in 1649 the Brazil Company of Portugal sent out its first fleet. The additional impetus communicated by this new engine to the exertions of the Portuguese colonists and their Indian allies, turned the scale against the Dutch. After a most sanguinary war, Vieyra was enabled in 1654 to present the keys of Olinda to the royal commander, and to restore to his monarch the undivided empire of Brazil; and in 1661, a treaty of peace was signed with them, and they renounced their pretensions to a portion of Brazil. After this, except some inroads on the frontiers, the only foreign invasion which Brazil had to suffer was from France. In 1710 a squadron commanded by Duclerc disembarked 1000 men, and attacked Rio de Janeiro. After having lost half of his men in a battle, Duclerc and all his surviving companions were made prisoners. The governor treated them cruelly. A new squadron with 6000 troops was intrusted to the famous admiral Duguay Trouin to revenge this injury. They arrived at Rio on the 12th September 1711. After four days of hard fighting, the town was taken. The governor retreated to a position out of it, and was only awaiting reinforcements from Minas to retake it; but Duguay Trouin threatening to burn it, he was obliged on the 10th October to sign a capitulation, and pay to the French admiral 610,000 cruzados, 500 cases of sugar, and provisions for the return of the fleet to Europe. The same day Albuquerque, the governor of Minas, arrived with the expected reinforcement of 15,000 men. The conditions of the capitulation were, however, fulfilled. Duguay Trouin departed for Bahia to obtain fresh spoils; but having lost in a storm two of his best ships, with an important part of the money received, he renounced this plan and returned directly to France.

After this the Portuguese governed undisturbed their colony. The approach of foreign traders was prohibited, while the regalities reserved by the crown drained the country of a great proportion of its wealth. The authority of the governors was despotic in its abuse, but limited in its corrective power; the administration of justice was slovenly in the extreme; the pay of all functionaries, civil, ecclesiastic, and military, was so parsimonious as to render peculation inevitable; and yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, the wealth and happiness of the people continued silently and steadily to increase. The reason was, that they were left in a great measure to themselves, and had an ample field within their own land for the exertion of their industry.

We have already adverted to the important part which the inhabitants of the captaincy of S. Paulo have played in the history of Brazil. The establishment of the Jesuit college had attracted to its neighbourhood a number of settlers from S. Vincente. The Indians of the district were of mild dispositions, and frequent intermarriages took place between them and the Europeans. A race of men sprung from this mixture, native to the soil, hardy and enterprising, wearing but lightly the bonds which attached them to the mother country. The first object of inquiry with the colonists was, whether the land of which they had taken possession were rich in metals. Gold was found, but not in sufficient quantities to reward the labour bestowed in search of it. The Portuguese next devoted their energies to excursions against the more remote Indian tribes, with a view to obtaining slaves. Traces of gold having been observed in the mountain ranges north of S. Paulo, successive bands of adventurers attempted to penetrate the wilderness. The spirit of enterprise was thus nourished and confirmed. From the year 1629 the Paulistas repeatedly attacked the settlements of the Jesuits in Paraguay, although both provinces were nominally subject to the crown of Spain, and carried away numbers of the natives into captivity. Other bands penetrated into Minas, and still farther northward and westward, into Goyaz and Cuiaba, in search of gold.

At first the gold-searchers, like the slave-hunters, undertook temporary expeditions, with the view, doubtless, of returning laden with booty, and settling in their native homes. By degrees, however, as the distance of the newly-discovered mines increased, and establishments for working them became necessary, new colonies were founded. Different associations of adventurers penetrated, in the years 1693, 1694, and 1695, into the district of Minas Geraes, which had been explored by the Paulistas at least twenty years before. In the beginning of the eighteenth century five of its principal settlements were elevated by royal charter to the privileges of towns. In 1720 the district was separated from S. Paulo, of which it had previously been esteemed a dependency, and placed under the control of a governor-general. In 1670 the gold-searchers penetrated into Goyaz; but it was not till the commencement of the next century that, encouraged by the discovery of the mines of Cuiaba, in the province of Matto Grosso, a permanent colony was settled there.

The first attempt to regulate by legislative enactments the industry of the miners of Brazil was made as early as 1618 by Philip III. According to his code of regulations, the privileges of the discoverer were that he should have one mine of eighty Portuguese varas by forty, and a second allotment of sixty by thirty upon the same vein. A hundred and twenty varas were to intervene between the portions. Any adventurer might claim a mine, but he could only have one of the same extent as the discoverer's first portion. No one except the discoverer might have more than one original grant within the distance of a league and a half; but the purchase of another person's allotment within that distance was allowed. Mines might be sought for and worked upon private property, because they belonged to the king, but the owner of the land had a right to indemnification. Mining adventurers were entitled to turn their cattle into the lands of the municipality (council), and even into private property, without the owner's permission, upon paying the value of the pasturage. No man engaged in mining could be arrested for debt, or have a distress levied upon such capital as he had employed in the work. Mines might only be granted to such persons as possessed the means of peopling and working them. A grant was forfeited if not taken possession of within sixty days. The executive and judicial functions within the mining districts were vested in a provedor and his secretary, those of the fiscal in a treasurer. None of these officials could hold a share in a mine, or trade in its produce, under penalty of loss of office and confiscation of property. The provedor or his secretary measured out the allotments; received and inspected the samples of metal from new mines; registered the grants, with the holder's oath to pay his fifths regularly and faithfully; and decided finally in all disputes to the amount of fifty milreas, with the reservation only of the right of appeal to the Provedor Mór da Real Fazenda to any amount. The treasurer received the royal fifths, and superintended the weighing, registering, refining, and stamping of all the gold. The king's share was deposited in a chest under three locks, the keys of which were kept by the provedor, secretary, and treasurer. A yearly account was returned of all the discoveries and produce.

For many years these laws were little more than a dead letter. The Paulistas were wholly engrossed with their expeditions in quest of slaves; the government and the colonists of the other captaincies, with the Dutch and other wars. Some few gipsy-like establishments were scattered thinly throughout the gold country. By degrees the desire of gain induced the more powerful and wealthy colonists to solicit large grants. No attention was paid to the restriction of the number that might be conferred on each individual; and the consequence was, that men of influence monopolized the mines, and were obliged either to sublet them to those they had forestalled, or to leave them unopened. It was found necessary in 1702 to alter the existing laws.

The whole ordinary civil and military authority was vested in the superintendent (Guarda Mór). The appointment of the treasurer belonged to this officer. Both were allowed a limited number of deputies. At first the salaries of all these officers were levied upon the miners, but subsequently the privilege of mining was conceded to them in lieu of a salary. No second grant was made to any person until he had worked the first. The allotments were regulated by the number of slaves which the miner employed. Besides its fifths, the crown reserved an allotment, selected after the adventurer had taken his first grant and before he had chosen his second. If an adventurer did not begin to work his ground within forty days, a third part of it, upon information of the lapse, was assigned to the informer, and the other two-thirds reverted to the crown. Cattle were allowed to be imported into the mining districts from Bahia, but no persons were allowed to enter except the drovers. They were required to notify their arrival, the number of their cattle, and the prices they obtained. Any person might carry gold-dust from the mines to Bahia to purchase cattle, but not till he had paid his fifths and provided himself with a certificate. These regulations were enforced by strong penalties, in order to prevent frauds upon the revenue. Slaves, and all other goods except cattle, were only allowed to be introduced from Rio, and that either by the way of S. Paulo or Ta-boate. No idle persons were allowed to remain about the mines; no goldsmith was tolerated there, nor any settler possessed of a slave capable of exercising this craft.

The same infatuated passion for mining speculations which had characterized the Spanish settlers in South America, now began to actuate the Portuguese. Adventurers crowded to the scene of action from all the capitancies; not mere "landless resolute" alone, but men of substance also. Labourers and capital were drained off to the mining districts. The sugar-mills (Engenhos) were either abandoned or left half-cultivated, from the inability of the proprietors to offer for slaves the ruinous prices paid by the adventurers of the mines. Brazil, which had hitherto in a great measure supplied Europe with sugar, sank before the competition of the French and English, who had no mines to distract their attention. Commerce of every kind declined along with this staple commodity. The court endeavoured for a time to counteract this course of enterprise, but in vain.

A new source of wealth for Brazil, had it been properly managed, but, as matters have turned out, merely a new source of injudicious restriction, was now about to be opened up. Some adventurers who had prosecuted the business of gold-washing northwards from Villa de Principe in the capitancy of Minas, made a discovery of diamonds about the year 1710. The value of these minerals was not known till several years after, when an Ouvier of the Comarca of Serro Frio, in which they were found, who had seen unpolished diamonds at Goa, ascertained what they were. In 1730 the discovery was announced for the first time to that government, which immediately declared the diamonds regalia. A further search showed that the district was equally rich in other gems. In 1741 its limits were described with greater precision, and the liberty to collect diamonds farmed upon a lease of four years to two influential inhabitants, at the rate of 230,000 reis for every negro, with permission to employ six hundred. At every renewal of the lease a high rent was exacted, and the tenants indemnified themselves by conducting their operations in the most wasteful manner.

While the population of Brazil, and the cultivation of its natural products, continued thus to increase, the moral and intellectual culture of its inhabitants was left in a great measure to chance. There was a hierarchical establishment, but one altogether inadequate to the extent of the territory. There were schools, but "few and far between." The colonists, thinly spread over what appeared an illimitable region, were most of them alike beyond the reach of instruction and of the arm of the law. The restrictions upon the free exercise of industry, introduced with a view to benefit the royal treasury, were little calculated to reconcile men to legal restraints which they scarcely knew in any other form. They grew up, therefore, with those robust and healthy sentiments engendered by the absence of false teachers; but at the same time they became habituated to a repugnance to legal ordinances, accustomed to give full scope to all their passions, and encouraged by their sense of ascendency over the Indians to habits of violence and oppression.

From the first moment of their landing in Brazil, the Jesuits had constituted themselves the protectors of the oppressed natives. But they were strenuously opposed by the interested colonists, and by the ordinary clergy. The Jesuits were not however easily dismayed, and, by dint of the most persevering exertions, they procured from government an explicit confirmation of the freedom of the natives. The next step of these venerable fathers was to collect their red children, as in all their other missions, into aldeas, over which officials of their order exercised both spiritual and temporal authority. Their intentions were pious and noble, but their plan was erroneous. They attempted to teach the most recondite dogmas of the Christian faith, before either the hearts or heads of their pupils were sufficiently awakened to comprehend them. They taught observance to the rules of external decorum, without inculcating those more essential principles which are independent of all form. By depriving the Indians of the power of managing their own affairs, they effectually stifled within them the germs of human thought and action. The Indian of the aldeas was little better than a puppet, and, when separated from his tutors, he soon sunk back into hopeless and irreclaimable barbarism.

The persecution of the Indians was yet more efficaciously put a stop to by the sacrifice of an equally innocent and yet more injured race. The Portuguese establishments on the coast of Africa have ever been more extensive, and their slave dealings better organized, than those of any other nation. By this means a large number of negroes was annually imported into Brazil, and being found more active and serviceable as labourers than the native tribes, the latter were in a great measure left to enjoy their savage independence.

The Portuguese government, under the administration of Carvalho afterwards Marquis of Pombal, attempted to extend to Brazil the effects of that bold spirit of innovation which directed all his actions.

Carvalho had experienced great resistance to his plans of reform at home from the Jesuits; and his brother, when appointed governor of Maranhão, experienced a resistance no less strenuous on their part to some measures of his government. This was enough to determine the proud minister to lessen the power of the order. With his sanction, the Jesuits and other regulars were deprived of all temporal authority over their aldeas in the state of Maranhão and Para. These, twenty-eight in number, were converted by the edict of the governor into four townlets, eighteen towns, and one city. The towns were to be governed by juízes ordinarios, to fill which offices a preference was given to Indians. The aldeas independent of towns were to be governed by their respective chiefs. The lands adjacent to the towns and hamlets were divided among the Indians, and declared heritable property.

To these regulations of his brother, the minister superadded some enactments intended to supply the loss of the Jesuits as teachers. The task of religious instruction was delegated to the bishop. Till such time as the Indians should be sufficiently advanced in civilization to manage their own affairs, a director was appointed to reside in each settlement; a man of integrity and zeal, and conversant with the native tongues. He possessed no coercive jurisdiction, but, when he observed remissness on the part of the native authorities in the administration of the laws, might complain to the governor. He was expected to explain to the Indians the advantages of industry and sobriety, to instruct them in the simpler arts and manufactures, and to recommend the adoption of the amenities of civilized life. Above all, these functionaries were directed to combat the prejudice, that there existed a natural inferiority in the Indian character, and to promote, as far as in them lay, intermarriages between the white and red races. As a reward for the directors, they were to have a sixth part of all that the Indians reared, excepting what was specially appropriated for their own consumption.

These ordinances, originally promulgated for Maranhão and Para, were ratified in Lisbon, and extended to the whole of Brazil. But the good which they might have done was neutralized in a great measure by some compulsory services still left binding upon the Indians, and by listlessness on the part of the white inhabitants in carrying them into effect. No good understanding could subsist between an ambitious order and the minister who had so openly braved them. Carvalho felt his new arrangements insecure as long as a Jesuit remained in Brazil. First of all, he sought to render the order suspected of being necessary to some partial revolts among the Indian troops on the Rio Negro. But it was the confession of one of the leaders of the conspiracy against the life of the king of Portugal, when put to the torture, that some Jesuits were implicated in the undertaking, that finally delivered them into his hands. In 1760 they were expelled from Brazil, under circumstances of considerable severity.

Pombal's next measure attracted more attention than his plans for the improvement of the Indians. The Brazilian Company, founded by Vieyra, which so materially contributed to preserve its South American possessions to Portugal, had been abolished, in 1721, by João V. Such instruments, however, were calculated to win the confidence of a bold spirit like that of Pombal. In 1755 he established a chartered company, with a capital of 1,200,000 cruzados, in 1200 shares, to trade exclusively with Maranhão and Paraíba and Pernambuco. Remonstrances were made on the part of the Board of Public Good, and the British factory at Lisbon; but the members of the former body were punished, and those of the latter were disregarded. Encouraged by success, the minister established an exclusive company for the whale fishery, and bestowed upon it the monopoly of furnishing Brazil with salt. This company had its head-quarters in the island of S. Catharina. Some time after these arrangements, an extension of the facility of intercourse was granted, and Portuguese subjects, instead of being restricted to the annual fleets, were allowed to trade in single ships to Bahia and the Rio.

The arrangements of Pombal extended also to the interior of the country. The claims of the original donatories in the respective captaincies were indefinite and oppressive in the highest degree. Other ministers had from time to time bought up some of these rights; Carvalho extinguished them at once, indemnifying the holders. With all his power, however, he durst not interfere in behalf of such new Christians (converted Jews) as were accused of adhering in private to their ancestral faith; but he prohibited, under strict penalties, light and malicious denunciations. He strengthened and enforced the regulations in the mining districts. Observing the profuse mode in which the treasures of the diamond district were lavished, he moved the king to take the management of it into his own hands. In 1772 an ordinance was issued, in which Pombal, as prime minister, reserved to himself the management of this district. The details of business were discharged by three directors in Lisbon, and three administrators in Brazil. At the head of the latter was placed an intendant-general, who, as the representative of majesty, exercised an unlimited power within his jurisdiction. He controlled the working of the diamond mines; he stood at the head of the judicial and police establishments; and he was authorized to punish every inhabitant convicted of having jewels in his possession with banishment and confiscation of goods, and even upon mere suspicion to order any individual to quit the district.

The policy of many of Pombal's measures is more than questionable. His encouragement of monopolies, and his preference of the interests of the crown to those of the state, as evinced in the regulations of the mining and diamond districts, do not admit of defence. But the admission of all races to equal rights in the eye of the law—the abolition of feudal privileges, and of certain restrictions upon commerce, with the livelier spirit which he knew how to infuse even into his monopolies—powerfully co-operated towards the development of the capabilities of Brazil. The spirit of improvement must have been already awake in the bosoms of the people, otherwise even his legislative energies must have been expended in vain. Still the merit abides with him of having firmly organized the powers of the land, and marshalled their way. And yet when, upon the death of his king and patron in 1777, court intrigue forced him from his high station, his successor was landed to the skies for concluding a treaty of limits, in which Pombal's chivalrous bravery had rendered Spain glad to acquiesce, whilst he who had done so much for his country's institutions was reviled on all hands.

During the first thirty years after the retirement of Pombal from active life, the most important feature in the history of Brazil was the conspiracy of Minas in 1789. In this rich district the population was increasing rapidly. Some young men began to be remarked for their literary talents, chiefly as poets. The successful issue of the recent revolution of the English colonies in North America, filled their minds with such enthusiasm, that they fancied it would be very easy to imitate them. A cavalry officer, Silva Xavier, nicknamed Tira-dentes (toothdrawer), formed a project to throw off the Portuguese yoke and to proclaim an independent republic. He associated in his plan Colonel Freire de Andrade, commander of the military forces of Rio de Janeiro, some wealthy merchants of that town, and some influential persons of Minas, such as Colonels Alvarenga and Abreu Vieyra, the fathers Oliveira, Rolim, and Toledo vicar of the town of S. José, and Antonio Gonzaga, a judge and famous lyric poet. They hoped, or made their partisans believe, that foreign assistance was at hand. They were informed that the new viceroy, Count de Barbacena, had brought orders from Portugal to exact at once all the sums due to the treasury as regularities for the working of the gold mines. The execution of such orders would have completely ruined the whole province. The plan of the conspirators then was to take advantage of the discontent produced by it. Awaiting this moment, they remained inactive for months, till the plot was in the meantime discovered. The viceroy wisely issued an immediate proclamation announcing that the arrears of the regularities due in Minas should not be exacted. The conspirators were all condemned to be quartered, but the queen modified the sentence. Tira-dentes alone was hanged; the others were banished to Africa. As a means of adding to its popularity the government decreed the immediate abolition of the oppressive salt monopoly, as a reward for the good conduct of the people.

By such means peace and tranquillity were preserved, and from that time affairs went on prosperously. The mining districts continued to be enlarged, especially in the direction of Matto Grosso and Goiás, where diamonds had been discovered. Roads, although very imperfectly constructed, were opened to facilitate the communication with those districts. As to the littoral provinces, the companies of Maranhão, Pernambuco, and Paraíba were abolished, but the impulse they had given to the agricultural industry remained. Cotton, the growth of which they had promoted in Maranhão, was introduced into Pernambuco, and cultivated so successfully as to become in a short time the main article of export.

Removed from all communication with the rest of the world, except through the mother country, Brazil remained unaffected by the first years of the great revolutionary war in Europe. Indirectly, however, the fate of this isolated country was decided by the consequences of the French Revolution. Brazil is the only instance of a colony becoming the seat of the government of its own mother country, and this was the work of Napoleon. When he resolved upon the invasion and conquest of Portugal, the Prince Regent, afterwards Don John VI., having no means of resistance, decided to take refuge in Brazil. He created a regency in Lisbon, ordered that no resistance should be offered to the French invasion, and departed for Brazil on the 29th November 1807, accompanied by the Queen Donna Maria I., the royal family, all the great officers of state, a large part of the nobility, and numerous retainers. They arrived at Bahia on the 21st January 1808. The royal family was received with enthusiasm. The regent was requested to establish there the seat of his government, but a more secure asylum presented itself in Rio de Janeiro, where the royal fugitives arrived on the 7th of March. Before leaving Bahia, Don John took the first step to emancipate Brazil. By a decree dated the 28th of January, its ports were opened to foreign commerce, the merchandise being subject to a duty of 24 per cent. The exportation also of all the products of Brazil under any flag was permitted, except some royal monopolies, such as diamonds, Brazil wood, &c.

Once established in Rio de Janeiro, the government of the regent was directed to the creation of an administrative machinery for the domains that remained to him; and all the supreme tribunals of administration, of justice, and of finance, were established as they existed in Portugal. Besides the ministry which had come with the regent, the council of state and all the other departments of the four ministers then existing, viz.:—Reino, or home department; Fazenda, finances; Guerra e Estrangeiros, war and foreign affairs; and Marinha e Ultramar, marine and colonies—there were in the course of one year created: 1. The Desembargo do Paço, a supreme court of justice and equity, which had the power to annul and revise the sentences of the other courts, and by whose means was exercised the royal prerogative of suspending and dispensing with laws; 2. The Mesa da conciliação e ordem, a board by means of which the royal prerogative was exercised for the patronage of the church and of the military orders, and also for the administration of their property; 3. The Casa do Suplicação, a court of appeal inferior to the Desembargo do Paço, and superior to the provincial courts of appeal; 4. The general board of high police; 5. The Comissão da Fazenda Erário Regio, or commission of exchequer and royal treasury; 6. The royal mint; 7. The bank of Brazil; 8. The royal printing office; 9. Powder mills on a large scale; 10. The supreme military command. The salaries of so large a number of high officials, and the maintenance of the court entailed expenses which the simple colonial administration had never required. The imposition, therefore, of new taxes, was a natural consequence. Heavy duties were successively imposed upon tobacco, sugar, dry and salted hides, cotton, and other exports. A tax of 10 per cent. upon house rent in the towns, and upon the sale of real estates, and harbour dues, were also levied. The expenses, however, continuing to increase, the government next had recourse to the reprehensible measure of altering the money standard. Gold was coined in a new form, the intrinsic value of which was not comparatively equal to the former standard, and the Spanish dollars were recolined retaining the same weight and size, and sent into circulation with a value of 20 per cent. higher than their intrinsic and commercial value. The whole monetary system was thrown into the greatest confusion by the simultaneous circulation of three different standards of currency. From this ensued a confusion in the finances of the country, and in private transactions, as well as a fluctuation in foreign exchange, from which Brazil suffers even at the present day. The bank, in addition to its private mercantile functions, farmed many of the regalia, and was in the practice of advancing large sums to the state, sometimes in consideration of valuable deposits, sometimes upon the assignment of taxes not yet due. Its connection with the mint enabled it to meet every emergency, and the hostility of some foreign merchant houses, and to maintain at first a high degree of credit. The treasury found great facility in raising money by compelling the bank to put into circulation enormous sums in notes, which its deposits could not guarantee. These transactions, however, gave rise to an extensive system of corruption, and the breaking of the bank some years later was the consequence. Thus the government of the Prince Regent commenced its career in the New World with the most palpable and dangerous errors in the financial system.

Notwithstanding these evils, the increased activity which a multitude of new customers, and an increased circulating medium, imparted to the trade of Rio, added a new stimulus to the industry of the whole nation. Immense numbers of English artisans and ship-builders, Swedish ironfounders, German engineers, and French artists and manufacturers, sought fortunes in the new land of promise, and diffused, both by example and precept, industry and ingenuity throughout the country. Useful measures were continually appearing; vaccination was introduced, various educational institutions were founded, and several arrangements were adopted in favour of commerce, such as the appointment of inspectors to prevent frauds on exported goods, and the permission to give money in bottomry, with such interest as the parties might agree upon. Foreigners were permitted the free exercise of their worship; and it is worthy of remark, that while all the tribunals which existed in Portugal were established, and a See of Rio de Janeiro erected in imitation of the Patriarchal See of Lisbon, no Inquisition was established.

In the beginning of 1809, in retaliation of the occupation of Portugal, an expedition was sent from Para to the French colony of Guiana. After some fighting, the governor and garrison capitulated, and Guiana was incorporated with Brazil. Although this conquest was of short duration—for by the treaty of Vienna in 1815, the colony was restored to France—it contributed to the improvement of agriculture in Brazil. It had been until then the policy of Portugal to prevent its colonies from enjoying the same productions. The cultivation of sugar, for instance, was reserved to Brazil and prohibited in Africa; while the cultivation of the spices of India was prohibited in Brazil, and even those which grow spontaneously (such as cinnamon), were ordered to be destroyed. Now, however, many seeds of different plants were imported not only from Guiana, but also from India and Africa, cultivated in the Royal Botanical Garden, and from thence distributed amongst private individuals.

The same principle which dictated the conquest of French Guiana, dictated some attempts to seize the Spanish colonies of Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, Portugal being also at war with Spain. Here, however, a conquest by force of arms was not easy, and the chiefs of these colonies were invited to place them under the protection of the Portuguese crown. At first they affected loyalty and devotion to their king and to the mother country, and refused the invitation; but a little after they threw off the yoke, and declared themselves an independent republic. The Spanish government, Elizondo able for some time to hold the Banda Oriental in subjection, and received succours from the coast of Rio de Janeiro, but was afterwards defeated by Artigas the chief of the independents; and Monte Video fell with the same fate as Buenos Ayres. The invades made on the frontiers of Rio Grande and S. Paulo, together with the disastrous example of anarchy and of republican principles, decided the army of Rio de Janeiro to take possession of Monte Video. A force of five thousand select troops, under General Lecor, was sent from Portugal, together with a Brazilian corps under general Carvalho. The irregular troops of Artigas, terrible in skirmishes and surprises, were incapable of resisting disciplined troops, and were forced after a total defeat to take refuge on the right bank of the Uruguay. The garrison of Monte Video evacuated, and General Lecor took possession of the city on the 20th January 1817. The territory of Misiones was occupied afterwards. Artigas, however, having recrossed the Uruguay, continued master of a part of the Banda Oriental; but this province properly formed part of the Brazilian territory from 1817. Without possessing one sea-port, Artigas sent letters of marque to American privateers, which did incalculable mischief to the Portuguese commerce.

The importance which Brazil was acquiring decided the regent to give it the title of kingdom, and by a decree of the 16th of January 1815, the Portuguese sovereignty thenceforward took the title of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarves. Thus the old colonial government disappeared even in name. The national pride of the Brazilians was flattered, and for some time nothing else was heard of but addresses of thanks and congratulations, feasts and rejoicings in every district. In March 1816 the Queen Donna Maria I. died, and the Prince Regent became king, under the title of Don João VI.

Although Brazil had now become in fact the head of its own mother country, the government was not in the hands of Brazilians, but of the Portuguese who had followed the court. This government was ignorant and profligate, and the morals of the court were far from being pure. The amiable character of the king preserved his personal popularity, but the public discontent daily increased. At the same time that the employés were badly paid, and obliged to discount their salaries at great loss, to obtain from speculators, favoured by the government, the necessary money to live frugally, a royal decree assigned 120,000 cruzados per annum to be taken from the custom-houses of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Maranhão for forty years, commencing from 1811, to the noblemen and high Portuguese officials who had suffered during the French war. The selection of the employés was in general bad. Justice was ill administered, and negligence, disorder, and corruption reigned in all the departments. In Portugal the discontent was still greater on account of its anomalous position, standing as it were in the relation of a colony to a colony of its own. These causes and the fermentation of liberal principles produced by the French Revolution, originated in 1817 a conspiracy in Lisbon, which was, however, discovered in time to prevent its success. A similar result took place in the province of Pernambuco, whose population had made some progress, specially remarkable in the instruction afforded to the priests. The inhabitants had certain recollections of glory, valour, and liberty connected with the war, which, when abandoned to themselves, they had also sustained against the Dutch. The city of Recife had attained such commercial importance, that it began to be jealous of Rio, and to complain of the sacrifices it was compelled to make for the support of a luxurious court. A regular conspiracy to establish a republican government had in fact arrived at the point of having ramifications in Bahia and other provinces; but an accident led to its bursting forth before the time, and speedily was the cause of its being so promptly smothered. In Bahia the governor was able to avoid a similar outbreak, and even to detach at once a sufficient force to put down the revolution of Pernambuco, so that the republic established there scarcely lasted ninety days. Some of the chiefs fled in time; three, Martins, Mendonça, and the priest Almeida were hung, and a great number were condemned to exile and imprisonment. Don John, fearing the progress of the republican spirit in Brazil, sent to Portugal for bodies of picked troops, which were stationed in Rio and in the different capitals of the provinces under the command of the best generals.

In Portugal the popular discontent produced the revolution of 1820. Representative government was proclaimed, and the constitution was to be framed by a congress of the representatives of the people, the Spanish constitution of 1812 being adopted provisionally. In Rio de Janeiro the Portuguese troops, with which the king had surrounded himself as a defence against the liberal spirit of the Brazilians, took up arms on the 26th February 1821 to force him to accept and swear to the system proclaimed in Portugal. The Prince Don Pedro, heir to the crown, who now for the first time took part in public affairs, actively exerted himself as a negotiator between the king and the troops, who were joined by bodies of the people. The king attempted a modification of the Spanish constitution, adopting a chamber of peers, but the insurgents would accept no compromise. He finally submitted, took the oath, and named a new ministry. The scenes of Rio de Janeiro were repeated, or simultaneously enacted in Pernambuco, Bahia, Maranhão, and other provinces, where the governors were deposed and provisional juntas created in their stead. The Brazilians were aware that the revolution in Portugal was made against Brazil; and some were disposed to resist it. In Bahia the Brazilian troops did actually fight with the Portuguese, but were defeated. Nevertheless, the idea of a free government filled them with enthusiasm, and the principles of representative legislature were freely adopted. From this time each was made of the liberty of the press, that talents and knowledge of a high order were revealed, which had not been supposed to exist in Brazil. The first care everywhere was the election of deputies to the cortes of Lisbon, to take part in the framing of the new constitution of the united kingdom. Magistrates, clergymen, priests, and military men, put themselves at the head of this movement and were elected. From this time great political importance was given to the existing municipal councils, which being formed by popular elections, were considered to represent the people. As the king could not abandon Portugal to itself, he determined from the first to send the prince thicker as regent. Don Pedro, however, who had always exhibited activity and a thirst for glory, had acquired great popularity by his conduct in the revolution, and the king was afraid to trust his adventurous spirit in Europe. He decided, therefore, to go himself, and leave the prince in Brazil as regent and lieutenant. It is now beyond doubt, that the secret instructions he left him were to oppose as far as possible the independence of Brazil, which he considered to be imminent; but if it could not be averted, to place himself at the head of the movement, and obtain the sovereignty of Brazil, so that this most considerable portion of the united kingdom might remain in the hands of the family of Bragança, rather than in the hands of adventurers.

The Brazilian deputies, on arriving in Lisbon, expressed their dissatisfaction with the cortes for having commenced the framing of the constitution, and taking measures in respect to Brazil before their arrival. Brazil felt that she could not be treated as a secondary part of the monarchy. The organization which the cortes were giving to the monarchy would have the effect of reducing Brazil to its former condition of a colony. They insulted the prince regent by a decree which ordered him to come to Europe for his education. Sharp discussions and angry words passed between the Brazilian and Portuguese deputies. The news of these proceedings excited great discontent in Brazil. The tone of the discussions with regard to the prince regent irritated him, and the decree ordering his retirement to Portugal filled the Brazilians with alarm. They saw that, without a central authority, the country would fall either into its former condition of a colony, divided into provincial governments subject to Portugal, or else into a state of anarchy. The provisional government of S. Paulo, influenced by the two Andradas, brothers of the leading deputy in Lisbon, commenced a movement for independence by asking the prince regent to disobey the cortes and remain in Brazil. The municipal council of Rio de Janeiro made a similar representation, to which the prince gave a decisive assent. The Portuguese troops assumed at first a coercive attitude, but were forced to give way before the unanimous ardour and the formidable military preparations of the Brazilians. They submitted, according to a remark for Portugal. These scenes in Rio were repeated in Pernambuco, where the Portuguese, after various conflicts, were obliged to leave the country. In Bahia, however, the Brazilians succumbed, and the Portuguese troops remained masters of the city. In Maranhão and Para also, the Portuguese party prevailed. In Rio the agitation for independence continued. The two brothers Andradas were called to the ministry; and the municipal council conferred on the prince regent the title of Perpetual Defender of Brazil. With great activity and courage he set off to the central provinces of Minas and S. Paulo to suppress disaffected movements and direct the revolution. In S. Paulo, on the 7th of September 1822, he proclaimed the independence of Brazil. He had just received despatches and letters from Lisbon, and it was remarked that he destroyed one of the letters without communicating its contents to any one; from which it was inferred to be that in which his father pronounced the moment arrived for placing himself at the head of the independents. On his return to Rio de Janeiro on the 12th October, he was proclaimed Constitutional Emperor with great enthusiasm.

Bahia was chosen by the cortes at Lisbon as a centre for resisting the independence. Thither numerous forces were sent to General Madeira, who had at his disposal, besides militia, 12,000 of the best disciplined troops, who had served under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular wars. The city, however, was vigorously besieged by the Brazilians by land, and succours were sent to them from Rio and Pernambuco. The Portuguese made many obstinate sallies, but were always repulsed; and finding their provisions fail they were obliged to embark for Portugal, July 2, 1823. Their squadron was composed of 15 ships of war and 77 transports. The Brazilian squadron, under the command of Lord Cochrane, although weaker, was better prepared for action than that of the Portuguese, which was embarrassed with so many troops. Cochrane attacked them, and took some ships. Taylor, another Englishman in the Brazilian service, followed it to the coast of Portugal, and even took some ships within sight of land. Cochrane proceeded to reduce Maranhão, and sent Grenfell to Parnaíba. Independence triumphed in both provinces. All resistance seemed impossible to the Portuguese after their power was destroyed in Bahia. The troops in Monte Video were abandoned by General Lecor, who declared for the independence, and they also embarked for Portugal; the Banda Oriental remaining part of Brazil, with the title of Província Cisplatina. Before the end of 1823 the authority of the emperor and the independence of Brazil were undisputed throughout the whole country. It is worthy of mention that during the whole contest the name of the king was always pronounced in Brazil with respect; all the manifestoes and proclamations were directed against the cortes, and the king was always commiserated by his Brazilian subjects as under coercion, and as a prisoner of the cortes.

In almost every part of Brazil, chiefly in the north, as soon as the Portuguese yoke was thrown off, republican movements spread. To suppress these the authorities employed the Portuguese, and, above all, the militia regiments formed of the com-

History. mercial young men. These, as soon as they lost all hope of assistance from Portugal, looked to the emperor for support. The emperor, on his side, began to fear the spirit of republicanism in Brazil, and to consider the Portuguese as his firmest supporters. This disposition much influenced the course of his government and his future destiny. The contest with the troops and with the Portuguese party went on jointly with the organization of the empire. At first a council was given to the prince, composed of Procuradores of the provinces freed from the Portuguese yoke, which assembled in Rio de Janeiro on the 2d of June 1822. This council immediately deliberated upon the convocation of a constituent assembly, which the prince convoked by a decree of the 6th of June. On the 3d May 1823, Dom Pedro, crowned emperor since the 1st December, opened this constitutional assembly in Rio de Janeiro. Then commenced the discussion of a project of constitution, in which the democratic element prevailed, though not so much as in the constitutions adopted at the same time by Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Sardinia. In Brazil a chamber of senators was to be created, in whose selection the monarch would take a part; while, in the constitutions of those kingdoms, the legislative power was vested in a single chamber. The two Andradas, and their brother, at first a distinguished leader of the independence in the cortes of Lisbon, and now in the constituent assembly, encountered great opposition; while their yoke was becoming every day more insupportable to the young emperor, whom they imagined they could govern as a sovereign of their own creation. On the 16th July the emperor resolved to dismiss them, and a new ministry was formed. The Andradas organized a violent opposition against this and the person of the emperor. A very tumultuous and angry debate ensued in the assembly in consequence of the petition of a newspaper editor, who had been assaulted by some Portuguese officers in the Brazilian service. The emperor determined to dissolve the assembly on the 13th November 1823, and exiled to France the three Andradas and some of their partisans, allowing himself a small pension. In the decree which dissolved the assembly, Dom Pedro convoked another to deliberate upon a proposed constitution more liberal than the one the assembly was discussing. Public opinion, meanwhile, was in a state of intense fermentation. In Portugal, Spain, Naples, and Piedmont representative government had fallen. The dissolution of the Brazilian constituent assembly led to the belief that the emperor intended also to make himself absolute. In Rio S. Paulo and Minas the discontent was so strong and universal that the emperor published new decrees, proclamations, and manifestoes, explaining his motives, and protesting that he wished to maintain the representative system. As a proof of his sincerity he soon after offered to the nation the project of the promised constitution, with the framing of which he had commissioned the council of state.

The proclamation of a republic in the province of Pernambuco, Ceará, and others in the north, disorders in the south, and the loss of the province of Cipiatina, were the consequences of the coup d'etat of 13th November 1823.

The Brazilians were universally discontented: on one side fearing absolutism if they supported the emperor, on the other they feared anarchy if he fell. The emperor, knowing the danger of an undefined position, caused the municipal councils to petition him to dispense with the deliberation of a constituent assembly, and to adopt immediately as the constitution of the empire the project framed by the council of state. Accordingly, on the 25th of March 1824, the emperor swore to the constitution with great solemnity and public rejoicings.

This policy of the emperor saved him and saved Brazil. The year 1824 was a time of difficulty, but the assurance given to the Brazilians that they would not lose the representative government enabled the emperor to triumph over the rebellion of the northern provinces, and to prevent similar movements in others. On account of the continued disorders the legislative chambers were not convoked during this year. The next year found Brazil in a state of tranquillity and obedience, but still the chambers were not convoked. The cortes of Lisbon having fallen, the king fancied that the Brazilians would submit to him, and sent emissaries to Rio de Janeiro to treat with the emperor. They arrived in September 1823, but the Brazilian ministry did not permit them to land. Afterwards preparations were begun in Portugal to fit out a squadron against Brazil; but these were finally given up, the ministers, according to the wishes of the king, having always opposed the war. Negotiations were opened in London between the Brazilian and Portuguese plenipotentiaries; but Mr. Canning, seeing that nothing would result from them obtained from the king the appointment of Sir Charles Stuart as his ambassador to treat with Brazil on the basis of the recognition of the independence. On the 29th of August 1825, a treaty was signed with him, by which the king, Don John VI., assumed the title of Emperor of Brazil, and immediately abdicated in favour of his son, acknowledging Brazil as an independent empire. Brazil was obliged to take upon herself all the debt of Portugal contracted in London = L.1,500,000, and pay besides L.200,000 as indemnification for property of Don John VI. (including a fine library of 80,000 volumes). A treaty of commerce was promised by which Portugal would be considered as the most favoured nation, her merchandise paying provisionally no higher duties than 15 per cent. in the custom-houses. Finally, Brazil was to pay the sum liquidated as expenses incurred by Portugal for the transport of troops and other indemnities to private Portuguese subjects.

The rebellion of the province Cipiatina (Banda Oriental), favoured by Buenos Ayres, was followed by a declaration of war by the emperor against that republic. On the pretence of that war he commenced forming regiments of Germans engaged in Europe. He entered into a treaty of commerce with France, and another with England, for the cessation of the slave trade, and finally convoked the legislative chambers at Rio de Janeiro on the 4th May 1826.

Until the middle of the year 1823, Dom Pedro had acquired in Brazil a high and well deserved popularity. He was the creator of the empire: he had delivered Brazil from anarchy, and had given her political liberty; but since the dissolution of the constituent assembly, he had entirely lost his popularity. He had given himself up to the influence of the Portuguese, preferring them in all things to the natives. He had also shown a desire to make himself absolute. The authors of the rebellion in the northern provinces, which he had provoked, were punished with much greater rigour than similar conspirators had been by his grandmother and his father in the colonial times. The most popular men who had worked for the independence, the Andradas, were banished. The war with Buenos Ayres was considered, likewise rebellion in the north, provoked by him, and threatened disastrous consequences to the country, whose resources he should have employed in the development of its internal prosperity and its new institutions. The treaty with Portugal was not only indecent but unjust. Brazil purchased for near two millions sterling the independence which she had won by her arms, and was obliged to pay the expenses of a war in which she had been victorious. The continual changes of ministry showed in the emperor either inconstancy or a disposition obstinately to prosecute measures which the ministers disapproved. His licentious life alienated the respect and consideration of his subjects; above all, when contrasted with the high character of the empress for virtue, charity, and condescension.

The death of his father offered an opportunity to the emperor for regaining in some measure his popularity. He was unanimously acknowledged as king of Portugal; and representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the people, came to Rio de Janeiro to make their submission. A terrible suspicion immediately sprang up that the independence of Brazil would be annulled. Dom Pedro, however, promptly tranquillized the public mind, by abdicating the crown of Portugal in favour of his daughter Donna Maria, and giving it a constitution exactly on the model of that of Brazil, with the difference of an hereditary chamber of peers instead of senators. This resolution, taken on the eve of opening the Brazilian legislative assembly, won him a very flattering reception from the chambers and the public.

The ministry, however, did not present any measure or system of public utility, or any regulations to give practical working to the representative government. The entire session of the chambers was passed in barren and odious accusations and recriminations. The emperor, preoccupied with the war with Buenos Ayres, no sooner closed the session than he sailed for the southern provinces; but, in the meantime, the empress died, and he immediately returned. In the session of 1827, it was seen that the respect for the emperor, and the hope of his return to better feelings, were not entirely lost. The legislative body, notwithstanding their dissatisfaction at the system of government, allowed so large a civil list that it almost absorbed a tenth part of the total revenue of the empire. The violence, however, of the opposition in the chamber of deputies was always increasing. The lavish expenditure of the public monies, and the bad state of the finances—the currency exclusively composed of copper money and of the notes of a bank in a state of bankruptcy—the shameful manner in which the operations against Buenos Ayres, both by sea and land, were conducted; the evils suffered by commerce, the presence of mercenary soldiers and the vexatious recruiting, afforded ample subjects for public discontent and for the denunciations of the opposition. The emperor continued the same line of policy; he was constantly changing his ministers, but always selecting them from an unpopular faction; and when he did call any popular deputy to the ministry, it seemed as if it were done for no other purpose than that of corrupting his politics. Commercial treaties were entered into with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, the Hanse Towns, the United States, Denmark, and the Netherlands, conceding in exchange of illusory reciprocity, favours that were considered to be injurious to the growth of the Brazilian shipping. The first of these treaties met with bitter censures, but the government always persisted in the same system. The chambers established by law equal custom-house duties for all nations, in order to render the treaties unnecessary. During the session of 1827, the public internal debt was consolidated and inscribed in the great book, and a department was created for the application of the sinking fund and payment of dividends.

The year 1828 was a calamitous one for Don Pedro and for Brazil. It commenced with a defeat of the Brazilian army by the Argentine forces, and this entirely through the incapacity of the commander-in-chief. In Rio de Janeiro the German and Irish regiments mutinied, and there were three days' fighting in the city between them and the Brazilian troops. Misunderstandings arose with the United States and France on account of the merchant vessels made prizes of by the Brazilian squadron blockading Buenos Ayres; and the imperial government being threatened with force, consented to pay for them. Afterwards England made a similar claim in a menacing tone, with a like result. The financial embarrassments were increasing to an alarming extent. The emperor was compelled by the English government to make peace with Buenos Ayres, renouncing the Banda Oriental, provided that it did not unite itself to Buenos Ayres, but formed an independent state with the title of the Republic of Uruguay. At length, to fill up the sum of disagreeable affairs, he went wrong with Don Pedro even in Portugal. His brother, Don Miguel, treacherously usurped the crown, availing himself of his authority as regent, who had just been invested. So many misfortunes were the result of a policy the responsibility of which the emperor incurred personally, as it was in opposition to the feelings of the public and of the chambers. These debates continued to be of a boisterous character, and the emperor refused his sanction to some bills adopted by the chambers for the development of the constitution.

It was under such unlucky auspices that the elections of the new deputies took place in 1829. As was expected, the result was the election everywhere of ultra-liberals opposed to the emperor, who still persevered in his course. A trifling riot in an insignificant town of Pernambuco was immediately seized as a pretext for the suspension of the habeas corpus in all that province, and the formation of a military commission to try even civilians. These measures caused great discontent, and the discussions in the chamber of deputies turned almost exclusively upon the necessity of impeaching the ministers who had decreed them. The emperor had recourse to intimidation to prevent it, in which he succeeded.

In October, the second wife of Don Pedro, the Princess Amelia of Leuchtenburgh arrived in Rio de Janeiro. She was well received by the public. The arrival of an empress, beautiful, and adorned with so many brilliant accomplishments, encouraged a hope that the emperor would never return to such favourites as the last, from whose influence he had just liberated himself.

In 1830, the chamber elected in 1829 assembled. If in the first the opposition against the personal policy of the emperor had been violent, and led by men of the highest talent, in this the opposition obtained almost a unanimity of votes. The democratic press every day insulted the emperor in a most insolent manner, and the people everywhere exhibited their disaffection; when he appeared in public the views given him were answered with chilling indifference by the multitude, while thunder of applause greeted the empress and the imperial prince, a delicate way of conciliating respect for the monarchy, with a show of reproach towards the person of the monarch. During the session of 1830, the chambers adopted a criminal code, framed according to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham, in which punishment by death for political offences was abolished, and in the budget they included a clause which compelled the government to disband the foreign regiments.

Like Charles X. in France, the emperor of Brazil had rebelled against the principle that the monarch must preserve in the ministry men only who possess a majority in the chamber of deputies. Charles X. was a victim of this obstinacy, and Don Pedro, who might yet have profited by the lesson, persevered, however, in the same principles. Animated by the example of France, the republican party thought that the moment had arrived to dethrone him. Some journals suggested the idea of reforming the constitution by turning Brazil into independent federal provinces governed by authorities popularly elected, and only acknowledging the emperor as a common centre, assisted by a federal congress, as in the United States. This idea was gaining ground in the provinces, not only because it flattered local interests and passions, but because whatever tended to evince dissatisfaction to the emperor, and limit his authority, pleased the discontented. The emperor alarmed, set off with the empress for Minas to stir up the former enthusiasm of that province in his favour, from recollections of the independence. There he published a proclamation against the pretended reform of the constitution, which, however, was coldly received, and only considered by his enemies as a proof of weakness.

On his return to Rio in March 1831, scenes of disorder occurred. Some deputies, at the time in Rio, presented a very energetic remonstrance to him, upon which he decided to form a ministry which included the most forward members of the liberal party; but men who ought to have been chosen, the most conspicuous and moderate leaders of the majority in the chamber, were excluded. The agitation and discontent continued. Don Pedro, tired of struggling, and disgusted at the opposition of his subjects, accused them of ingratitude. The Portuguese emigrants who escaped from the tyranny of Don Miguel, and the emissaries of the liberal chiefs of Spain, had made him believe that by presenting himself in Europe, expelling Don Miguel, and offering a constitution to Spain, he should be without difficulty proclaimed emperor of the whole peninsula. Imagining himself sure of such a brilliant destiny in Europe if he lost his Brazilian crown, he attempted to risk a decisive attack against the liberal party, dismissed the ministry, and formed another composed of men considered as favourable to absolutism. The agitation in the capital increased—the people met in a state of excitement in an immense square in the city called the Campo S. Anna, the troops joined them, and deputations composed of the justices of peace and of some citizens, went respectfully to ask the emperor only to dismiss the unpopular ministry. He replied at three o'clock in the morning on the 7th April, dismissing the ministry without naming another, and abdicating the crown in favour of the heir-apparent, who was then five years and four months old.

The country was thus left without a government, and exposed to all the horrors of anarchy. Don Pedro immediately embarked with the empress on board the English ship of the line Warspite, leaving the new emperor Don Pedro II., and the princesses Januaria, Francisca, and Paula. Hearing on board great demonstrations of rejoicings in the city, he asked some persons who came from shore if the republic were proclaimed—"No," they answered, "on the contrary, the people are delirious with enthusiasm for the new emperor." If paternal tenderness was flattered by this reply, self-love must have been cruelly wounded. On the 13th April Don Pedro retired from Brazil. The subsequent history of this unfortunate prince belongs to the history of Portugal. See PORTUGAL.

Meanwhile the deputies and senators assembled to snatch the country out of the hands of the republican party. They first elected a provisional, and afterwards (May 34) a permanent regency, composed of three members. The first care of the new regent was the appointment of a ministry composed of the most influential members of the chambers. The repub- ican party, however, enraged at seeing the power escape from their hands, excited discontent in all directions; and such horrible scenes of disorder succeeded, that it seemed as if Brazil were destined to the state of chronic anarchy which prevailed among its neighbours of the Spanish race. The regency and the ministry showed the greatest prudence and courage. To the activity and energy, however, of Feijó, a priest, minister of justice, the country is chiefly indebted for the preservation of order and the union of the provinces. In the chambers the ultra-Liberals united with the absolutists, and other disappointed men formed a violent but small opposition. The government and its supporters adhered to the reform of the constitution, and treated to gain time, and so to modify it that the monarchy might be saved. According to the constitution, the existing legislature was only empowered to designate the articles which ought to be altered, the power of decreeing a definitive reform being reserved to their successors. These discussions and struggles occupied the year 1831. A reactionary third party, however, began to appear in favour of the restoration of Don Pedro, and opposed to every reform of the constitution. This party, though strong in Rio de Janeiro, was not so in the provinces. It impeded the progress of the government, but perhaps tended to limit the reform of the constitution. Of course with the death of Don Pedro I this party was essentially modified.

The reform was finally decreed in 1834. Instead of a regency of three members elected by the legislative chambers, one regent only was appointed, chosen by the electors in the same manner as the deputies. The councils of provinces, which hitherto had simply a consulting vote in local matters, were replaced by legislative provincial assemblies, with power in such matters to make provincial laws, which were to be executed with the sanction of the president of the province. These reforms were well received, and immediately put into execution. They inaugurated in Brazil in reality a republican government analogous to that of the United States, for not the least difference existed between the election of the regent and that of the president of this republic. The election for the regency fell on the ex-minister of justice Feijó, a man of small attainments and democratic principles, whose remarkable self-will and obstinacy brought him into great difficulties. The provinces, although more or less agitated, had already been reduced to obedience. Para, and Rio Grande alone were in open rebellion. The former, in which great horrors were perpetrated, became pacified; but in Rio Grande the warlike habits of the people, the interest which many of the inhabitants had in a civil war, which afforded them opportunities of enriching themselves by plunder, the facility in receiving succours from the other rebels of the republic of Uruguay, and the nature of the ground, rendered the pacification of the province very difficult. The imperial forces occupied all the cities and villages, while the rebels ravaged the open country. The regent was accused of conniving at the rebels, and the opposition of the chamber of deputies became so violent, that rather than change his policy he resigned. In September 1837 he appointed the senator Araújo Lima minister of the home department, a man of extensive abilities and experience, and who had been a candidate at all the elections for the regency. Araújo Lima appointed a ministry composed of men of the greatest note in the chambers, gave a great impulse to the war in Rio Grande, and strove to give his government the character of a monarchical reaction against the principles of democracy, which had guided the policy of Feijó. On a new election for the regency, he was chosen by a large majority.

The experiment of a republican government in Brazil had proved so discreditable—the country was so wearied of cabals and instability, that the men known hitherto for their sympathy with democratic principles, saw that it was only by being more monarchial than the regent himself, that they would be able to seize the power. Under this impression they set to work. They maintained, that as soon as the Princess Donna Januaria completed her eighteenth year, she would be entitled to the regency in the name of her brother. The article, however, of the constitution which they appealed to was not clear; and the good sense of the public perceived, that if the empire could be governed by a princess of eighteen, it would be governed far better by the emperor himself, who was then fourteen. A bill was accordingly presented to the legislature, dispensing with the age of the emperor, and declaring that he had attained his majority. It was carried after a noisy discussion, and the majority of the emperor was proclaimed in a sort of revolutionary manner on the 23rd of July 1840.

The emperor appointed a coalition ministry (including two of the Andrades), which fell before a year had expired, and was replaced by the party of the last regent, which began to be called the Saquarema party. In 1842 a rebellion broke out in the provinces of San Paulo and Minas, which was with difficulty repressed. A misunderstanding between the emperor and his ministers cast him again into the arms of the Feijó party, which was now called the Santa Luzia party. Several ministries taken from this party governed the empire from 1843 to 1848, and the most important service it rendered was the pacification of Rio Grande do Sul, obtained more through negotiation than by force of arms. In September 1848, the emperor formed a Saquarema ministry, with the ex-regent Araújo Lima, now Visconde de Olinda, at its head. The ministry commenced with two great difficulties. Hostilities had been raised by the English government on account of neglect shown by the Brazilian authorities in putting the treaty in force for the abolition of the slave-trade. On the other hand, the governor of Buenos Ayres, General Rosas, was endeavouring to revolutionize affairs in the province of Rio Grande, separate it from the empire, and in this way break up or weaken the Brazilian monarchy. The slave trade had hitherto been evidently carried on, protected by some authorities, and tolerated by others. The number of slaves introduced in 1849 amounted to 54,000. This excess of itself, and the symptoms of insurrection which appeared, had already rendered unpopular the dealers in slaves, who enriched themselves by extorting money from the ruined planters. The appearance of the yellow fever also, until now unknown in Brazil, was attributed to the importation of slaves; so that public opinion began at last to declare against the traffic. The minister of justice, Sr. Eusebio de Queiroz, profited by this feeling to pass severe laws against slave dealing, and to secure their rigorous enforcement, so that in 1850 the importation of slaves diminished to 23,000, in 1851 to 2380, and in 1852 to 700. In 1853 there was not a single disembarkation; so that it may now be said that the slave-trade is extinct in Brazil.

In the contest with General Rosas, the success of the ministerial policy was no less brilliant. The Visconde de Olinda left the ministry, through ill health, in the beginning of 1849. He was succeeded by the Visconde de Mont Alégre, who had been one of the three regents appointed by the legislature in 1831; the secretaryship of foreign affairs was given to Sª Paulino de Souza. This ministry entered into an alliance with the governors of Monte Video, Paraguay, and the states of Entre-Rios and Corrientes, for the purpose of maintaining the independence of the republics of Uruguay and Paraguay, which Rosas intended to reunite to Buenos Ayres. The troops of Rosas which besieged the city of Monte Video, and infested the frontiers of Brazil, under the command of General Orbe, were forced to capitulate. Rosas then formally declared war against Brazil. An army composed of the troops of Entre-Rios, Corrientes, Uruguay, and Brazil, commanded by General Urquiza, and assisted by the Brazilian squadron, under the command of Admiral Gronfier, marched on Buenos Ayres. Rosas was able to oppose the allies with an army of 30,000 men; but the cavalry of Urquiza and the Brazilian infantry (amounting in all to 23,000 men), completely routed them on the field of Monte Caseros, and crushed for ever the power of that bloody dictator. The Brazilian infantry took 50 pieces of cannon at the point of the bayonet, and earned a still more glorious distinction by their clemency to their prisoners.

From 1844, Brazil was free from intestine commotions and civil war, and had resumed its activity in useful undertakings. Public education received a strong impulse, and many new streets, roads, canals, improvement of ports, steam navigation, embellishment of cities, and other works of public utility were commenced. The finances rose to a degree of prosperity previously unknown, and commercial intercourse immensely increased.

At length with a consolidated government, and after so many struggles and revolutions, this country seems to be progressing quietly to a destiny that will insure it the riches of its soil and the advantages of its climate.

The Emperor Don Pedro II. and the Empress, a sister of the King of Naples, are universally beloved and respected for their intellectual and moral endowments, and their affectionate interest in the welfare of their subjects. Two princesses, Isabel, born in July 1846, and Leopoldina, born in 1847, are their only surviving children.

II. Physical Geography.—Brazil is bounded on the north by New Granada, Venezuela, and the Guianas, British, French, and Dutch; on the east by the Atlantic; on the south by the republics of Uruguay and the Argentine Confederation; and on the west by Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. It extends from about the 4th N. Lat. to 33.40. S. Lat., and from 35° to 70° W. Long. Its greatest length is about 2600 British miles, its greatest breadth about 2500; it has a sea-board of nearly 3700 miles.

The original line of demarcation between the Portuguese and Spanish possessions was fixed by two bulls of Pope Alexander VI., the one of the 2d, the other of the 3d of May 1493. The kings of Castile and Portugal afterwards concluded the treaty of Torrijos, which was approved by the Pope in 1529. The reunion of the two crowns in 1580 suspended all discussions about the boundaries. They, however, recommenced after the revolution and independence of Portugal. The treaty of Utrecht in 1777 regulated many points, but the treaties always referred to rivers, mountains, and other positions passing through deserts, the names of which were not well established. For some time past the government of Brazil has taken great pains to establish amicably with the neighbouring states the boundary lines of the empire. In 1851 these were established with the republic of Uruguay, and at present (1854) commissioners of both countries are occupied in tracing the lines agreed upon. Treaties have been concluded with Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and New Granada, which have not yet been published. The negotiations with France and the republic of Paraguay are still pending.

According to the existing treaties, eight boundary lines are recognised, which we shall describe in detail.

1st Line—from the Ocean to the Uruguay.—1. The rivulet Chuchy extending 3610 fathoms (brasas) from its mouth in the ocean, S. Lat. 33. 45., to its chief fording place, Lat. 33. 41. 52. 2. A straight line of 3805 fathoms, nearly an east to west course from the fording place of the Chuchy, as far as the fording place of the channel of São Miguel opposite the fort of that name, and in the middle of it: Lat. 33. 41. 41. 3. The river of São Miguel, extending 1030 fathoms in a northerly course from its fording place, as far as its entrance at the bottom of the Gulf of São Miguel, the northernmost point of the Lake Marim : Lat. 33. 36. 54. 4. West margin of the Gulf of São Miguel, and of the Lake Merim at the ordinary height of their waters, from the entrance of the stream of São Miguel as far as the mouth of the river Sangaribau : Lat. 32. 39. 12. 5. Straight margin of the Jaguarao, from its mouth in the Lake Merim, as far as its rise in the most southerly of its sources, in the mountain of Aceguá above the Cachilha Geral, which furnishes its waters, easterly towards the Lake Merim and the Lagos dos Patos, and westerly towards the Uruguay : Lat. 31. 32. 6. Straight line to the SW. from the mouth of the Jaguarao, as far as the entrance of the rivulet of São Luiz, on the right margin of the Rio Negro, crossing that river. 7. The straight line of São Luiz, from its source as far as its rise in the Cachilha of Sant' Anna. 8. The Cachilha de Sant' Anna, which furnishes waters to the Rio Negro and Ibiapuã. 9. The Cachilha de Haedo, which furnishes waters to the Rio Negro and Guarahim, as far as the point in which the Guarahim takes its rise, called the rivulet of Invernada in the map of the Viscount de São Leopoldo. 10. The stream of Invernada throughout its whole length. 11. The Guarahim from the mouth of the rivulet of Invernada, as far as its entrance into the Uruguay; any island or islands in the Uruguay from the point of the said entrance belonging to Brazil.

2d Line—from the Uruguay to the Paraná.—12. The Uruguay from the mouth of the Guarahim on its left bank, as far as the entrance of the Pepiry on its right bank : Lat. 37. 10. 30. 13. The Pepiry, from its mouth, as far as its principal source in the mountain, which furnishes waters respectively to the rivers Uruguay and Iguaçu : Lat. 26. 10. 14. Straight line of 500 paces from the source of the Pepiry to the source of the Santo Antonio. 15. The river Santo Antonio, from its rise as far as its junction with the Iguaçu : Lat. 25. 35. 16. The Iguaçu extending 34 miles in a straight line, and with its windings, 23 leagues of 20 to a degree, from the mouth of the Santo Antonio on its left bank, as far as its (the Iguaçu's) junction with the Paraná. Lat. 25. 35. 35.

3d Line—from the Paraná to the Paraguay.—17. The Paraná from the mouth of the Iguaçu on its left bank, as far as the entrance of the Garay on its right bank, immediately below the Salto Grande (Great Fall) of the Paraná : Lat. 24. 4. 20. 18. The Garay, from its mouth, as far as its rise in the mountain of Maracajú. 19. Maracajú mountain, which furnishes waters for the rivers Paraná and Paraguay; from the rise of the Garay, yet unexplored, as far as the source of the river Apá, also unexplored. 20. The Apá, from its rise as far as its entrance into the river Paraguay.

4th Line—from the Paraguay to the Madeira.—21. The Paraguay from the mouth of the Apá on its left bank, as far as the mouth of the discharge of Lake Bahia Negra on its right bank : Lat. 20. 25.; this point being at an equal distance from the Brazilian fortress of Coimbra to the Paraguayan fortress of Olímpio, and ten leagues from each side of Bahia Negra, which, as well as the stream which discharges its waters, runs north-west south. 22. The said stream, which is six leagues in length. East bank of the said Bahia Grande, which is five leagues. 23. Straight line, N.E., ten leagues of the right bank of the Paraguay, by marches, from the extreme north of the Bahia Negra, as far as the zenith of the angle which forms the southern and west sides of the mountain (serra) of Albuquerque. This line covers the fortress of Coimbra, which is on the southern point of a mountain above the right bank of the Paraguay, in Lat. 19. 55. 24. West side of the mountain of Albuquerque. This mountain, covered with dense and lofty groves, extends ten leagues on each side. The north side, on which is the garrison of Albuquerque, stretches perpendicularly with the Paraguay, between the river banks to the east, in Lat. 19., to form the extreme southern point of the island of Pará; the east side is also washed by the river when it resumes its general course of north to south. The south side faces the fortress of Coimbra, from which it is distant ten leagues. The west side constitutes a portion of the boundaries of the empire. 25. The east face of the lofty and wooded serra, which, in its extent of twenty leagues north and south, covers with the west belt the isolated lake Mandoré, which empties itself into the Paraguay, and the connected lakes Guahiba, Ubaiana, and Jany, which empty themselves into the same river by way only of the stream Guahiba, passing the mid-point near the lake Mandoré, and seven leagues to the west of the Ubaiana. Its extreme north is called Ponta dos Limites (Point of the Boundaries). 26. Bisecting line, drawn perpendicularly from the point of the boundaries as far as the right bank of the river Paragahú, in Lat. 15. 48. This line covers the serra of Agnephy which separates the Argentine and Amazonian valleys, and from whose southern zenith, Lat. 16., with scarcely an interval of a fathom rise the rivers Agnephy and Alegre which run parallel for the first seven leagues, and are shortly precipitated in two great falls on the northern face of the mountain, the Agnephy to the east to join the Sanhú, a tributary of the Paraguay, and the Alegre to the west to enter the Guaporé. 27. The Guaporé, from the latitude of 15. 48., as far as its mouth on the left bank of the Guaporé. 28. The line which covers the territory of the left bank of the Guaporé, from the mouth of the Guaporé as far as the mouth of the São Simão Pequeno on the same left bank of the Guaporé, three leagues below the Destacamento das Pedras, which is on the right bank : Lat. 12. 52. 35. 29. The Guaporé, from the mouth of São Simão Pequeno as far as its own mouth on the right bank of the Marmoreó : Lat. 11. 55. On this line is the fortress called Prince on the right bank of the Guaporé, 21 leagues above the mouth with the windings of the river, and 14 leagues in a straight line. 30. The Marmoreó for the space of 44 leagues from the mouth of the Guaporé, as far as the junction of the same Marmoreó with the Beirós which forms the Madeira : Lat. 10. 22. A little below this confluence there is an island on the Madeira well adapted for a fortress.

5th Line—from the Madeira to the Amazonas.—31. Right line from east to west from the above-mentioned latitude in the higher part of the Madeira, as far as the same latitude in the river Savary. 32. The Savary, from the Lat. of 10. 22., as far as the most western of its three mouths in the Amazonas, Lat. 4. 17. 30. Opposite the Savary in the Amazonas are three considerable islands, one of which is called the Ilha do Gallo. On the right bank of the Savary we have, besides the Amazonas, the hamlet of São Paulo or Sativa.

6th Line—from the Amazonas to the River Negro.—33. The Amazonas, running up stream for the space of six miles, from the river Savary on its right bank as far as the garrison of Tabatinga on the left bank. 34. Garrison of Tabatinga on the left bank of the Amazonas on firm ground. 35. Straight line from Tabatinga to the north as far as the mouth of the Apaporis on the left bank of the Jupura, crossing this river. 36. Line from the mouth of the Apaporis in a Physical Geography.

Northern direction, as far as the extreme western point of the hill of Guajáia. 37. Colina do Guajáia (Hill of Guajáia), from whose flow towards the south the sources of the rivers Serra and Xixé, tributaries of the river Negro, and towards the north the sources of the Mamachá, the Aquilo, and the Tornom, tributaries of the Guaná (the name of the Rio Negro above the Cascadura). 38. Line of level ground from the eastern extremity of the hill of Guajáia as far as the right bank of the river Negro opposite the Pedra do Cocóhy; six leagues in extent.

7th Line—from the river Negro to the Rupunumy.—39. Pedra do Cocóhy, also called Glorietas do Cocóhy, and also Pão d'Água, on the left bank of the river Negro. Lat. 1° 20', N. Long. west of Greenwich, 67° 20'; an equally distant point (eleven leagues on each side) from the Brazilian fortress of São José de Marabitanos, and of the Venezuelan hamlet of São Carlos, both on the margins of the river Negro. 40. Straight line of 22 leagues in nearly an east course, level ground from the skirt of the Pedra do Cocóhy on the left bank of the river Negro as far as the middle of the Matuana, which, in the high floods of the Cabarobis, is a canal of communication between the Cabarobis, tributary to the river Negro, and the river Barra, tributary to the Jacuí, which is tributary to the canal Caciqueguá. Lat. 1° 50', N. 41. Straight line of six leagues, level road from the middle of the canal Matuana as far as the mountain Cupy, which is the beginning of the great Cordillera that extends to the east. 42. The Cordillera which furnishes waters, to the south for the rivers Negro and Branco, and to the north for the canal Caciqueguá and rivers Orinoco and Essequibo, namely:—Cerro Cupy, Cerro Inverry, Cerros de Guahy; Cerros de Ucurucuro, in an eastern direction to the distance of 43 leagues of 20 to a degree; Serra Parima, whose extreme south is called Serra Tapirapéco, and the northern extremity Cerros Machiaty, course N.N.W. for 50 leagues; Cerros Moravary, and Cerro Arivarra, in an eastern direction; Serra Pacaraima, which runs for nearly forty leagues to the east, taking a south-easterly course, for 24 leagues, then bending to the north-east, continuing to the east for nearly 40 leagues, terminates in the Point Anáhy. 43. Point Anáhy, or Uamahy, of an altitude of 1500 feet, in the zenith of the angle formed by the river Rupunumy, when it quits a northern course to take an eastern. Lat. 5° 55', E. 6° N. Long. west of Greenwich, exactly 59'. The mouth of the Rupunumy on the left bank of the Essequibo is a little more to the north, and much further to the east, being in Lat. 5° 57', 45' N., and Long. 58° 20', 30' W.

8th Line.—The Rupunumy, north and south course, from the Point Anáhy as far as its source in Lat. 2° 49', N. Long. west of Greenwich 68° 50', 45'. The elevations which in the same course of north and south furnish waters to the west for the river Brancos, and to the east for the Essequibo. 46. The Cordilleras, which, with an east course, and with the names of Serra Acaráhy, and Serra Pacaraima, turn towards to the north for the Amazonas, and to the north for the rivers Essequibo, Corentim, Maués, and Oyapoc. 47. The Oyapoc, from its source in the eastern extremity of the Serra Tamacarimque, Lat. 2° 24', N., as far as its mouth in the ocean, in Lat. 4° 22', 24' N.

Rivers.

The principal rivers of Brazil are the Amazon, and its tributaries the Tocantins, the Xingu, the Topajos, from the south; and the Rio Negro and Yapura from the north. See AMAZON.

Mountains.

From latitude 19° to 21° south, stretch the mountains of Itacolumi, 5710 English feet above the level of the sea, and of Itambé, 6900. These, and their connecting range, may be considered as the nucleus of the mountain formation of Brazil. Towards the north, and parallel to the coast, extends the Serra do Sol, under the varying names of the Serra do Espírito Santo, Serra do Príncipe, Torre, and S.W. a similar, or rather the same chain (the Mantiqueira), stretches, throwing off spur on either side, till it gradually subsides into the high plain on the eastern side of the Paraná, near its mouth. By means of the Serra dos Vertentes the Itacolumi connects with the system known under the names of Montes Pyreneos, Serra do Sijada, and Serra do Anambuhy, extending in the direction of W.S.W. to the banks of the Paraguay, a little above where it receives the waters of the Paraná. That part of the latter chain termed Montes Pyreneos extends towards the north to the sources of the Tocantins. An important arm of this latter, the Itiapamba, but of which little is yet known, runs out to the N.E., and loses itself in the northern sea-board provinces of Brazil. To the west extends the Serra Geral. To the south and the west, in the provinces of S. Paulo and Matto Grosso, these mountains attain an elevation considerably above the level of a high and extensive inland plain. To the N.E., in Minas Geraes and Goiás, they rise from a much lower level above the sea. Nevertheless, while these mountains which have for their base the high inland plains of Piratininga and Matto Grosso seldom attain a higher elevation than 1900 Parisian feet above the sea, the average height of the Montes Pyreneos is 3900. From the Serra dos Vertentes, in Lat. 20° south, flow the streams which combine to form the Rio Francisco; at first in the direction of north, afterwards curving towards the east, till it reaches the ocean in Lat. 11° south. On the southern declivity of the same serra arise the highest sources of the Paraná. They flow at first in the direction of due west, receiving numerous tributaries to the north from the Montes Pyreneos, &c., to the south from the Serra do Mantiqueira. Having reached the base of the Serra do Sijada, in Long. 53° west, and Lat. 20° south, the Paraná assumes a south-easterly direction, receiving many minor tributaries from the vast mountain ridges which bound the valley, and the Paraguay in Lat. 27° south, and Long. 53° west. From the south-eastern declivity of the Mantiqueira descends the Uruguay to the estuary of La Plata. From the eastern side of the same ridge, and its northern continuation the Serra do Mar, a number of minor streams flow into the ocean. To the northward of the Serra dos Vertentes, the western streams of the Serra do Mar and the eastern of the Serra do Sijada flow into the Rio Francisco. From the southern declivity of the Serra Geral, and from the western side of the Serra do Anambuhy, flow the confluents of the Paraguay. From the northern side of the Serra Geral, and from the central and eastern branches of the Montes Pyreneos, descend the four great tributaries of the Amazonas, which join that inland ocean from the south, and the streams that intersect the coast of Brazil between Para and the mouth of the Rio Francisco.

The great constituent of all the mountain ranges of Brazil is Geology, granite; the maritime ridges seems exclusively composed of it. The soil on the shore consists of clay, covered in many places with a rich mould, resting on a bed of granite, mixed with amphibole, felspar, quartz, and mica. In the high inland plains of Piratininga we find on the surface a red vegetable earth impregnated with oxide of iron; beneath this a layer of fine argill, intersected with veins of sand; and, thirdly, an alluvial stratum containing a great quantity of iron, resting on meandering granite, quartz, and mica. A mass of solid granite supports the whole. Between Rio Janeiro and Vila Rica the coast consists of a strong clay, and the hills are composed of granite. The mountainous Minas Geraes are composed of ferruginous quartz, granite, or argillaceous schistus. Beds of limestone have been found near Sorocaba, near Sabara in Minas Geraes, and in the gold mines near S. Rita. The immense central plateau of Matto Grosso has never been sufficiently explored; but from the nature of its mineral productions there is every reason to believe that the granitic formation prevails there also. The Itiapamba, the great chain on the northern coast, consists chiefly of granite. The northern coast from Maranhão to Olinda is bounded by a reef of coral, in many places resembling an artificial mole. It is employed by the inhabitants in building their houses. The valley of the Amazonas has been so little explored, and its impenetrable woods and luxuriant vegetation throw so many difficulties in the way of the geologist, that a long time must elapse before we can hope for satisfactory results. As far as the observations of Spix and Martius extend, its geological relations are sufficiently simple. All along the banks of the main stream, and of its tributaries, as long as they continue in the plain, only two mountain rocks are discovered—the variegated and the green sandstone. Sometimes the sandstone appears in the form of a composite breccia, containing iron; sometimes of a fine-grained crumbling red; sometimes of a hard white stone; but the former is the more prevalent. Beds of marl, clays of different colours, and porcelain clay, occur frequently. On the Topajos gypsum occurs in one place. To the south this sandstone formation is bounded by the granitic ridges of the Itiapamba, Montes Pyreneos, and Serra Geral. On the northern ridge of the first mountain chain a transitional layer of conglomerate separates the granite and the sandstone. To the north, this sandstone is bounded by the gneiss and granite of the Parimé range; to the westward, on the rivers Negro and Yapura, a quartz rock of slaty structure is the basis on which it rests. The western and south-western limits of the sandstones of the Amazonas are imperfectly known.

The metallic and mineral products which occur in the geological formations above described are various. Iron is found in vast quantities in the high plains of S. Paulo and in Minas Geraes. Entire hills are composed of brown iron ore and magnetic iron glances. In the latter province an argillaceous ironstone fills whole valleys, and spreads like a mantle over many of the hills. In Goiás and Matto Grosso whole districts are covered with formations rich in iron ore, and it is said that the extent of country thus rich in iron ore is enormous. It is found in veins intermingled with the latter metal almost wherever it is worked. The chief scene of the exertions of gold-miners has hitherto been in the district of Minas Geraes, among the central mountains, and at the sources of the Paraguay. It is certain, however, that the gold country extends to S. Paulo on the south, and to the mountains among which the Tocantins arises on the north. The soil where the gold is found is ferruginous and deep in many places, resting on rocks of gneiss and granite. The gold rests on a stratum of conglomerate or gravel, incumbent on the solid rock. It occurs sometimes in grains, sometimes in crystals, and occasionally in large masses. Lead and zinc have been found on the banks of the Rio Aíais, a tributary of the Rio Francisco; chrome and manganese in Paraíba; platinum in other rivers; quicksilver, arsenic, bismuth, and antimony, in the neighbourhood of Villa Rica; and copper in Minas Novas. The diamond occurs in greatest abundance in a district of the Serra do Frio, sixteen leagues from north to south, and eight from east to west, known by the designation of the diamond district. The little that is known of the territory of Matto Grosso and the sources of the Tocantins, induces a strong belief that this gem is likewise to be found there. It is found in a stratum, of variable thickness, of rounded quartz-ore pebbles cemented by an earthy matter. They are found along the banks of rivers, and in cavities and water-courses on the mountains. Fine crystals of opaline are found in Matto Grosso; and no country surpasses Brazil in the size and purity of its beryl. Lapidaries and jewellers continue to believe that the oriental diamonds have a finer water. Topazes occur in nearly the same localities as the diamond. They are found among a conglomerate of friable earthy tale, quartz, and crystals of specular iron ore; and they are of many colours, yellow, white, blue, &c. The chrysoberyl, amethyst, and green tourmaline, have been found in the Serra do Encantado. Martius states that coal appears in the mountain district, but does not specify any locality. He explicitly asserts that none occurs in the interior of the Amazon. Vast quantities of culinary salt effloresce from the soil during the dry season in the upper districts of the Paraguay. Saltpetre is likewise said to be a product of the province, but upon questionable authority. In the upper district of the Rio San Francisco immense deposits of marl occur, strongly impregnated with this latter salt; so strongly, indeed, that the wells and rivulets contain a perceptible solution of it. In the neighbourhood of Arrayal are some caves which yield annually about 2250 cwt. of saltpetre. In Pinhy quantities of alum have been found efflorescing from the sandstone. The only fossil remains of animated beings occurring in Brazil of which we have any authentic account are found in these caves. Martius and Dollinger mention that they examined them in every respect with the Megalonyx of Cuvier. They are scattered about in a fine greasy earth, which covers the limestone to the depth of eight inches. Bones, supposed to have formed part of a mammoth, have been found in Minas Geraes; and similar remains have been discovered in Bahia, near the Rio Solitre, and in Pernambuco. Bones resembling those of the megatherium, found in Paraguay, and now in the Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid, are said to have been seen near the Rio de Contas. We are not aware that any volcanic appearances have been observed in Brazil, unless the vague stories of hills where subterranean noises are at times heard may be considered to indicate something of a kind.

A country so extensive as Brazil, so diversified in its surface, necessarily exhibits a considerable variety of atmospheric phenomena. The greater portion lies within the tropics, and has consequently the periodical interchange of wet and dry seasons. The narrow valleys, exposed to great heats, and surrounded by lofty mountains, have the vapours forced down upon them, and have a moist atmosphere. The high plains of the interior, the extensive level regions of the northern coast, and the summits of the mountains, are comparatively dry. The wide valley of the Amazon, with its "boundless cloudless shade," and lakes, and ocean streams, is most subject to inundation. At Alto Janeiro, nearly on the level of the sea, the thermometer in July, 22° 56' 38", in December of Reaumur indicates, on an average, during the months of September, October, and November, a mean temperature of 20° 49'. The highest observed by Spix and Martius was 23° 49', the lowest 15° 49'. The rainy season lasts from October to March, and is heaviest in February. In September the hygrometer stands on an average at 49°, in October at 76°, in November at 85°. Owing to the proximity of the mountains, and the cooler atmosphere at their summits, the mists generally settle around their brows with considerable density towards evening. At Cachoeira, in the neighbourhood of Bahia, about the thirteenth degree of south latitude, and only six Parisian leagues above the level of the sea, the thermometer of Reaumur gave, in February, 1818, below zero six degrees; and so low in the evening, 17° to 19°, mid-day 25°, sunset 21° 23'. In Bahia itself the temperature at sunset is said to vary in the rainy season (September to March) from 17° to 18° Reaumur; in the dry months from 16° to 17°. The cloudless mid-day sun causes an extraordinary heat in the town; the sea breezes render the mornings and evenings cool; but the nights are warmer. At Oeyras, the capital of Pinhy, in about seven degrees of south latitude, and 779 feet above the level of the sea, the thermometer of Reaumur varies in the warm months at mid-day from 29° to 30°. Martius found it very during the day as follows:—morning 23° 35', mid-day 24° to 25', evening 23° 30'.

He does not mention in what month this was. The driest months are July, August, and September. The south wind prevails during these months, and the climate is healthful. Throughout the course of the Amazon the mean temperature is 22° of Reaumur; the lowest being 15°, and the highest 38°. Thunderstorms are frequent and violent in the highest degree. We have no observations with the hygrometer. S. Paulo, situated in Lat. 23° 33', S., is 1200 feet above the level of the ocean; and having a westerly declination of the surface of the ground, is consequently shielded from the sea breezes. The average temperature is 20° to 23° of the centigrade thermometer. The rainy season commences in November, and lasts till April. The greatest quantity of rain falls in January. Hoar frost is sometimes seen in the cold months. The prevalent winds are affected by the place of the sun; when he is in the northern tropics, S.S.W. and N.E. winds prevail; when he is in the southern tropics, more variable. Villa Rica is situated in Lat. 12° 27', S., about 3760 English feet above the level of the sea. It is overshadowed by the huge mountain Itacolomi, the summit of which is 5710 feet above the sea, and surrounded by mountains on all sides. Here the average indications of the thermometer are, morning 12° Reaumur, mid-day 23°, evening 16°, midnight 14°. When the thermometer stood at 16° Reaumur on the summit of Itacolomi, it was found to be at 22° in Villa Rica. The temperature is agreeable enough to the senses, but the thunderstorms are frequent and violent. The wind among the mountain ranges is very variable, but cooling; from whatever direction it happens to blow. The weather is most changeable in June and July; has frequently been known to affect the crops. Restricting the temperature and other skyey influences of the high inland plateau of Matto Grosso we are entirely in the dark. Meteors are extremely frequent in the middle regions of the atmosphere in Brazil. Martius and Spix describe an immense mass of meteoric iron which they examined on their route from Bahia to Oeyras. Its estimated weight is about 17,500 Parisian pounds; it measures from 31 to 32 cubic feet, is extremely hard, and occasionally crystallized, and breaks in some places with a shelly impression.

Except on the loftiest mountains, and on the wide seratas, the Vegetable vegetation of Brazil is luxuriant beyond description. In the mountain productions passes in the neighbourhood of the seashore, the conjoint effects, on the one hand, produce a superabundance of vegetable life, which man's utmost efforts cannot remove. Trees are forailing in the neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro send forth shoots and branches immediately, and this whether the position of the fragments be that in which they originally grew, or inverted. On the banks of the Amazon the loftiest trees destroy each other by their proximity, and are bound together by rich and multiform lianas. In the province of Maranhão, the roots, grasses, and other plants, extending from the shores of pools, weave themselves into a kind of vegetable bridge, along which the passenger treads, unaware that he has left the firm earth, until the jaws of a cayman protrude through the herbage before him. The vegetable productions of Brazil have a strong analogy with those of Guiana. The most common are the palms, the coco-palm, the espeletia, the guanacaste, and forms of the most varied forms. The vegetation of the valleys differs from that of the caespites, as it again does from that which occurs in the seratas. Along the coast, the mangroves are the most numerous and prominent species. The most marked peculiarity of this class of plants is, that the seeds begin to shoot before they drop from the parent plant, and that the drooping branches strike roots into the soil. They are never found inland except where the surface is scarcely elevated above the level of the sea. They flourish from Rio Grande do Sul to Maranhão, converting the land into a morass wherever they are allowed to flourish un molested. Immediately behind their numerous families of palms raise their graceful heads. The unvaried forest of the neighbourhood of Rio Janeiro consists principally of oredos. Every large river of Brazil has its own appropriate form of vegetable life, giving a peculiar character to its banks. The vegetation of the Amazon may be divided into three classes; 1. that which we find on the islands; 2. the vegetation upon the banks overflowed at regular intervals by the stream; 3. that which stands high and dry. The difference between them consists in the character of the bark and the species of the plants. Brushwood and herbage are nowhere to be seen; everything tends to the gigantic in size. The most various forms group awkwardly together, crossed and intertwined with leaves. The preponderance of trees over the shrubs and foliage, and with glossy, fleshy leaves, lends almost a tender and a somewhat delicate aspect to the scene, which is in every other respect painful from its monotony. Representatives of the most estranged natural families grow side by side. It is only on the islands, where the willow and some other plants are found in numbers, that we are reminded of the monotony of our northern vegetation. Cocoa trees and the vanilla, capsicum frutescens, and different kinds of pepper, the cinnamon tree, and Brazilian casca, abound. The flora of all the tributaries of the Amazon is similar. to what we have described, until the traveller ascends above the falls, and finds himself in another region. The sources of the Madeira alone offer a partial exception, retaining a vegetation indicative of extensive plains, lakes, and morasses. The vegetation of the southern compass (corresponding to the North American provinces) is widely different. On the plains of the southern provinces we find scattered about strong tufts of grayish-green and hairy grasses, springing from the red clay. Mingled with these are numerous herbaceous flowers of the most various colours and elegant forms. At intervals small groups of trees seldom exceeding twenty feet in height, so distant that the individual form of each is easily recognised, with spreading fantastic branches and pale green leaves, break the monotony of the scene. Solitary myrtles, numerous varieties of pleasing fruits, and now and then a cactus, add to the variety. A similar vegetation, but with a richer variety of plants, occurs in the diamond district. On the western declivity of the Serra do Mar, and along the upper banks of the Rio San Francisco, extends a wooded country, but of a character entirely different from that which is found in the valleys below. The name Caatingas is applied to the forests in both of the above-mentioned districts, although their characters are entirely different. The term merely expresses the fact that they exist during the dry season, and push them forth when the rains return. Malen, euphorbiaceae, palms, and such like, are the prevailing types on the Rio Francisco; cactuses, palms, and ferns, abound on the Serra do Mar. In this latter district the ipecacuan flourishes best. It is, however, in the glowing steppes of Pernambuco that we find the cactus predominant. In the valley of the Paraguay the most striking feature is presented by the water plants, which in one river are sufficiently strong to impede the navigation of a stream both deep and broad.

The forests of Brazil contain almost every species of useful and ornamental wood. The coco-tree is found in great quantities in the province of the Amazon, and furnishes one of the most important items of internal commerce. A considerable surplus of coco is annually exported. One of the most valuable sorts of timber is furnished by the Ibiriptanga or Brazil-wood (Cassiafisia brasiliensis), which yields a fine red dye. The wood itself is very hard and heavy, and takes a beautiful polish. It grew at one time in great abundance along the coast; but being a government monopoly (thence called pau de rainha, Queen's wood), it was cut down in a reckless manner, and is now by no means so abundant as it once was. The other trees most worthy of mention are the jatunama or rosewood tree, the trumpet-tree, (Sapotaceae); the laurel; the sapucaia, or tapir tree; the cedro, or cedar; and the palm tree of palms. Not less important is the lignum vitae, or caoutchouc tree, which during the season is tapped every day, and furnishes in considerable quantities a gum which is poured into moulds, and when it attains the proper consistency, forms excellent shoes, bottles, &c., &c. The Banana is one of the most useful of all the trees that grow in Brazil, and its fruit is the chief food of the native Indians. The fruits of Brazil are numerous and excellent. The best of these are the pine-apple, the mango, the custard-apple, the guava, and the various kinds of melons and nuts.

In an empire of such vast extent as Brazil, embracing as it does, every variety of temperature and elevation, the value and importance of the agricultural products must be very great. So small, however, is the number of farmers, compared with the extent of the soil, that it is believed that not one acre in 200 is under cultivation. In some provinces, especially those near the sea, the quantity of grain raised is not sufficient to supply the demand, and thus large quantities of wheat are annually imported from the United States. The reason of this is that the soil, under tillage is occupied in the production of articles for foreign markets. The chief products of Brazil are coffee, sugar, cotton, mandioca or cassava flour, tobacco, rice, maize, fruits, and spices. Of these by far the most important now is coffee, which has recently increased in value, and cotton after sugar, it was not until 1810, that Brazilian cotton came to be highly valued by the European markets. In that year, however, Dr. Jackson, a planter expelled by the revolution from St Domingo, settled near Rio, and introduced the most improved methods of rearing the coffee-plant. So successful has the result of the new system been, that whereas in 1818 the annual exports of coffee did not amount to 80,000 bags, they now average nearly a million and a half of bags. Estimating the value of each bag at L3, the total value of the coffee exports is not less than L4,000,000. The cultivation of sugar has not increased nearly in the same proportion with that of coffee. It is produced in greatest quantities in the districts adjoining Bahia. The quantity of sugar exported in 1859 was 2,000,000 balares, representing a value of about L1,700,000. Cotton is found only on the best table-lands of the northern provinces, especially in Maranhao and Pernambuco. Its quality is considered excellent; but the rude and expensive method of its culture, and the high rates of carriage in these inland districts, operate very unfavourably for this branch of traffic. The annual value of cotton exported is not much above L500,000. The quantity exported to Britain in 1851 was 19,339,104 lb. The tea plant has been recently introduced into Brazil, where it flourishes extremely well. Though not equal in quality to that of Chinese growth, it finds a ready market in Europe. It has hitherto been cultivated almost exclusively in the province of S. Paulo, but is beginning to spread rapidly through the empire, and threatens to supersede the cotton trade altogether. As its cultivation is of so very recent date, it is not yet possible to ascertain exactly the amount and value of the annual exports. Tobacco grows in greatest abundance in the neighbourhood of Rio, but, from its inferior quality, it cannot compete with that of the United States, and the demand for it is annually decreasing. Rice is grown in considerable quantities, and, not being much used by the natives for food, a large surplus remains for exportation. The casava or mandioca is extensively grown, and forms the staple food of the lower classes. The root, which is the part of the plant used for this purpose, contains a deadly poison. It is easily expelled, however, by the action of fire, and the residuum is ground into a wholesome and nutritious flour. Taploco, which is extensively used in Europe, is a preparation made from the root of the casava. The quantities annually exported from Brazil alone, amount to about 1600 cwt.

The varieties of animal life in Brazil are more numerous perhaps than in any other region in the world. Of beasts of prey, the most formidable are the jaguar or South American tiger, the ocelot, the tiger-cat, the puma, and the caraca, a kind of fox. Large herds of the peccary roam in the forests, in which also is to be found the tapir. This animal resembles the hog, but is many times larger, and is amphibious. It is capable of remaining a long time under water without rising to the surface to breathe. Its flesh is like that of the ox. The varieties of the monkey tribe that abound in the forests appear to be almost infinite. The Simia Jaculus has never been seen elsewhere. There are several varieties of bats, of which the Vespertilio leporinus and the V. spectans are the largest. Two species of sloth, the Bradypus tridactylus and didactylus, are not uncommon. No less interesting is the variety of birds, from the crane, an eagle far larger than our most powerful birds of prey, to the humming-bird, no larger than a bee. The rhea, a species of ostrich, is found in Brazil. Snakes of every kind abound in the marshy districts, some of which, such as the rattlesnake, the jararaca, are remarkably venomous; while others, such as the boa, attain an enormous size and strength. A vast number of troublesome insects infest the margins of all the great rivers. Of these the most formidable is the pesse, which is so small as to be scarcely visible, but infests a most painful and even dangerous bite. The rapid and regularly destructive effect of vegetation; and whole districts are sometimes laid waste by its ravages. The spider here attains an enormous size, but is not so venomous as might be expected from its appearance. The Brazilian birds are celebrated for the beauty of their plumage. "Red, blue, and green parrots," says Malte-Brun, "frequent the tops of trees. The gallinaceous fauna, the hocco, and different kinds of pigeons, haunt the woods. The oriole resort to the orange groves; and their sentinels, stationed at a distance, announce with a screaming noise the approach of man. Chattering manakins mislead the hunter; and the metallic tones of the arapongas resound through the forest like the strokes of a hammer on an anvil. The toucan (ramphastos) is a bristly bird, of fantastic which are of a black and bright red colour, with transversal stripes reaching to the extremities of the wings. The different species of humming birds are more numerous in Brazil than in any other country of America. One sort is called by the people the Gnatuba egera or winged flower." The gayest butterflies flutter through the air, the blue shining Menausa, the Adonis, the Nestor, and the Ixeretes. More than ten species of wild bees have been observed in the woods; and the greater number produce honey. The cactus coccinellifer, and the insect peculiar to it, are found in the province of S. Paulo. Lizards and caimans abound. The quantity of cattle in the Amazon and its tributaries is almost incalculable. The river swarms with fish of which there is only one entitled to notice in a sketch like this is the parana, the tyrant of the fresh waters, which divides with the caiman the terror and hatred of the inhabitants. Of domestic animals, the most important are the horse, the ox, and the sheep. Vast numbers of horses, sprung from the original European stock, roam at large over the extensive plains of the southern provinces. They are generally found in droves of twenty or thirty. Oxen are also allowed to wander wild. They are hunted down with the lance in great numbers, and are valued chiefly on account of their hides, horns, and tallow, which are exported in immense quantities. The carcasses are commonly abandoned to the birds and beasts of prey, though they are sometimes salted and used as food. Sheep do not thrive in Brazil at all so well as the larger kinds of cattle.

III. Statistics.—The population of Brazil has been variously estimated at different times, and indeed even now. The facilities for investigating the matter are not great. To the natural difficulties the people themselves add new causes of incorrectness. Fearing the conception, they conceal from the authorities the number of their sons; and to avoid payment of taxes and the contribution of labour for the benefit of roads and other municipal works, they likewise conceal the number of their slaves; a more difficult matter, however, as slaves are essentially a stationary population. The following are official data in round numbers extracted from the reports of the presidents of the different provinces presented to their legislative chambers:

| Names of the Provinces | Chief towns | Date of the report | Number of inhabitants | |------------------------|------------|-------------------|----------------------| | Rio Grande do Sul | Portalegre | 1848 | 250,000 | | Santa Catarina | Destermo | 1849 | 81,000 | | Paraíba | Coritiba | 1853 | 67,000 | | Sao Paulo | Sao Paulo | 1853 | 540,000 | | Rio de Janeiro | Rio de Janeiro | 1851 | 580,000 | | Espirito Santo | Victoria | 1851 | 60,000 | | Bahia | Bahia | 1848 | 900,000 | | Sergipe | Sergipe | 1848 | 135,000 | | Alagoas | Maceió | 1849 | 208,000 | | Pernambuco | Recife | 1852 | 900,000 | | Paraíba | Paraíba | 1853 | 290,000 | | Rio Grande do Norte | Natal | 1847 | 160,000 | | Ceara | Fortaleza | 1853 | 210,000 | | Piauí | Oeiras | 1848 | 120,000 | | Maranhão | San Luis | 1848 | 910,000 | | Pará | Belem | 1852 | 182,000 | | Amazonas | Villa da Barra | 1853 | 35,000 | | Matto Grosso | Cayabá | 1849 | 48,000 | | Goiás | Villa Boa | 1849 | 100,000 | | Minas Geraes | Ouro Preto | 1852 | 1,200,000 |

Total for the 20 provinces, 6,521,000

To compensate omissions and increase in some provinces since 1847, 479,000

The most approximate total, 7,000,000

The classification of the different races in some of the provinces is entirely wanting; the following is subjoined as an approximation, drawn up from the data existing for several provinces:

- White population: 2,000,000 - Free mixed population, mulattoes, cafuzos, and other varieties: 1,000,000 - Civilized aborigines: 800,000 - Mixed slave population: 600,000 - African, or black slaves: 2,500,000

There are 6 in Rio Grande do Sul, 6 in Santa Catarina, 4 in Sao Paulo, 3 in Rio de Janeiro, and 1 in Espirito Santo, numbering altogether in 1852, 20,833 inhabitants. The most flourishing is that of San Leopoldo in Rio Grande, which contains 10,576 inhabitants, and whose exports in 1852 were valued at L120,000. The chief traffic is in articles of leather, such as saddlery, portmanteaus, &c.

There is no means of ascertaining the average number of emigrants from Europe who annually settled in the provinces or quitted them, but in 1853, 9610 foreigners established themselves in Rio, of whom more than 8000 were Portuguese, while 1976 left it, of whom likewise the great proportion were Portuguese.

The number of emigrants landed at the provincial ports may be calculated at a little less than that of those who landed at Rio.

The Brazilian monarchy derives from the ancient monarchy of Portugal the principle of hereditary succession to the crown. The laws of succession are defined with great distinctness in the constitution, and are the same as in England.

In Brazil there is no privileged aristocracy, but descent from the noble families of Portugal, length of time in the service of the country, or large fortune, give a certain claim to the privileges of aristocracy readily admitted by the Brazilians. The emperor rewards services according to their difficulty or importance with the titles of marquis, count, baron, or knight (moços fidalgos). In 1853 there were in Brazil 6 marquises, 5 counts, 17 viscounts, 66 barons, and 120 knights. Titles are not hereditary, but if a son prove himself worthy of his father, he inherits his title. There are in the empire three orders of chivalry adopted from Portugal, those namely of Christ, Aviz, and Santiago, and two created since the declaration of independence, those namely of Cruzeiro and Rose. Great numbers of crosses of the first and last of these orders have been distributed. That of Aviz is reserved for military services, and that of Cruzeiro for very important and extraordinary services exclusively. The senate represents the only element of aristocracy recognised by the constitution.

The democratic element preponderates in the constitution of Brazil, but its action is greatly modified by the complicated system of election.

The constitution established four powers, the moderator (what is called in England the royal prerogative), the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. The moderator is vested in the emperor, whom it empowers to select senators and ministers, to sanction laws, to convolve extraordinary assemblies, prorogue parliament, dissolve the chamber of deputies, grant amnesties and pardons, and suspend judges to be afterwards tried.

The legislative power is vested, for the affairs of the empire, in the general legislative assembly with the sanction of the emperor, and for the provincial affairs in the provincial assemblies with the sanction of the president (governor) of the province. The general legislative assembly consists of two chambers, that of deputies, and that of senators. The deputies are nominated by indirect election. Citizens, and even manumitted slaves, born in the empire, who possess an income of L22,10s., choose the electors in parochial assemblies, and these electors nominate the deputies. The qualification for an elector is an annual income of L45; that of a deputy an income of L90. Minors, monks, and servants, are incapable of voting; naturalized foreigners, and persons not professing the religion of the state, are incapable of being elected deputies, but they can be senators. The deputies are elected for four years, and must hold an annual session of four months, opening on the 3d of May. The senators are elected for life. Every province has a number of senators, equal to half its number of deputies; but they are nominated in triple lists, from which the emperor selects one-third. A senator must be forty years of age, and possess a clear annual income of L180. The allowance of a senator is one-half more than that of a deputy. Each house nominates its own officers. When the two houses sit in general assembly, as at the opening and close of the session, to hear the emperor's speech, &c., the president of the senate presides, and the senators and deputies sit promiscuously. They sit apart, and proceed by way of bill, when they make laws, interpret and suspend them; they determine the public charges, and assess the contributions, &c. The chamber of deputies has the initiative in taxes, in recruiting, and in the choice of a new dynasty. The senate has the exclusive privilege of taking cognizance of offences committed by members of the imperial family, councillors of state, senators, and deputies, during the session; of enforcing the responsibility of secretaries and councillors of state; of convoking the assembly in case the emperor fail to do so within two months after the period fixed by law; and also of calling it together on the death of the emperor.

The executive power is vested in the emperor assisted by his ministers and secretaries of state, who are responsible for treason, corruption, abuse of power, acts contrary to the liberty, security, or property of the citizens, and waste of public property. From this responsibility they cannot escape upon the plea of orders from the emperor. The executive functions are the convocation of the general ordinary assembly; the nomination of bishops, presidents, governors of provinces; commanders by sea and land, and ambassadors; the formation of alliances, and all foreign negotiations; the declaration of peace and war; the granting letters of naturalization, &c. The ministers are six: one for each of the departments of home, justice, war, marine, finances, and foreign affairs. One of these is president or premier. To these is superadded a council of state, composed of ten ordinary and ten extraordinary members nominated by the emperor, and the imperial prince, if of age, is by right a councillor of state. This council is divided into as many sections as there are ministerial departments.

Every town and village, with the surrounding district, has a municipal council composed of seven or twelve members, elected directly by the citizens who possess an annual income of L22, 10s. This council is charged with all that concerns the good of the district, meets four times a-year, besides extraordinary sessions, and every meeting may last as many days as may be found necessary for the expedition of business. They impose fines to a certain amount, and even enforce their decrees by a penalty of thirty days' imprisonment. They annually draw up a municipal budget, which is submitted to the provincial legislative assembly for approval. If their revenue and the produce of fines be not sufficient to defray expenses, an allowance from the provincial treasury is granted. Their decrees are called posturas, and the penalties imposed by them are applied to the infractors by the justices of peace. Their enactments can be annulled by the provincial legislative assembly.

Each parish has four justices of peace elected for four years, but only one is actively engaged for the year. They are nominated by the citizens in the same manner as the municipal councils. No one can bring a case into court without having previously attempted a conciliation with his adversary before a justice of peace. Trial by jury is authorised for civil as well as for criminal cases. Each province is divided into comarcas, and then into municipalities. In each comarca there is a judge called Juiz de Direito, who presides at the sessions of the jury, in every municipality, twice or thrice a-year. In each municipality there is a municipal judge, who decides in civil cases, and prepares the process for the criminal. The decisions of this judge may be amended by the Juiz de Direito, and finally be decided by the court. The courts are divided into four appeal districts, each of which there is a Rádio (court of appeal), composed of fourteen members. There is, besides, in Rio a supreme court of justice, composed of seventeen members, whose duties are to permit or refuse the revision of causes, to try its own members, or those of the court of appeal, the members of the diplomatic body, and the presidents of provinces, and to decide on disputed cases between the other courts. Promotion by election is made from municipal judge to Juiz de Direito, and from this grade to that immediately above it. Admittance into the supreme court can only be obtained by seniority. All judges are responsible for abuse of power, and for corruption. They may be removed from one district to another, but cannot lose their access to a second.

The civil law, originally the same with those of Portugal, have been greatly modified by a number of new ones. A criminal code was organized in 1830 on the principles of Jeremy Bentham, and is considered very perfect and clear. The new form of procedure, and the new organization of justices, is embodied in a code decreed in 1832. Finally, a new code of commerce, nearly copied from that of France, was decreed in 1859.

To carry on the war of the independence, and to crush a subsequent revolution in the northern provinces, the government contracted two loans in 1824-5, of the nominal amount of L3,686,200; and on the recognition of the independence of Portugal in 1822, it undertook the liability of a rise of L1,500,000. The war with Buenos Ayres, and the assistance rendered by Don Pedro to the constitutional party of Portugal, led to two farther loans in 1829, of the nominal amount of L709,200. Internal difficulties in 1839 compelled the regency to contract another loan of the nominal amount of L411,200. The dissensions in Portugal caused a temporary suspension in the payment of the dividends on the Portuguese loan, and in 1842, L732,600 stock were delivered to the Portuguese agents in settlement of this claim. The debt contracted and assumed by Brazil between 1823 and 1843, therefore, amounted to L7,069,200 nominal; and throughout all its difficulties and embarrassments the imperial government has punctually and honourably provided for the dividends as they became due. Their disorder, so long as it existed, was wholly borne by the Brazilian people, on whom, for a season, it fell with great severity.

By the renewal in 1844 of the sinking fund, the operations of which had been suspended in 1828, the Portuguese loan of L1,500,000 was reduced to L954,250; and on its expiration in July 1832, it was paid off by a new 4% per cent. loan of that amount, contracted for at 95. In the same way, reductions of the other loans have been made, and now the foreign debt of Brazil stands only at L4,000,000 at 4% per cent. stock, and L1,000,000 at 4½ per cent., total L5,000,000. Gradually, it is in prospect of further reduction, and if the operation of the sinking fund be, as is intended, persevered in, at no very distant period, the foreign debt of Brazil will be extinguished.

The deficiencies of former years have been funded and form the greater part of the internal debt of Brazil. The total funded debt of the empire now stands thus:

| Foreign Debt | |-------------| | Balance of 5 per cent. loan of 1824 | L3,197,800 | | 1829 | 597,500 | | 1839 | 391,200 | | 1843 | 673,900 | | 4½ per cent. loan of 1852 | 1,035,100 |

| Internal Debt | |---------------| | L5,894,800 |

| Total Debt of Brazil | |----------------------| | L12,362,290 |

It thus appears that with a revenue of nearly L4,000,000 a-year, the Brazilian debt, foreign and domestic, does not much exceed three years' revenue. This is a proportion such as few states can exhibit.

For a few years previously to the declaration of the emperor's majority, the imperial expenditure had not been very largely in excess of the revenue. In 1835-7, the deficit was reis 476,825,000; in 1837-8, reis 885,100,000; in 1838-9, there was even a surplus of reis 40,591,000; in 1839-40, the deficiency was increased to reis 1,693,046,000; in 1840-1, the year of the emperor's majority, it rose to reis 3,630,608,000. In consequence of the greater vigour then displayed in reducing the public expenditure, and the surplus since 1835 in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, the deficit went on augmenting until after 1844, when these efforts were crowned with success. In 1841-2, the deficit was reis 6,212,659,000; in 1842-3 reis 5,724,843,000; in 1843-4 reis 6,620,865,000; in 1844-5 reis 9,484,520,000. Nor was it for three or four years after the pacification, that the deficit entirely disappeared. In 1849-50, however, there was a large surplus after payment of all expenses, of reis 3,035,003,000 or L3,414,438; in 1850-1, the surplus was reis 3,552,404,000 or L3,991,645; in 1851-2, reis 4,010,290,000, or L4,511,449; in 1852-3, reis 3,976,202,000 or L4,460,700; in 1853-4, reis 3,549,490,000 or L3,954,100. To put up still in the following years, 1836-1848, the deficiencies in the Brazilian finances altogether amounted to reis 40,550,675,000. In the last five years there has been an aggregate surplus of reis 18,096,765,000, or L2,035,835.

The revenues of Brazil have risen in that period (from 1828 to 1854), from reis 2,263,262,000, their lowest point in 1837-8, to reis 35,646,407,000, or L3,410,220, the highest in 1851-2, about which sum it seems reasonable to estimate them for succeeding years. The following table gives the revenue and expenditure for the last five years.

| Years | Receipts | Expenditure | |-------|----------|-------------| | 1849-50 | 25,977,836,000 | 23,942,830,000 | | 1850-1 | 31,676,930,000 | 27,864,404,000 | | 1851-2 | 35,646,407,000 | 31,635,187,000 | | 1852-3 | 35,290,691,000 | 31,320,489,000 | | 1853-4 | 34,000,000,000 | 30,471,066,000 |

Under the influence of the new tariff of customs' duties, issued 12th August 1844, combined with growing prosperity at home, greater liberality of treatment of its produce in foreign markets, and with an improved collection of the customs' revenue, a steady increase of the deficit has been changed into a large surplus. The government of Brazil has availed itself of financial prosperity to establish naval and to extend and perfect judicial means for the effectual suppression of the slave trade, has reduced the tonnage duties on shipping by two-thirds, has lowered some oppressive internal taxes, and abolished others, has already made some partial modifications of her customs' tariff, and is now engaged in preparing a measure for a general diminution of import, and the entire repeal of export duties. Estimates for the fiscal year, ending the 30th June 1854:

**Revenue**

Custom-houses .................................................. Reis, 22,515,800,000 Taxes upon shipping ........................................... 246,600,000 Export duties ...................................................... 4,634,500,000 Post-office .......................................................... 146,000,000 Mint and other establishments ................................ 258,300,000 Taxes upon transfer of real property ......................... 1,697,900,000 Stamps ............................................................... 803,300,000 Tax on slave-labour ............................................. 279,050,000 Miscellaneous .................................................... 5,929,550,000

Total ................................................................. Reis, 34,000,000,000 or L3,825,000

**Expenditure**

Home department ............................................... Reis, 3,769,318,000 Justice ............................................................... 2,278,291,188 Foreign .............................................................. 654,346,000 Marine ............................................................... 3,862,434,590 War ................................................................. 7,322,448,027 Financial ............................................................ 12,083,027,765

Total ................................................................. Reis, 30,471,065,970 or L3,427,995

Surplus ............................................................... L377,005

In addition to the above imperial revenues of Brazil, each of the twenty provinces has a separate revenue, raised by the authority of its provincial assembly, and spent its own local objects, amounting altogether for the twenty provinces to about one-third of the imperial revenue.

The Roman Catholic religion is the established religion of the empire. All forms of worship are tolerated, but may only be practised privately. Dissenters enjoy all political and civil rights, with the sole exception of being elected into the chamber of deputies. There is one archbishopric in Bahia, with suffragan bishops in Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco, Maranhao, Para, Sao Paulo, Minas, and Goiás. Every bishopric is divided into a convenient number of parishes, according to the population; a vicar is attached to each parish, and assisted by other priests if necessary.

The peculiarity of the ecclesiastical organization of the Brazilian church is, that the clergy do not receive the tithes. As a conquest of the military and religious orders of Christ, all the churches of Brazil belong from the beginning of the order, whose grand master appointed the bishops and submitted them solely to the approbation of the Pope. The order became so powerful that the king obtained the union of the grand mastership to the crown, and so disposed of all the livings and other benefits of the order, and paid from his treasury the salaries of the clergy, receiving the tithes from the people, as a civil tax. The tithes were afterwards abolished as oppressive. This organization is still recognized by the Holy See, and in the capacity of grand-master of the order of Christ, the emperor appoints all the bishops and other ecclesiastical functionaries. The most common religious orders are Carmelites, and Benedictines. These are very rich, and generally very learned men, who are usually employed in teaching the sciences. They pay double annual taxes as a compensation to the treasury for not paying taxes upon transfers of property, as theirs is not transferable.

In every parish there is a schoolmaster for boys, and a schoolmistress for girls. As education is free, they receive no fees from their pupils, but a salary from the provincial treasury. In every large town there is a Lyceum, maintained also by the provincial treasury. From the scholars of these establishments a small annual fee is exacted; but those lyceums, the Latin, French, and English languages, rhetoric, philosophy, geography, mathematics, natural philosophy, and chemistry, are taught. In the least important towns and large villages the course of instruction at the lyceums is limited to Latin, French, and philosophy or rhetoric. In every bishopric there is a theological seminary supported by the property belonging to the see. The advanced sciences are taught by the respective faculties, forming together the university, and distributed in the following manner. The civil and common law, political economy, and other social sciences are taught in Sao Paulo, and Oiáda; mathematics, and their application to engineering, in Rio de Janeiro; medicine, surgery, anatomy, mineralogy, botany, chemistry, and physics, in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. All the salaries of the professors, as well as all the expenses for the higher sciences, are defrayed from the imperial treasury.

Besides the public establishments of education, there are many private ones. The public library of Rio de Janeiro is a very rich one, and contains more than 100,000 volumes; in the other important towns there are also good libraries, museums of zoology and mineralogy, open to the public.

The effective strength of the army and navy is every year fixed by the general legislative assembly, upon the data furnished by the ministers of the two departments. The army is organized on the principles established by Marshal Beresford when in the service of Portugal. It is principally from the northern provinces that the infantry is recruited, and from the southern that the best cavalry is obtained.

The actual army is thus composed:

| Staff and engineers | 355 | | Infantry | 12,785 | | Cavalry | 2,359 | | Artillery | 3,517 | | Sappers and miners | 1,691 |

Total | 20,098

Besides the regular army there is the national guard, organized since 1831, on the same plan as that of France; the subaltern officers being elected by the soldiers, the superior officers by the subalterns, the generals, instructors, majors, adjutants, sergeants, named by the government. These appointments are for four years. The national guard is divided into three classes, the first of which may, in the event of war, be called upon to serve on the same terms as soldiers of the line. The total effective strength of the national guards is as follows:

| Infantry | 97,543 | | Cavalry | 6,593 | | Artillery | 2,194 |

Total | 106,330

The navy is principally manned by civilized aborigines, organized in bodies called Imperial sailors, with a certain military discipline, which has of late proved exceedingly beneficial. The aborigines have a peculiar aptitude for a maritime life. Officers destined for the Brazilian navy receive a suitable education in the naval school for three years; the government introduced the practice of sending the more apt scholars to serve in the British, French, and American navies. In this way a body of efficient naval officers is gradually being formed.

The naval forces for the present year 1854 are fixed thus:

- 1st class frigates, of which 2 are steamers ................. 5 - Corvettes, of which 7 are steamers ......................... 17 - Brigs .......................................................... 8 - Schooners and brig-schooners ................................ 19 - Small steamers .................................................. 6 - Small vessels armed, or gun-boats .......................... 5 - Transports ...................................................... 6

These 65 ships are manned by 6000 sailors, including gunners and marines.

It is obvious, from the insufficient establishments for general education, that the intellectual development of individuals must have been for a long period achieved in a great measure by unaided exertion. Not things are better, but in the more thinly inhabited districts devoted to agriculture, there is not much room for mental occupation except in the arts of subsistence and securing self-defence. Even where the population is more dense, a lazy feeling of animal comfort represses the exertions of the majority. It is among the more aspiring class, who aim at the learned professions or state employment, and who are consequently obliged to cultivate their minds, that we must look for that attachment to intellectual pursuits which is rarely acquired except from habit. In the theological seminaries, established at the seat of each bishop, little more is required than a knowledge of the classics, an outward knowledge of systematic doctrine, and a knowledge of the daily duty of a priest. The schools of medicine in Rio Janeiro and in Bahia, from the attention bestowed upon practical surgery and anatomy, have done more to awaken the mind. The number of situations under government requiring a certain knowledge of practical mathematics and natural history, has been made more efficient in diffusing a knowledge of and a taste for these kindred pursuits. The number of foreign engineers and naturalists encouraged to settle in Brazil has rendered the natives in some measure acquainted with all that has been of late achieved in Europe in the mathematical and experimental sciences. Less attentive formerly upon the inhabitants a number of political questions, which engaged him to every man's business and bosom, have excited the whole community.

In parliament and by the press the most delicate political questions have been discussed with success, and the progress of the government and of legislation evinces a certain administrative foresight and prudence rarely displayed by other new states.

The Brazilians who frequent the university of Coimbra in Portugal often distinguish themselves among their fellow-students; Statistics, and notwithstanding the difficulties they have to contend against, not unfrequently rise to the highest offices of the state.

The most remarkable writers in the Portuguese language on political economy and commercial law were Coutinho, bishop of Pernambuco, and Silva Lisboa, afterwards Viscount de Cayron, a senator of the empire, both Brazilians. Among historians the Brazilian Roche Pita is distinguished. Portugal is poor in dramatic literature, but one of her most distinguished comic poets was the Brazilian Silva, who afterwards fell a victim to the Inquisition of Lisbon. In epic poetry, on the other hand, Portuguese literature is rich. Brazil claims the authorship of two of its most beautiful poems of this class, the Caramurin of Durão and the Upaná of Gama. The best of the minor poets is Gonzaga, whose collection of lyrics is well known under the title of Marília de Dirce. Little inferior to him is Sousa Caldas, whose translation of the Psalms denotes a talent of the first order. Claudio, Avarenga, Gregório de Matos, Euzébio de Matos, Gusmão, in former times; and in modern, Odorico Mendes, Borges de Barros, Domingos Magalhães, Marquês de Paranhos, A. de Macedo, Porto-Allegre, Barbosa, and others, are well worth the notice of lyric poets.

Religious education was formerly much cultivated in Brazil, and Vieira is one of the most original and eloquent preachers known. In more recent times S. Carlos and Montalverne deserve particular notice. In the natural sciences Frei Leandro, Arruda, Canana, and José Bonifácio de Andrada, are known for their works and discoveries.

In sacred music José Maurício, a mulatto, left compositions of merit that were executed in the chapel of D. João VI.

The Brazilians have a natural taste for music, and an Italian theatre maintained with but little interruption in Rio de Janeiro, has assisted in improving and refining this taste. The old fashioned Brazilian lute, which was a particular kind of guitar, has almost disappeared from the provinces, but is still frequently employed in the provinces to accompany the modinhas (romances) which are peculiar to Brazil, and which have a particular style.

The school of the fine arts of Rio de Janeiro has produced some good but no remarkable painters. Of late, however, the most promising artists have been annually sent to Italy at the public expense to prosecute their studies in that country.

There is in the Brazilian national character, with great mildness and generosity, a certain tendency to vindictiveness. Homicides are often the result of vengeance alone are proportionally as numerous in Brazil as in certain countries of Europe; while the crimes against property are much rarer. The greatest number of homicides, however, takes place in the most backward provinces of the centre and north.

The Roman Catholic religion predominates in Brazil, and although there are enlightened men among the clergy, a great number of the priests are ill educated, and the institution of celibacy keeps the members of the principal families from entering the profession. Such is the want of priests that the government finds itself obliged to send to Italy for them. Among educated classes the spirit of materialism of the French writers of the eighteenth century made great headway, but considerable reaction has lately taken place. The lower classes, above all in the interior, are still deplorably superstitious.

The Brazilians are in general hospitable, generous, and charitable, endowed with great pride and vanity, and susceptibility of character, and are easily led away by flattery. The unlimited power they exercise over the African slaves, and the colonial system from which they have but a short time been freed, the imperfect religious education, the facility with which they can live in abundance at small cost, while the climate enables them to dispense with many things necessary in other countries, the enervating effects of the hot atmosphere, all combine to indicate the qualities and vices which we must expect in this people.

Except a few rude manufactures for family use, this branch of national industry is in Brazil confined to mining operations, the smelting of metals, the polishing of precious stones, the manufacture of salt, ship-building, tanning and dressing hides, and the making of oil. In the town of Rio, the number of gold and silver smiths appears to a stranger astonishing. Like the other tradesmen they live in a street by themselves. Though they cannot yet compete with European artisans in the matter of taste and elegance, their wares are far from being destitute of either. So great is the dearth of mechanics, that when, in 1844, some French workmen arrived, the provincial government induced three of them, a carpenter, a cabinet-maker, and a blacksmith, to establish themselves in the country; and this event was deemed so important as to be officially noticed in the President's message.

Skilled labour of every kind is very scarce and expensive. Machinery of every description is thus kept in its present rude and primitive forms, and the general development of the internal resources of the country retarded.

The diamond washings, with the exception of a few of which but little is known, are confined to the diamond district in Minas Geraes, and are still conducted on the ill-judged system of a government monopoly. The escacalho, mentioned above, is dug up and removed to a convenient place for washing. As soon as raised during the rainy months as is expected to go into employment to the owner for the other six. It is deposited in heaps of from five to fifteen tons. A shed is erected in the form of a parallelogram twenty-five or thirty yards long and about fifteen wide, composed of upright posts supporting a thatched roof. A stream of water is conveyed down the middle of the area of this shed, covered with strong planks, on which the escacalho is laid two or three feet thick. On one side of the canal is a flooring of planks from four to five yards long, imbedded in clay, extending the whole length of the shed, and having a slope from the side of three or four inches to a yard. This flooring is divided into twenty compartments or troughs, each of about three feet in width, by means of planks set across. The upper end of each trough communicates with the canal. Three men take their seats at equal distances on high chairs placed on the heaps of escacalho, on the side of the canal opposite to the troughs. As soon as they are seated a negro enters into each compartment, provided with a short handled rake, with which he draws to him fifty or eighty lbs. of escacalho. He then lets in water upon this, and keeps stirring it with his rake until the earthy particles are washed off; then pours out the water, throwing out the largest stones, he carefully examines the rest for diamonds. As soon as he finds one he rises and holds it out between his fingers, throws it into a small basin held by another from him, and deposits it in a bowl half full of water, suspended from the centre of the structure. At the close of the day's labour, the diamonds obtained are taken from this deposit and delivered to the principal overseer, who weighs and registers them. On an average the mines yield 20,000 carats annually. The establishment is burdened with a load of debt incurred to foreigners for advances of money at the time that government first took it in hand. It is calculated that the diamonds cost government £33,94. per carat. The mines give employment and support to a population of about 6000. The trade in gems which have not been deemed of sufficient importance to be claimed as royalties, exists in Minas Geraes. The dealers in precious stones have their residences for the most part in Chapada. The greater part are sent in a state of nature to Bahia and Rio Janeiro; some, however, are polished, rudely enough, in the neighbourhood.

The gold country extends over Minas Geraes, Goias, Matto Gold Grosso, and part of S. Paulo. In all these districts the winning of mines, this metal is pursued in a manner exactly similar. It is found either in the beds of rivers, or in veins, at times twenty feet under the surface, at times close under the roots of the grass. Like diamonds, it is found mingled with escacalho. This mass, with the auriferous particles, is removed from its site, and placed in a place for washing. Where water of a sufficiently high level can be obtained, the ground is cut into slips twenty or thirty feet wide, two or three broad, and one deep. Near the bottom is a trench two or three feet deep. On these slips the escacalho is deposited, and on each stand six or eight negroes, keeping it in motion with shovels as the water flows gently upon it from above, until the whole is reduced to liquid mud and washed down. In the trench the particles of gold, from their weight, quickly precipitate. Other negroes are busy clearing away the stones and removing the surface mud. After five days washing the precipitate is carried to some convenient stream. Here each negro is provided with a bowl in a funnel shape, about two feet wide at the mouth, and five or six inches deep. Standing in the stream, he takes about six lbs. of the sediment into his bowl, admits regulated portions of water, and keeps moving the sediment until the gold deposit itself at the sides and bottom of the vessel. He then rinses the bowl in a larger vessel of clean water, and begins again. This operation occupies about five minutes. When the particles of gold in the sediment are very minute, troughs similar to those employed in diamond washing, but longer and narrower, are constructed. On their bottoms are stretched hides, tanned with the hair on, or pieces of rough baize. The water containing the sediment is thrown upon these troughs, and the gold, which is coarse is enmeshed in the rough surface. Every half hour the hides are carried to a neighbouring tank, stretched over it, dipped, and beaten repeatedly. The gold is found at the bottom of these reservoirs mingled with cemera, from which it is separated by the aid of mercury. The whole business is carried on in a most cumbrous, inelastic, and wasteful manner. The gold thus procured is brought to the nearest mint, where the crown's fifths are deducted, and the rest refined and melted. The deliverer may either have his gold in the form of an ingot, with the public stamp, or he may have a receipt for it, which entitles him to receive the amount from any mint in Brazil. The banks are given a mortgage to the best bolt of the population in Minas Geraes, in Matto Grosso, and in Goias. The total amount of gold obtained from the Brazilian mines, from their discovery till 1803, according to the registers, amounted to £1,155,000,000 BRAZIL Nut, the fruit of the Juvia (Bertholletia excelsa), a tree that abounds on the shores of the Orinoco, and in the northern parts of Brazil. This majestic tree rises to the height of 120 feet or more. The nuts, which are of a triangular shape, are inclosed in a large pericarp, which is divided into several compartments. The kernel has a rich flavour, and contains much oil. See Bertholletia.

Brazil Wood. See Dyeing.

Ship-building is diligently pursued at more than one station along the coast. The port of S. Francisco is the most southerly point at which the construction of vessels is carried on to any extent. Vessels of large size, and a number of small craft for coasters, are built here. The demand for ships' timber is always great. To the north of Bahia, on account of the reef, the ships are built on generally a small tonnage. Laranjeiras, Ilhaçou, and Villa do Conde build vessels capable of holding from 4000 to 9000 arrobas of loading. Pernambuco sits out a great number of small craft. The royal docks at Bahia are small, and few ships of war are built there; but such as are have the character of surpassing even the East Indian vessels in durability. Merchant ships are for the most part built at Tapajipe, about a league and a half to the north-east of the city.

The whale-fishery stations are S. Catharina, Hiparica, and Bahia. Whales are caught in the sea, in bays, and near the shore. The pans in which fishery the blubber is boiled are small, limited by common stones. The receivers are extremely apt to collect dust and dirt of all kinds. Throughout Brazil, not above 100 fish, great and small, are taken in the course of a year. Each yields, on an average, from fourteen to eighteen pipas (150 gallons English each) of train oil; and the value of this oil, together with the whalebone, may amount to L150.

On the islands of the Solimoes (Upper Amazonas), a considerable quantity of oil is yearly collected from the eggs of the turtle, which are dug up, broken in the boats, and left till the light oil separates and runs over on top. It is boiled and separated from the impurities, when it assumes the colour and consistence of lard. This product is deposited in earthen pots, each containing fifteen pounds each. Of these more than 8000 are yearly prepared on the islands.

The Madeira yields 1000. The drying and salting of fish is carried on to a considerable extent along the sea-coast, on the Amazonas, and upon a large lake near the salines on the Rio de Francisco. A coarse kind of woollen cloth for house consumption is manufactured at S. Paulo. Hats are made at S. João del Rey. There is an establishment for the manufacture of arms in the town of S. Paulo; a powder-mill in the neighbourhood of Rio, and one of less importance at Minas. A coarse cotton cloth is woven in Goyaz, Maranhao, and Sergipe. At Rey, used to clothe the slaves, or form bags for packing cotton. In S. Paulo, Goyaz, and Para, tanning is carried on to a small extent.

The commerce of Brazil, despite the disadvantages against which Commerce. It has had at various times to contend, has been on the whole uniformly progressive. These disadvantages consisted chiefly in the restrictions originally imposed on the young colony by the jealousy of the mother country, which refused to admit the Brazilian products, except at certain stated seasons of the year. The exportation of native productions to the old world was limited to the ports of Rio, Bahia, Olinda, and Paraiba. These restrictions continued in force until the colonial measures had been exploded in the commercial systems of other countries, and were not repealed till the beginning of the present century. In 1810, all the ports of Brazil were thrown open to British goods on the payment of duty at the rate of 15 per cent.; and though this rate has been greatly increased by the tariff of 1844, the average annual value of manufactured goods imported into Brazil from Great Britain alone, during the last ten years has been nearly L2,500,000.

The official value of imports to the United Kingdom in 1852, was L3,653,169, and the declared value of British produce exported L3,464,694.

The rapidity with which the trade of Brazil is annually increasing may be inferred by a comparison of the shipping returns for 1848 and 1852. In the former year, there entered the various harbours of Brazil 931 vessels of all countries, with a tonnage of 218,519; cleared out 1034 vessels of 321,722 tons. In 1852, there entered and left the harbour of Rio Janeiro alone 7284 vessels (including coasters) of 1,576,974 tons; and as this harbour monopolizes about one-half of traffic of the whole empire, the total number of ships engaged in the Brazilian trade may be estimated in round numbers at about 15,000 ships, of 3,000,000 tons.

For further information concerning the present aspect of Brazilian commerce, see Rio Janeiro, St Salvado, Pernambuco, &c., &c.

(W.W.—H.)