TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



319 



expedition was excited in the whole province. The 

 PauUsta, it is true, is distinguished above most of the 

 inhabitants of Brazil for obedience to the govern- 

 ment ; but the greatest dissatisfaction could not fail 

 to be produced by a war, which in the eyes of the 

 multitude was not carried on for urgent reasons, but 

 rather in compliance with the opinions of a few, and 

 to which the farmer, who till then had never been 

 used to war, remained wholly indifferent, till he was 

 roused on finding that it required the sacrifice of 

 the lives and domestic happiness of many of his fel- 

 low-countrymen. Accordingly a great part of the 

 militia deserted before they marched away, and 

 fled sometimes with their whole families, either 

 into the remote wildernesses of the capitania of 

 S. Paulo, or to Minas Geraes, where they settled, 

 and from which province, though demanded back, 

 they were not given up, according to the privileges 

 enjoyed by each capitania. 



In Aldea da Escada, a small village, three miles 

 to the south of Jacarehy, which lies near a formerly 

 numerous, but now abandoned, convent of Car- 

 melites, at the foot of a gneiss mountain, and close 

 to the Paraiba, we had the pleasure of meeting 

 with a very sensible country priest, who w^as at the 

 head of a mission for the Indians residing in that 

 vicinity. He observed to us, that the sphere of 

 his activity was daily lessened, in consequence of 

 the royal mandate which has abolished the restraint 

 of the missions over the Indians, and given them a 



