Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

ART. XI. History of Brazil. By Robert Southey.
First. 4to. pp. 660. London. Longman and Co.

Part the 1810.

T is by no means easy to mention a style of composition which

and

point out one in which his talents might not be expected to raise him to distinguished eminence; few authors, of the present age, have written so much as he has done, and still fewer, of any age, have written so well. As a poet, we conceive his name has not yet arrived at the reputation which it is hereafter destined to attain; and, as an historian, the expectation excited by his previous and less important essays, will not be disappointed by the present bulky volume. With a share of genius and fancy equalled but by few; an honesty surpassed by none; and an extent and variety of information marked with the stamp of that industrious and almost forgotten accuracy which brings us back to the severer days of English study; he possesses a commanding knowledge of his mother tongue, which, though the ostentation of power sometimes produces pedantry, and its attendant negligence betrays him too often into antiquated homeliness, is strongly, however, and we think, advantageously contrasted with the monotonous and unbending dignity which distinguishes the greater part of modern historians. No author could be fixed upon to continue, with greater prospect of success, the task of American history which Robertson left unfinished; and none is better adapted to correct and supply, by superior minuteness, zealous research, and lively painting of nature and manners, the cold, and often inaccurate outline of that sensible and pleasing, but, certainly, superficial writer.

That portion of American annals* which, in this literary colonization, has fallen to Mr. Southey's share, has less indeed of the usual common places of history, less that is refined, or splendid, or illustrious, than is offered by the revolutions of Europe and of Asia, or even by the transactions of the Spaniards in Mexico, Chili, and Peru.

I have to speak,' are Mr. Southey's words, of savages so barbarous, that little sympathy can be felt for any sufferings which they endured, and of colonists, in whose triumphs no joy will be taken, because they added avarice to barbarity;-ignoble men, carrying on an obscure warfare, the consequences of which have been greater than were produced by the conquests of Alexander or of Charlemagne, and will be far more lasting. Even the few higher characters which appear

The title of History of Brazil' is hardly adequate to the subject, as Mr. Southey's work comprises the rise and progress of all the European colonies, from the Andes to the Atlantic, and from the Plata to the river of Amazons.

have obtained no fame beyond the limits of their own religion, scarcely beyond those of their language.'

With all these defects incidental to his subject, we agree with him in rating its importance highly. Much yet remains to be learned concerning the habits and character of savages, and it is a topic on which erroneous opinions have done such intinite harm, that a philosophic mind can hardly bestow its attention better, than in illustrating those barbarous manners and strange superstitions which, wild as they seem, are the rudiments, perhaps, and, as it were, the grammar of political man. And, however inglorious the agents in the colonization of Brazil-the mariners-the missionaries-the exiles of one of the least of our European nations; it cannot be an unimportant labour to trace the process by which their slender means achieved effects so apparently disproportioned. In these rude efforts of an infant state, these struggles with their savage neighbours, or the more important warfare which they have carried on against the beasts of the wood, the dragons of the fen, and the unkindly effects of strange and adverse climates, we are readingthe original history of every civilized nation in the world; the tales of Cadmus and Jason divested of fable: it is to such expeditions as these that Europe owes its present glories:

Sic fortis Etruria crevit :

Scilicet, et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma!

And if the end of history be, indeed, instruction, what better lesson can she afford to individual and private exertion than the contemplation of their gigantic result? What more important warning and example to those high-souled men who (should the increasing calamities of Europe produce another age of colonies) may bear, with equal courage, and with greater mercy, a purer faith and better constitution than those of the conquerors of Brazil, to shelter beyond the reach of despotism amid the forests of New Zealand, or the countless isles of the Polynesian Archipelago?

It was Vicente Yanez Pinzon, a Spaniard, and a distinguished associate of Columbus, who, in the year 1500, discovered the coast of Brazil. As usual, in those days, the Castilians met with gold and giants, and carried as many infidels as they could catch, into exile and slavery. But this was all the profit which they derived from their discovery. The land was to the east of Pope Alexander's famous boundary line; and Pinzon had not yet brought the news of his success to Europe, when the fleet of Portugal, under Cabral, was driven, by a fortunate storm which befel them in their way to India, to that country which had been thus blindly allotted to their future empire. Cabral was followed by the famous Amerigo Vespucci, a really able navigator, who, while he narrowly missed the honour of

discovering the Straits of Magellan, has, by a singular fortune, been recompensed far above his deserts, in imposing, perhaps unconsciously, his name on a mighty continent. The country thus partially explored, bore, according to Garcia, the native name of Arabutan. Cabral, however, called it Santa Cruz, and, within a few years after its discovery, both appellations were forgotten in the new one of Brazil, derived, as Mr. Southey thinks, from the valuable wood which was brought from thence, or, as appears to us also possible, from the Milesian Fables, introduced to our acquaintance in the notes to the poem of Madoc,' and to the present volume. Without, indeed, recurring to the Platonic Atlantis, or the lucky guess of Seneca, who foresaw, according to Garcia, the discovery of America, como suelen adivinar los freneticos i poetas por calentarse demasiadamente el celebro'; it is a very perplexing and curious question, nor, as yet, by any means sufficiently explained, from what source, prior to Columbus, the suspicion arose, so prevalent in the darker ages, of countries

[ocr errors]

6

'Farre in the sea, beyond West Spayne.'

To the voyage of St. Brandan and his monks, and that of Mr. Southey's Cambrian Hero, may be added the extraordinary expedition of Dante's Ulysses, whom the poet conducts in a second ramble, far more adventurous than the first, and, by the same track with Columbus, to suffer shipwreck on the dusky and mountainous shore of the Terrestrial paradise. (Inferno, canto 26.) Two fabulous Atlantic islands, of the names of Brazil and Antilia, occur in maps anterior to the Spanish voyage. The first of these may have been taken from an old Irish superstition, founded on a natural phenomenon, and a name once famous might have been easily transferred, as was at least the case with Antilia, to the discoveries afterwards made.

But Chaucer, when he mentions the red dye of Brazil, in the same breath with graine of Portingale,'* displays a premature knowledge of its produce which is very perplexing, and the more so, because we cannot find any sufficient authority to prove that the wood existed in the ancient hemisphere, or that Brazil has a meaning in any Eastern or European language. Is it absurd to suppose that specimens of American timber may have been cast on the western shores of Europe in sufficient quantities to become a rare and valuable article in dying? Or that such arrivals may have been thought to proceed from the enchanted Island of O-Brazil? This wood, however, which, except parrots and monkies, was the only article of exportation Brazil was then known to afford,

* Him needeth not his colour for to dien

With Brazil, or with graine of Portingale.'-Nonnes Preest's Tait.

(for gryphons and tiger's wool, though mentioned in an old English statement, must have been very rare commodities indeed, and Pinzon was mistaken in his golden tales,) was not of sufficient value to make the country of any great importance in the estimation of the Lords of the conquest and commerce of India.' The land was neglected and left like a common to whoever chose to traffic there, and even when its value was better understood, the Government of Lisbon was long more anxious to exclude the French from its commerce, than to profit by the possession themselves. Almost all which has been done in Brazil has been effected by private exertion. At first, a trade was carried on with the Indian inhabitants in the same manner, and for nearly the same commodities as that now maintained by the English and Americans with the savages of Polynesia.

By degrees, occasional adventurers thrown by shipwreck on the coast, or led by idleness and aversion to restraint, united themselves with the natives, and became interpreters or supercargoes. Of these one of the first and most remarkable was Diogo Alvarez, a young Portuguese, whose story might supplant Philip Quarl or Robinson Crusoe in the nursery, and set many an ardent boy on fire for voyages and discovery.

'He was wrecked upon the shoals on the North of the bar of Bahia. Part of the crew were lost; others escaped this death to suffer one more dreadful; the natives seized and eat them. Diogo saw that there was no other possible chance of saving his life, than by making himself as useful as possible to these cannibals. He therefore exerted himself in recovering things from the wreck, and by these exertions succeeded in conciliating their favour. Among other things he was fortunate enough to get on shore some barrels of powder, and a musket, which he put in order at his first leisure, after his masters were returned to their village; and one day when the opportunity was favourable, brought down a bird before them. The women and children shouted Caramuru! Caramuru! which signified a man of fire! and they cried out that he would destroy them: but he told the men, whose astonishment had less of fear mingled with it, that he would go with them to war and kill their enemies.

'Caramuru was the name which from thenceforward he was known by. They marched against the Tapuyas; the fame of this dreadful engine went before them, and the Tapuyas fled. From a slave Caramuru became a sovereign. The chiefs of the savages thought themselves happy if he would accept their daughters to be his wives; he fixed his abode upon the spot where Villa Velha was afterwards erected, and soon saw as numerous a progeny as an old patriarch's rising round him. The best families in Bahia trace their origin to him.'-p. 30, 31.

Caramuru, however, and persons in the same condition with himself, were not the only colonists many individuals founded

VOL IV. NO. VƑL.

[ocr errors]

little factories in different parts of the country; and small forts and establishments, resembling nearly those at present scattered along the Coast of Guinea, appear, though this stage of Brazilian history is not very clearly told, to have been founded by government; yet the persons sent out to these feeble garrisons, were of all others least adapted to serve the real interests of their country, or to contribute to the advantage of the natives, a docile race, whom a wiser policy might have soon reclaimed.

A majority, at least, of these colonists were criminals, not sent as prisoners or labourers, like our convicts in New South Wales, but employed as soldiers, or as free settlers, and sometimes even as commanders and governors. But if the system of Port Jackson be erroneous, and tend to immorality, what must have been the effect of sending the same description of characters in responsible and important situations? Was there a Portuguese gentleman whose vices were intolerable in his mother country? He was sent with arms in his hands to prey upon the wretched Americans. Was there an Indian governor, whose lust and cruelties had forced themselves on the notice of government? he was punished by the permission to tyrannize, with still less restraint upon his actions, in Brazil. For many generations this extraordinary policy was the curse of the South American colonies; but at first when the settlers were almost all of this description, released from the restraints of European laws and decency, and thinly scattered amid numerous tribes of savages,-it is evident that the wicked passions of cach party would grow worse by their mutual example. We have seen in the present day how much harm has been done by the runagate sailors in Polynesia, and in Brazil the consequences appear to have been equally pernicious.

'Each made the other worse; the cannibals acquired new means of destruction, and the Europeans new modes of barbarity. The Europeans were weaned from that human horror at the bloody feasts of the savages, which, ruffians as they were, they had at first felt, and the natives lost that awe and veneration for a superior race, which might have been improved so greatly to their own advantage.'

For thirty years after the discovery of Brazil, things remained in this neglected state; but by degrees the fertility of the soil and the excellence of the climate were known, and the renown of Cortez and Pizarro, with the treasures they had acquired, conferred a sort of fashion on America, which induced noble adventurers of capital and influence to try their fortune there. Here too the system pursued was singular; to encourage such enterprises, the country was partitioned by Joam the Third into large lots, under the name of Captaincies, each extending over 50 leagues of coast, and each committed to the absolute and hereditary government of the Fi

« AnteriorContinuar »