p's guns, produced the
desired effect on the refractory troops ashore, though not till I was
compelled to send Captain Crosbie with a large party to enforce
compliance and to disarm the militia, both of which objects he effected
without bloodshed.

The embarkation being accomplished, and the foreign portion of the
militia disarmed, so as to leave the city in the hands of the civil
authorities--on the 2nd of August, I issued a proclamation declaring the
commerce of the coast free and uninterrupted; following this, shortly
afterwards by another, declaratory of my willingness to accept from
consignees and others, two-thirds of the estimated value of Portuguese
property liable to confiscation--in place of sending the captured
vessels to Rio de Janeiro; which--from the state of the city, as well as
from want of seamen to man them--was impossible.

To the inhabitants of the city I had been careful to accord complete
liberty, exacting, in return, perfect order, which was preserved, and
property of all kinds respected; the delight of the inhabitants being
unbounded at having been freed from a terrible system of exaction and
imprisonment, which, when I entered the river, was being carried on with
unrelenting rigour by the Portuguese authorities towards all suspected
of a leaning to the Imperial Government. Instead of retaliating--as
would have been gratifying to those so recently labouring under
oppression--I directed oaths to the Constitution to be administered, not
to Brazilians only, but also to all Portuguese who chose to remain and
conform to the new order of things; a privilege, of which many
influential persons of that nation availed themselves.

On the 1st of August the inhabitants of Alcantara made a declaration of
adherence to His Imperial Majesty, notwithstanding a report sedulously
circulated amongst them that the Portuguese troops at Maranham were
about to recover the city. An assurance from me, that the Portuguese
troops were embarked, and were under the guns of the flagship, as well
as the fire of their own gunboats, which could be turned against them,
and that the European militia was disarmed, speedily dispelled all
grounds for alarm.

The proceedings of the temporary Provisional Junta being unsatisfactory,
especially as regarded their desire for retaliation on the Portuguese, I
determined to embody a more popular Government, though, as yet the
election would, of necessity, be confined to the inhabitants of