The South American Republics Volume I Part 11

Great public edifices were completed, the telegraph cable was laid to Buenos Aires, the building of railroads was begun, and a new civil code adopted. Immigration was resumed on a large scale and the country felt the economic impulse that was already transforming the whole Plate valley. Although the country rapidly prospered under the military administration of Flores, the feeling of the blancos remained intensely bitter, and on the 15th of February, 1868, the colorado president was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the streets of Montevideo.

Flores's death was the signal for wholesale executions and for the outbreak of another long blanco insurrection. Although the growth of wealth and population had never been more rapid than at this very time, the country was not free from civil disturbance until 1872, when an armistice was signed. A year later troubles broke out again and the troops refused to march against the insurgents. To the bitterness of party feeling and the official corruption which diminished the revenue and hampered commerce was added the embarra.s.sment of the financial difficulties which followed the great panic of 1873. The public debt had doubled in the ten years between 1860 and 1870 and now reached the enormous figure of over forty million dollars, nearly $150 for each inhabitant in the country. One president after another was unable to maintain himself in the face of the financial and political difficulties of the situation, but in 1876 General Lorenzo Latorre, an intelligent and determined colorado chief, became dictator. For economy's sake, he reduced the number of army officers, of whom there were over twelve hundred for two thousand privates. He rooted out the worst frauds in the customs service, and refunded the public debt, compelling the foreign creditors to accept six instead of twelve per cent. interest. At the same time he rigidly suppressed the disorders which had hara.s.sed the country since the murder of Flores. The bands of marauders, a.s.sa.s.sins, and bandits, who had exercised their nefarious occupations under cover of belonging to the insurrectionists, were relentlessly pursued and brought to justice. For the first time in years a traveller could traverse the country from end to end without arms. Like Flores, Latorre often used brute force to secure peace and order, and the Uruguayans were too turbulent to submit long to such dictation. Countless conspiracies were formed which were bloodily suppressed, but public fear and dislike of Latorre grew continually more menacing. In 1880, tired out with constant anxieties and grieved over what he considered the ingrat.i.tude of his countrymen, Latorre resigned his office and went into exile.

His successor, Dr. Vidal, held the presidency for only two years, when he, too, was forced to resign. The next president, Maximo Santos, served his complete term of four full years, ending in 1886. Then Vidal managed to get back into power for a few months and was again replaced by Santos, who, in turn, was succeeded by Tajes, who governed the country until 1890. The ten years succeeding the resignation of Latorre were materially very prosperous. The sheep industry developed tremendously; the production of wheat was more than doubled; immigration ran up to nearly 20,000 a year; the population of the country reached 700,000, having increased from 400,000 in twelve years. Immigration had been so great that the number of the foreign-born almost equalled the natives, even when including in the latter those of foreign parentage. In the mixture of nationalities the foundations have been laid for a race of unusual vigour and of pure Caucasian descent.

The bitterness of the old factional feeling largely died out during the disturbances which succeeded the murder of Flores. The blancos had suffered terrible losses in 1864, and the colorados had become far the more numerous party. During Latorre's dictators.h.i.+p the distinctions between the two were almost lost, and the blanco party, by that name at least, ceased to be an active factor in politics. New factions, however, took their place, but the struggles for place and power lacked the conviction and ferocity of the old civil wars. The gaucho and Creole element, although still politically dominant, was diluted by the infiltration of a more industrially minded population. The people were not so exclusively pastoral and had ceased to be so military in their tastes. The foreign immigrants wanted peace,--a chance to sow their wheat and tend their sheep undisturbed,--and the gaucho, living on his horse, feeding on beef alone, and always ready to ride off to fight by the side of his favourite chief, ceased in many of the departments to be the dominant factor. Politics became largely a game played by the ruling Spanish-American caste and did not directly interfere with the material interests of the country, and rarely affected the maintenance of law and order.

The prosperity of the eighties had been accompanied by an enormous increase in governmental expenditures and debt. The economies so painfully enforced in Latorre's administration were abandoned. Nearly as much money was spent in ten years as had been in the previous fifty years of the republic's existence. The debt more than doubled, and the deficit each year equalled fifty per cent. of the receipts. The Buenos Aires panic of 1890 brought on grave commercial difficulties; real estate dropped one-half; prices fell, and, as usual, the people blamed the government. Political disturbances began with an attempt at a blanco uprising in Montevideo in 1891. The clergy were active in fomenting dissatisfaction, but the trouble was suppressed for the time. Herrera y Obes, elected in 1890, served his term out, but the government was getting deeper and deeper into the financial mire, in spite of having cut down the rate of interest on the public debt fifty per cent. The murmurs of the public grew constantly more menacing against a taxation which had become so excessive that it almost threatened the destruction of industries.

When the election came on in 1894 the outgoing president found that he had not control of Congress, the body which elects the president. A deadlock ensued and the ballots were taken amid confusion and fears of intimidation. Ellaure, the president's candidate, dared not accept because of the threatening att.i.tude of the opposition. Finally, Juan Idiarte Borda was declared elected, amid outcries and protests against dictation and terrorism. The new president pledged himself to reform the finances and pursue a conciliatory policy toward the different factions, but he was soon accused of extravagance and favouritism. The blancos had again become a formidable party after twenty years of eclipse, and they believed that they were being deprived of their political rights by the colorado president. In 1896 he procured the election of a Congress completely under his control, and early in 1897, seeing no hope of a const.i.tutional change, a blanco colonel named Lamas raised the standard of revolt, a.s.sembled a force in the western provinces, and gained a victory over the president's soldiers. He marched east and joined Aparicio Saraiva, a chief belonging to a family celebrated in the military annals of Brazil, who had brought a considerable force over the border. The rebels soon had possession of the eastern departments and menaced Montevideo, while Borda borrowed money right and left and armed and drilled regiment after regiment to prosecute the war against them.

Nevertheless, the rebels maintained themselves and roamed the country at will. They would listen to no terms that did not include Borda's resignation, and it seemed as if the country was doomed to pa.s.s through another long and b.l.o.o.d.y civil war.

On August 25, 1897, President Borda was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the streets of Montevideo by a respectable grocer's clerk. The vice-president, Juan L.

Cuestas, succeeded peacefully to the control of the government in Montevideo, and at once entered into negotiations with the leaders of the insurrectionists in the departments. Terms were quickly agreed upon.

Cuestas conceded minority representation and electoral reform, and in a very short time the rebels had laid down their arms. The few months of war had cost Uruguay dear. Thirteen million dollars had been spent by the government, the collection of the revenue had been interrupted, and internal transportation had been demoralised. Now, however, industry and commerce resumed their usual course, and, since President Cuestas's accession to power, the peace of the country has been undisturbed.

Political manifestations have been confined to disputes in Congress and the press. They became so violent that in 1898 the president dissolved the chambers and declared himself dictator. He reorganised the army on a basis which insured that there would be no mutinies, and at the same time pursued a policy of administrative reform which has done much to bring order out of the financial confusion. The obligations of the government have been religiously performed, and Uruguay's currency is on a gold basis. In 1899 Cuestas was elected president according to the forms of the Const.i.tution. He carried out the pledge he had given the blancos not to interfere with the elections, and in 1900 they made great gains and elected enough members to control the Senate. The political situation has, therefore, been somewhat strained, but there seems to be no danger that the congressional opposition will try to interfere with the executive functions of the president.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL, MONTEVIDEO.]

This gallant and pugnacious little people will continue to play a role in South American affairs out of all proportion to the size of their country. Uruguay seems certain to continue to be the political storm-centre of the Atlantic coast. Climate, soil, and geographical position insure a rapid increase in population and wealth, while its political independence must continue to be an object of constant solicitude on the part of its gigantic neighbours, Argentina and Brazil.

Montevideo is a formidable trade rival to Buenos Aires, and must always be, as it has so often been in the past, the base for any attach at the heart of the Argentine Republic. To the north nothing but an artificial boundary separates Uruguay from Rio Grande do Sul, and the two regions are alike in everything except language. Should the Portuguese-Americans again evince those tendencies toward expansion which distinguished them in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Uruguay would be the natural point of attack, and if Brazil should ever divide into its component parts, as it came so near doing in 1822 and again in 1837, Rio Grande and Uruguay might find it necessary to coalesce, or possibly wars might ensue between them which would change the face of South America. A not improbable alternative would be the establishment of a power on the north bank of the Plate strong enough to hold its own, and which might play the same role in the interaction of Spanish and Portuguese Americans as did Flanders between the Teutons and Latins in Europe.

BRAZIL

CHAPTER I

PORTUGAL

The motherland of Brazil is Portugal. Profound as were the changes incident to transplanting a people to a virgin continent; notwithstanding Spanish dominion and Dutch conquests; large as were the admixtures of negro, Indian, and alien blood; in spite of independence and Republicanism; the language, customs, religion, and laws of Brazil are to-day substantially like those of Portugal.

The parallel between the United States and Britain is not closer. Brazil has diverged even less than her model. Her population may have a larger admixture of non-Portuguese blood than the North Americans have of non-British, but politically there was less opportunity for divergence, for Brazil was kept under much closer subordination. The discovery of Brazil coincided with the destruction of popular liberties in the mother-country. Thereafter, the Portuguese government was a centralised despotism, and its hand lay heavy on the Brazilian provinces. They were forbidden intercourse with the rest of the world; functionaries of every kind were continually imported; the provinces never dreamed of a.s.serting any right to self-government; from the beginning the system was centralising and stifling. The North American colonies of England were left to grow up by themselves; they were never under a colonial government properly so called; a revolt followed the first serious attempt to subject them to a real colonial regime. But the independence of Brazil came because liberties were finally granted, not because they were threatened to be taken away. The country remained under a tutelage, growing continually more rigorous, and which ceased only after the Portuguese monarch had fled from Lisbon and the colony had become greater than the mother-country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OUTLINE MAP OF BRAZIL]

It is, therefore, in the little peninsular kingdom, during the centuries before Cabral caught sight of the South American coast, that we must look for the beginnings of Brazil. Rome gave to Portugal laws, language, religion, and architecture; the forests of Germany modified her political inst.i.tutions; the Saracens gave her the arts, navigation, and material civilisation. Her happy geographical position near the Straits of Gibraltar made her the meeting-place for the Mohammedan and Christian religions--of Levantine civilisation with Teutonic barbarism and liberty. That position also enabled the qualities of daring and enterprise and the scientific knowledge acquired in centuries of long conflicts and intercourse with the Moors to be turned to immediate advantage when the Renaissance came. Portugal was the pioneer of Europe in discovery and colonisation, though Spain followed close after.

Together they led in making Western European civilisation dominant beyond seas. The nations who followed in their track have long since pa.s.sed them, but Portugal had once the opportunity of spreading her influence and inst.i.tutions over half the planet. In Brazil she mixed success with the failure that was her fate elsewhere. Brazil is to-day the nation which has inherited Roman civilisation in the least modified form, and is the country where the genuine Latin spirit has the best opportunity for growth and survival.

The study of Portugal takes on a new dignity and importance when we reflect that she has given language, inst.i.tutions, and laws to half of South America and to a population that already outnumbers her own four to one. She is ent.i.tled to the interest of the world if only because she has placed her indelible imprint on a region which is as large as Europe and as fertile as Java, and which is destined within the next two centuries to support the largest population of any of the great political divisions of the globe.

In the twelfth century, the coalescence of a fragment of the kingdom of Leon with the Moorish territory near the mouth of the Tagus originated Portugal as a separate country. The race was very mixed. Its princ.i.p.al elements were the Leonese and the Mosarabes--the latter being the Christians of Moorish Portugal left undisturbed from Visigothic times by their tolerant Mohammedan conquerors. Each of these elements was, in its turn, of mixed origin. To the original Iberian population, which had occupied the Peninsula two thousand years before the Christian era, had been successively added Phenicians, Greeks, Celts, Ligurians, Carthaginians, Latins,--and in Roman times,--officials, soldiers, and slaves from all over the empire, including many Jews. The long Roman dominion welded all these together into a h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s. Later, the Visigothic conquest added a large Teutonic contingent, which is especially evident in northern and Leonese Portugal. Still later, the Saracens intermarried in considerable numbers with the Mosarabes of southern Portugal. After the formation of the modern kingdom, another element was added in the French, Provencals, Flemings, and English who came in large numbers to aid in the final expulsion of the Moors. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Portuguese had become a distinct nation. Racial and religious tolerance were more advanced than in the rest of Europe; self-governing munic.i.p.alities covered the greatest part of the country, each privileged within a definite territory. The n.o.bles, prelates, and monastic and military orders were still privileged, and their property was not subject to tribute, but their power was not predominant. The king was chief of the army and the proprietor of a very considerable proportion of the land, but he was under constant pressure to grant it to the religious orders and to the n.o.bles. The people were everywhere heavily taxed--in the munic.i.p.alities and Crown lands by the king, and on the estates of the privileged orders for the benefit of their great proprietors. The n.o.bles were under no enforceable obligation to perform military service. A great general deliberative and representative a.s.sembly--the Cortes--had come into being when the monarchy was founded. It included representatives of the munic.i.p.alities as well as n.o.bles and clergy, and its importance and vitality are shown by the fact that from 1250 to 1376 it met twenty-five times. By the latter date, jurisprudence had become generalised and its administration had fallen into the hands of the Crown. The nation had developed out of local and cla.s.s privilege a reasonably consistent and uniform administration. The munic.i.p.alities were the basis of the governmental structure, and a rude but effective local self-government existed through their instrumentality. The norm for the centralisation and organisation had not been, as in nearly all the rest of Europe, the feudal system, but the surviving fragments of the Roman structure. To the munic.i.p.alities was largely due the astonis.h.i.+ng vigour shown by the Portuguese people in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The norm even survived the destruction of liberty, and its influence can be seen in every step of the subsequent development of Portugal and also of Brazil.

Portugal's heroic era began near the close of the fourteenth century.

The great King John I., founder of the dynasty of Aviz, secured Portugal for ever from absorption by Spain when he won the battle of Aljubarrota in 1385. This was the signal for a rapid transformation of the character and policies of the Portuguese people. The thirst for war and adventure grew. The old Portugal--laborious, agricultural, home-loving, conservative--was replaced by a new Portugal--adventurous, seafaring, eager, romantic, longing for conquest, glory, and wealth, its eyes straining over the sea, the embodiment of the spirit of the Renaissance on its material side. The meeting of the Levant and the Baltic, the East and the West, Mohammedans and Christianity, the arts and knowledge of the old races with the energy of the new, had at last produced its perfect work. In 1415 an army was sent into Africa, and Ceuta was conquered; and there began that marvellous series of voyages which not only transformed Portugal into an empire, but gave a new world to Europe and revolutionised the planet. Modern scientific navigation began with the sailors instructed in the school which was set up at Sagres by Prince Henry, King John's son. Until then, European nautical knowledge had been very meagre. The compa.s.s served only to indicate direction, not distance or position, and did not suffice for the systematic navigation of the open Atlantic. The Portuguese first made that possible by using astronomical observations and inventing the quadrant and the astrolabe.

This knowledge, once acquired, was promptly applied to the work of navigation. Madeira was discovered in 1418; the Canaries in 1427; the Azores in 1432. The first and last were colonised and rapidly became populous. To the West the explorers pushed no farther for the present, but to the south they reached Cape Blanco in 1441, Senegambia and Cape Verde in 1445, and the Cape Verde Islands in 1460. In 1469, they turned into the Gulf of Guinea, and in 1471 were the first Europeans to cross the Equator. Their search, at first random, now became definite. They believed it was only necessary to keep on and they would round the southern extremity of Africa and reach Abyssinia and India by sea, a hope which became a certainty in 1487, when Bartholomew Diaz finally reached the Cape of Good Hope.

Meanwhile, a political revolution had been going on. The strong kings of the line of Aviz had won for the Crown a moral preponderance over the n.o.bility and clergy. The latter resisted the royal encroachments, but the munic.i.p.alities joined the monarchs in the struggle against them. The king who established centralised despotism--the Richelieu of Portugal--was John II., the third of the Aviz dynasty, and who reigned from 1481 to 1495. Under his rule, the whole military power was concentrated in the Crown; the n.o.bility became a cla.s.s living at Court; the king was the fountain of all honour and advancement; local officers were replaced by officials appointed by and responsible to the central government; piece by piece the independent functions of the munic.i.p.alities were taken away.

Concentration of power in the hands of monarch and bureaucracy produced its inevitable effect. A short period of marvellous brilliancy in arms, statecraft, literature, and the arts was followed by sudden decay. The self-governing munic.i.p.alities had nurtured a mult.i.tude of men whom small power and responsibility fitted for great things. The nation turned eagerly to the work of exploration and conquest and prosecuted it efficiently.

Such a people would undertake conquest for their king, rather than colonisation on their own account; they would emigrate under military leaders.h.i.+p and forms; their colonies would tolerate a close control by the mother country; they would seek to convert the aborigines and reduce them to slavery; private initiative would be stifled and overshadowed by that of the government; large proprietors.h.i.+p would be the rule; the colonies would be burdened with functionaries sent in successive swarms from home; taxation would be excessive; the best talent would go into the bureau and not concern itself with industrial matters; invention and originality would be discouraged; agriculture would not be diversified, nor manufactures thrive. To this day a few staple crops predominate in Brazil; small landowners.h.i.+p is the exception, and the people show little apt.i.tude for change when unfavourable circ.u.mstances make their crops unprofitable. Brazilian Creoles have little taste for manual pursuits, and not much more for commerce. Non-Portuguese immigration has supplied most of the labour; foreigners have always conducted most of the trade.

CHAPTER II

DISCOVERY

On the 9th of March, 1500, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese n.o.bleman of ill.u.s.trious birth, but not yet distinguished by any notable feats in war or seamans.h.i.+p, sailed from Lisbon for the East Indies. This expedition was sent out to continue the work begun by Vasco da Gama in the first all-sea voyage to India. It was an advance-guard for the larger armament that two years later founded the Portuguese empire on the coasts of India. Vasco da Gama himself wrote Cabral's sailing orders. The latter was instructed, after pa.s.sing the Cape Verde Islands in 14 North, to sail directly south, as long as the wind was favourable. If forced to change his course, he was ordered to keep on the starboard tack, even though it led him south-west. When he reached the lat.i.tude of the Cape of Good Hope--34 South--he was to bear away to the east.

These sailing instructions have been the subject of much discussion.

Many believe their sole purpose was to enable Cabral to avoid the Guinea calms, so annoying to sailing s.h.i.+ps near the African coast. Others contend that Da Gama had seen signs of land to the west on his own voyage, and that its discovery was a real, though secondary, object of the expedition. In any event the Brazilian coast is too near the natural route around Africa to have escaped encounter, and would infallibly have shortly been seen by some one else.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD TOWER AT LISBON WHENCE THE FLEET SAILED.]

Forty-two days after leaving Lisbon, Cabral's fleet saw unmistakable signs of land, being then in lat.i.tude 17 degrees south and longitude 36 degrees west. From the Cape Verde Islands, just off the western point of Africa, he had made 2300 miles, and had come 500 miles to the west. The next day a mountain was sighted, which he called Paschoal, because it was Easter week. This mountain is in the southern part of the state of Bahia, about four hundred miles north-east of Rio, and on a coast that to this day is spa.r.s.ely inhabited and rarely visited. The following day the whole fleet came to an anchor a mile and a half from the sh.o.r.e, and just north of the dangerous Abrolhos reefs. This was the 23rd of April, Old Style, which corresponds with the 3rd of May in the Gregorian calendar. The date is a national holiday in Brazil, and the anniversary for the annual convening of Congress.

Because no quadrupeds or large rivers were seen, Cabral thought he had discovered an island and named it the "Island of the True Cross." The name has not survived except in poetry. He stopped ten days on the coast, took formal possession, and sent expeditions on sh.o.r.e which entered into communication with the Indians, who were seen in considerable numbers. It is characteristic that the first question asked of the Indians was if they knew what gold and silver were. They were peaceable and friendly, and the old chronicle describes them as of a dark reddish complexion with good features, and muscular, well-shaped bodies. They wore no clothes, their lower lips and cheeks were perforated to carry great ornaments of white bone, and their hair was elaborately dressed and adorned with feathers.

These were fair specimens of the Tupi-Guaranies, the largest of the four great families into which the Brazilian aborigines have been cla.s.sified.

The others are the Caribs, the Arawaks, and the Botacudos. There are also traces of tribes who inhabited the country remote centuries ago. In caves in Minas Geraes skeletons have been found remarkably like those of the earliest Europeans. The theory is that these Indians came from Europe by land in that remote geological epoch when Scandinavia was joined to Greenland. Later came Mongoloids, probably by way of the Behring Strait, who appear largely to have exterminated their European predecessors, and to have been the ancestors of the modern Indians.

When America was discovered, the four great families were spread in scattering and widely differing tribes over the whole of Brazil and the adjacent countries. Their state of culture varied from that of the most squalid tribes of Botacudos, who had not even reached the Stone Age, lived in brush shelters, slept in the ashes of their fires, practised promiscuous marriage, and had no idea of religion except a fear of malignant spirits; up to Arawaks, who were cleanly, had a well-defined tribal organisation, and built marvellous canoes, or Tupis, who cultivated the soil, built fair houses, used rude machinery for making mandioc flour, spun cotton, wove cloth, and were good potters. But the civilisation of the best of them was stationary. No Brazilian tribe ever got beyond the condition where the struggle to obtain food was its sole preoccupation. No civilisation like that of Mexico, Peru, or Yucatan ever existed. Disaggregation, failure, and obliteration were the rule.

Organically unfitted to cope with their surroundings they never devised a method of getting a good and permanent food-supply. Defective nutrition sapped their powers to resist strains. Their muscular appearance was not accompanied by corresponding endurance. Their European taskmasters could never understand why they died from the effects of exertion to which a white man would easily have been equal.

The vast majority had no regular agriculture and lived on the spontaneous products of the forests and the streams. Land game is not abundant in the tropics, and they had developed only few good food plants. What they did procure was spoiled by bad preparation. Such a people had no chance of successfully resisting the Portuguese invaders, and their only hope of survival was in contact and admixture with the more vigorous white and black races.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TUPI VILLAGE.]

The Tupi-Guaranies occupied one-fourth of Brazil, all of Paraguay and Uruguay, and much of Bolivia and the Argentine, and it is probable that the original seats of this family were in the central table-lands or in Paraguay. All Tupi Indians spoke dialects of one language, which the Jesuit missionaries soon reduced to grammatical and literary form, and which became a _lingua franca_ that was understood from the Plate to the Amazon. Back of the coast Tupis were the Botacudos, the most degraded and intractable of Brazilian savages, remnants of whom still survive in their original seats in Espirito Santo, Minas, and So Paulo. The Caribs, with whom students of the history of the Caribbean Sea are familiar, originated in the plains of Goyaz and Matto Grosso and emigrated as far north as the Antilles. The Arawaks were most numerous in Guiana and on the Lower Amazon, but were also spread over central Brazil.

The Brazilian Indians did not survive the white man's coming to as large an extent as in Spanish-America. The pure Indian is found in Brazil only in regions where the white man has not thought it worth while to take possession, and the proportion of Indian blood is much smaller than in surrounding countries. In many localities, evidences of Indian descent are so rare as to be remarkable.

Cabral's voyage was the real discovery of Brazil, if we consider historical and political consequences. It was the first reported to Europe; and the Portuguese Crown immediately made formal claim to the territory. But, as a matter of fact, land which to-day is a part of Brazilian territory had been seen by Europeans before Cabral landed. In January, 1500, Vincente Yanez Pinzon, who had commanded the _Nina_ on the first voyage of Columbus, saw land in the neigbourhood of Cape St.

Roque. Bound westward, he bore away to the west and north, following the prevailing winds and currents as far as the Orange Cape, the present extreme northern limits of Brazil. He was, therefore, the discoverer of the great estuary which forms the mouth of the Amazon. He named it the "Fresh-Water Sea," because the great river freshens the open ocean far out of sight of land, but he did not ascend, nor even see, the river proper. It is also claimed on good evidence that, six months before Pinzon, another Spanish navigator, Alonso de Ojeda, accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci, had made the South American coast not far from Cape St. Roque; and that a month later still another, Diego de Lepe, did the same.

None of these Spanish voyages produced any results. They were not reported until after the news of Cabral's discovery had been solemnly promulgated to the Courts of Europe, and were soon forgotten. The honour of making Brazil known to Europe belongs to Cabral just as certainly as that of discovering America does to Columbus. The Spanish voyages are interesting to antiquarians, but neither they nor the Norwegian voyages of the eleventh century were followed up, or produced any permanent results.

The news reached Portugal in the fall of 1500, and no time was lost in sending out a small fleet to ascertain definitely the extent, value, and resources of the region. The Portuguese hoped to find a wealthy and civilised population like that of India--rich and unwarlike nations, such as the Spaniards did encounter a few years later in Peru and Mexico. The exploring expedition was under the command of Amerigo Vespucci, the greatest technical navigator of the age. He shaped his course so as to keep to the windward and south of the redoubtable promontory of St. Roque, which the clumsy s.h.i.+ps of that day could not weather in the teeth of the trade-winds and the equatorial current, and, turning to the south, made a systematic examination of the coast nearly as far as the river Plate, employing five months in the task. In naming the rivers, capes and harbours, he saved his inventive faculty and gratified the popular religious sentiment by calling each one by the name of the saint on whose anniversary it was reached. Most of these names have survived. For example, the So Francisco, the largest river between the Amazon and the Plate, is so called because Vespucci reached it on October 1, 1501, which date is sacred to St. Francis in the Roman calendar. Rio de Janeiro is so named because he saw the great bay, whose entrance is narrower than many rivers, on New Year's Day, 1501. He coasted along for two thousand miles, looking eagerly for gold, silver, spices, and civilised inhabitants. He was disappointed. The only thing found which seemed to have an immediate market value was brazil-wood--a dye-wood that had been used in Europe for centuries and was in great demand. Its colour was a bright red--hence its name, which means "wood the colour of fire." It was found in such abundance that the world's supply has since been drawn from this coast, and among sailors and merchants the country soon became known as "the Country of Brazil-wood."

The name almost immediately supplanted "Santa Cruz." Vespucci saw that the country was fertile and the climate pleasant. This was not enough to satisfy his greedy employers. A government whose coffers were beginning to overflow with the profits of the Indian spice-trade and the African mines was not inclined to pay much attention to a region without the precious metals, and inhabited only by naked savages. The reports of the abundance of brazil-wood, however, induced private adventurers to go and cut that valuable commodity. The government declared it a Portuguese monopoly, but the high price of the article made the trade so enormously profitable, that s.h.i.+ps of other nationalities, especially French, could not be excluded.