46 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[October, 
was sent over to superintend the colony as governor-genera] to 
make war upon the hospitable and unoffending Indians^ in order 
to reduce them at once to slavery and the true faith ; and to com- 
pel them to cultivate the ground for the colonists, on such terms 
as he chose to dictate. 
This outrageous course of conduct, as might naturally have 
been expected,, quickly roused the free independent spirit of the 
natives, whose courage and numbers would have soon swept the 
intruders from their soil, had it not been for the interference 
of some Jesuit missionaries, who had already acquired great 
influence over the Indians near the coast, whom they endeav- 
oured to persuade to accede to terms of reconciliation with the 
colonists. Some consented, and thus became subservient to their 
invaders ; but the great mass of the original population, having 
lost confidence in their double-dealing neighbours, refused to hold 
any further intercourse with such monsters of injustice, but indig- 
nantly retired into the interior, resolved, as afterward did the 
Araucanians on the western side of the same continent, to maintain 
their independence at all hazards. Thus failing in the nefarious 
attempt to make slaves of the natives, and being too indolent to 
perform their own agricultural labours, they turned their eyes^ 
towards ill-fated Africa, and were the first to commence that 
horrible traffic in human flesh, which, for three hundred yesis 
since, has been the disgrace of humanity ! 
The proscribed outlaws who formed the nucleus of this colony, 
which has since grown to a mighty empire, and is now an inde- 
pendent nation, originally seated themselves at Porto Seguro, 
from whence they gradually extended themselves to Bakia de 
Todas Santos, or the Bay of All Saints, in latitude 13° 13' south, 
longitude 38° 24' west, where they founded, the city of St. Salvador. 
Here, for many years, was the seat of the colonial; government, 
and the emporium of Brazilian commerce ; the principal articles 
of importation being African slaves, twenty thousand of which 
were, but a few years ago, imported annually into the different- 
ports of BraziL 
Fifteen years after Cabral's first landing in Brazil, dtiring which 
period the Portuguese navigators had explored a great portion 
of the Southern American coast north of the La Plata, the har-^ 
bour of, Rio Janeiro was first discovered by Solis. This hap> 
