Rerump: Fœd: Americæ Sept:
Legati.
Natus Bostoniæ A. D. MDCCLXXIX.
Mortuus est
Rio Janiero A. D. MDCCCXXX.
Multis ille bonis
flebilis Occidit.
September 18th.—The objects, at Rio, of historic interest to the stranger, or suggestive to him of thoughts of the past, are few. There is, however, at least one entitled in these respects to a passing notice from a Protestant. It is a small island, situated a short distance seaward from our anchorage, beneath the green heights of Castle Hill, a half mile from the shore. Its entire area is occupied by a fortress, whose white ramparts, demi-turreted angles, and floating banner, form conspicuous objects in coming up the harbor. My eye never consciously rests upon it without recurrence to a fact in the early history of Rio, inseparably associated with the name which both island and fortress now bear—that of Villegagnon. However imposing and aristocratic in sound, it is synonymous in its application here, with treachery, and not less surreptitious—to compare small things with great—as regards the name of the noble old Huguenot Coligny, first given to them, than that of Americus, borne by half the globe, instead of one in honor of the true finder of the western world.
Brazil was first discovered by Vincente Pinzon, one of the companions of Columbus in his first voyage, on the 26th of January, 1499. The land descried by him was Cape St. Augustine in the vicinity of the present city of Pernambuco. He took possession of the country in the name of the crown of Castile, whose flag he bore, and, coasting northward to the mouth of the Amazon, returned to Spain without forming a settlement. About the same period Pedro Cabral was fitting out a large fleet in the Tagus, to be conducted to India by the newly known route of the Cape of Good Hope. Fearful of the calms in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, in pursuing the voyage, he ran so far to the west as to make, on the 25th of April, 1506, the same shores Pinzon had, some degrees further to the south. Entering a fine bay, in imitation of Columbus, he erected a wooden cross on the shore, before which he and his followers prostrated themselves, and high mass being performed, possession of the country was taken in the name of his sovereign Emanuel of Portugal. He gave to the bay the name of Porto Seguro, since changed in honor of him to Cabralia, and to the country that of the Terra de Vera Cruz—the Land of the Holy Cross. This appellation, however, was soon lost in that of Brazil, from the abundance of the wood of that name found in it and the high value placed upon the article in Europe: a result pathetically deplored by a pious Jesuit, in the lamentation that “the cupidity of man by unworthy traffic, should change the wood of the cross, red with the real blood of Christ, for that of another wood which resembled it only in color.”
The harbor of Rio de Janeiro was not discovered till 1516. De Solis, in search of a western passage to the Pacific, looked into it, in that year, as he coasted his way to the Rio de la Plata where he lost his life. He gave to it no name, however, and it remained unvisited again till De Sousa entered it in 1531. Under the impression that it was the outlet of a great river, this navigator called it Rio de Janeiro, the day on which he made the supposed discovery being the first of the new year. It did not, however, particularly attract the notice of the Portuguese, and still remained unoccupied by them.