IXTHODUCTION. 
23 
Sumo (littieulty, in mastcuiug them, and finally driving them away in 
Unf'ortnnately the period of peace which followed these victories, ami 
during which the intemally effervescing condition of things began to 
clear and settle, was used by the Portuguese CJovernment only to get xip 
a kind of old .Jai)auese system of isolation, by which it was intended to 
keep the colony in jierpetnal tutelage. In consequence of this even now, 
after the lapse of half a century since it violently separated itself, 
Ih'azilians gemu’ally entertain a bittfw grudge against the mother 
country. All the trade to and from Brazil was engrossed by Portugal ; 
every functioutiry, down to the last clerk, was Portuguese.* Any other 
European of scientific education v'as looked at with suspicion ; and 
particularly they sought to prevent by all means the exploration of the, 
interior, as they feai’ed not only that the eyes of the natives might Ih\ 
opened to their mode of administration, but also that such travellers 
might side with the Spaniards in tlieir long dispute regarding the 
boundai'ics of the two nations, as the French astronomer, La Coudamine, 
had done. 
This question, which arose shortly after the discovery, and was 
hushed up only during the short Union of both the Crowns (from 1581 — 
1G40), broke out with renewed vigour every now and then, maugi-e the 
Treaty of Tordesilhas in 1494 ; accordhig to which, by a bull of Pope 
Alexander VI., the infamous Borgia, the transmarine possessions of the 
two nations were to be divided by a meridian drawn arbitrarily over land 
and main ; and in .spite of a subsequent confirmation of this strange 
partition of the terrestrial globe by P<q>e Julius II., in 1506. Both 
these extraordinary do(;umeuts dating from a period when the real 
extent of our planet, and the situation of its vairious parts, were utterly 
unknown, either a stout belief in their own infallibility, or a strong dose 
of sublime audacity, was certainly required to induce tlie successors of 
St. Peter ever to impose such an award. 
To the present day the Brazilian calls the Dutch cheese queijo do reino, cheese 
Irom the kingdom, that is to say, from Portugal ; brown Indian jjejjper, pimenta do 
reino ; because these articles and many others, by no moans produced on Portuguese 
soil, reached the colony only through Portugal, of course at three times their original 
price. Formerly in Brazil, as still in BoKvia, the costliest plate might be found in 
opulent houses, but not onongh knives and glasses, since plate of true Portuguese 
manufacture coidd be had more easily, and comparatively cheaper, than steelwaro or 
crockery. 
