in
states so far advanced in civilisation the defeat of an army decides the
fate of a kingdom, and the land already cultivated, and the mines
already known and worked, were entered upon at once by the conquerors.

In Brazil the land that was granted by leagues was _to be won by inches_
from the hordes of savages who succeeded each other in incalculable
multitudes, and whose migratory habits rendered it a matter of course
for one tribe immediately to occupy the ground from which its
predecessors had been driven. Hence the history of the early settlers in
Brazil presents none of those splendid and chivalresque pictures that
the chronicles of the Corteses, and Pizarros, and Almagros furnish. They
are plain, and often pathetic scenes of human life, full of patience,
and enterprise, and endurance; but the wickedness that stains even the
best of them, is the more disgusting as it is more sordid.

But the very circumstances that facilitated the settling of the Spanish
colonies were also likely to accelerate their liberation. A sense and a
remembrance of national honour and freedom, remained among the polished
Mexicans and Peruvians. Their numbers indeed had been thinned by the
cruelties of the conquerors, but enough were left to perpetuate the
memory of their fathers, to hand down the prophecies uttered in the
phrenzy of their dying patriots; and the Peruvian, when he visited Lima,
looked round the chamber of the viceroys, as he saw niche after niche
filled up with their pictures, till the fated number should be
accomplished, with no common emotion[1]; and many a dreamer on the
Peruvian coast, when he saw the Admiral of the Chilian squadron, was
ready to hail him as the golden-haired son of light who was to restore
the kingdom of the Incas.[2]

[Note 1: The hall with the pictures of the viceroys was filled:
there would be no room in it for Lacerna.]

[Note 2: This prophecy was recorded by Garcelaco de la Vega; and it
is said, that the copies of his Incas were bought up, and an edition
printed, omitting the prophecy.]

But in Brazil, what was once gained was not likely to be lost by the
efforts of the natives, or at least by any recollection of their's,
pointing to a better or more glorious time. They have been either
exterminated, or wholly subdued. The slave hunting, which had been
systematic on the first occupation of the land, and more especially
after the discovery of the mines, had diminished the wretched Indians,