ores of the Plata, not without opposition from the Portuguese, and a
more obstinate and fatal resistance from the Indians. The tribes in this
neighbourhood appear to have been more civilised than those of the coast
of Brazil, and consequently more formidable enemies to the rising towns.
Orellana had also made his daring voyage down the mighty river that is
sometimes called by his name. He had afterwards perished in an attempt
to make a settlement on its shores, and nearly the same fate had
attended Luiz de Mello da Silva, who made a similar attempt on the part
of Portugal.

Cabeza de Vacca had also made his adventurous overland journey from St.
Catherine's, and after settling himself in the government of Assumption,
had conducted various expeditions of discovery, always in hopes of
finding an easy way to the gold countries. In one of these he found
traces of the adventurer Garcia, a Portuguese, who, under the orders of
Martim Affonso de Souza, had, with five companions, undertaken to
explore the interior of South America. This man had by some means so
conciliated the Indians, that he was followed by a very considerable
army, and is said to have penetrated even into Tarija. He is believed to
have perished by the hand of one of his own followers, but no
particulars were ever known of his fate.

During the next ten years, nothing remarkable occurred with regard to
Brazil, except the founding of the city of St. Salvador's, by Thome de
Souza, the first Captain General of Brazil, who carried out with him the
first Jesuit missionaries. For the site of his new town De Souza fixed
upon the hill immediately above the deepest part of the harbour of
Bahia, which is defended at the back by a deep lake, and lies about half
a league from the Villa Velha of Coutinho and Caramuru.

The temporal concerns of the new colony, derived inestimable advantage
from the friendship and assistance of the patriarch Caramuru: as to the
spiritual, it was indeed time that some rule of faith and morals should
find its way to Brazil. The settlers had hitherto had no instructors
but friars, whose manners were as dissolute as their own, and who
encouraged in them a licentious depravity, scarcely less shocking than
the cannibalism of the savages. These latter are said to have eaten the
children born by their own daughters to their prisoners of war,--a thing
so unnatural, that it only gains credit because the Portuguese sold as
slaves even their own childr