Santos 81 



Souza founded a little settlement, from which the way 

 was speedily discovered to the more healthful and 

 equally fertile highlands separated from the coastal 

 plains by the lofty escarpments which rise to a height 

 of from twenty-five hundred to three thousand feet 

 along the ocean. Da Souza was not, however, the 

 first Portuguese to establish himself in this place. 

 In the year 1511 Joao Ramalho, a Portuguese deserter, 

 had settled here, as had Diego Alvarez at Bahia two 

 years before. He too, like Alvarez, took to himself 

 an Indian wife, and when Da Souza arrived he was 

 glad to welcome his fellow-countryman, and his dusky 

 sons and daughters played an important role in en- 

 abling the Portuguese colonists to enter into friendly 

 relations with the surrounding Indian tribes. The 

 occupation of the highlands by the colonists speedily 

 cut them off more or less from communication with the 

 world and forced the Paulistas to become more and 

 more self-reliant. They developed energy and daring 

 in their new surroundings, and, as the colony grew, 

 they acquired an independent spirit. With courage, 

 boldness, and the hospitality of the frontier, they min- 

 gled ignorance and cruelty. The story of the colony, 

 about which centers the early history of the develop- 

 ment of the power of Portugal in Brazil, is in many of 

 its features not unlike the story of the winning of our 

 Middle West. Tales of hardship and privation, of 

 encounters with hostile Indian tribes, of restless migra- 

 tions westward in quest of lands and gold fill the pages 

 of the historian of Sao Paulo, as they fill the pages of 

 those who narrate the history of the Mississippi Valley. 

 The Jesuits played an important part in the movement 

 at first, but the people of Sao Paulo discovered after a 

 while that the theocratic ideas of these representatives 



