2S6 



NOTES ON BRAZIL. 



kind, except at the two extreme points of the bay. The Southern one 

 is ornamented with the round chapel of Copo Cabano, almost in ruins. 

 Here, it is said, smugglers have found an useful station, the passes into the 

 country being narrow and intricate. From hence a loose beach leads to 

 the Lagoa do Freitas, separated from the sea only by a bank of sand, 

 three hundred yards long, and at low water, broad and lofty. Against 

 this bank the waves break furiously in tempestuous weather, and so dash 

 over it as to render a gallop along it, during the recoil of the billow, a 

 rough and not unmanly exercise. 



By another of these roads we are conducted to a small swampy plain 

 surrounded by mountains, where Mem de Sa performed perliaps one of 

 the most bloody of his feats. On a military excursion from Villa Velha, 

 he accidentally learned that the Indians were holding one of their great 

 festivals in the neighbouring woods ; and, though his detachment was 

 small, determined to attack them. He concealed himself until the 

 evening, when his party approached, unperceived, to the very fires of 

 the Indians, and with the sword in one hand and a fire-brand, which 

 every soldier had been ordered to seize, in the other, so effectually per- 

 formed the work of slaughter and devastation, that it is said, not a soul 

 escaped, nor a hut was left unconsumed. This event no less plainly 

 marks the remissness with which the war had been carried on, than its 

 abominable cruelty. Villa Velha, which had then been a year in the 

 hands of the Portuguese, is only two miles from this spot, and the 

 beach, where they must often have landed, not more than half a mile; 

 yet it seems that they were altogether uninformed of this Indian 

 Settlement. 



Here is also the site of one of the oldest and most retired of the 

 establishments belonging to the Jesuits. The house and chapel, of which 

 enough remains to show their magnitude, strength, and splendour, now 

 look from their elevation upon the harbour, which appears to have 

 been once hidden from them by a mass of native forest. In this 

 place were confined the French prisoners taken in the attack made 

 upon Rio in 1710, by Du Clerc ; and hither they were conducted so 



