318 



TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



we met many Spanish fugitives belonging to the 

 suite of the Bishop of Cordova. These victims of 

 the poHtical parties in Buenos Ayres, were re- 

 ceived by the Pauhstas with the most sincere com- 

 miseration, and humanely provided for during 

 their long journey. The sending of troops from 

 S. Paulo, to the Island of Saint Catharine, and 

 from thence to Monte Video, had attracted the at- 

 tention of the Paulistas to the political events in 

 the south, and they thought by a hospitable recep^ 

 tion of those fugitives, to establish the claims of 

 their countrymen, now in that quarter, to equally 

 good treatment. The Portuguese expedition to 

 Monte Video had fallen heavily on the Paulistas, 

 for not only troops of the line were sent upon it, 

 but even a regiment of the militia, which occa- 

 sioned a sensible chasm in the labouring class, and 

 was attended with very lamentable consequences 

 to many families.* As a great part of the militia 

 perished in S. Catharina, and still more on the 

 continent in the garrison of Monte Video, partly 

 in battle, partly from longing for home, dysentery 

 and other diseases the consequence of unusual 

 hardship, a general discontent at this mihtary 



* We were informed that on the whole twelve thousand 

 men, of whom four thousand were Paulistas, carried on the 

 war in Monte Video. This war, the necessity of which was 

 affirmed by the minister Da Barca, but denied by many has, 

 however, proved in latter times advantageous to Brazil, by 

 giving it a natural boundary in the river La Plata. 



