The Spaniard Pinzón had already sighted what is to-day Brazil when, in 1500, Pedro Alves Cabral, whom Portugal had sent out to get her share of this new world, accidentally discovered land at some point on the present Brazilian coast. He named it “Vera Cruz,” which not long afterward was changed to “Santa Cruz.” But neither name endured, for the only importance of the country during the first century and more after its discovery was its exportation of the fire-colored wood of a bright red tree which found favor in the old world for decorative purposes. This the Arabs called “bakkam,” or “burning wood,” a term which became in Latin bresilium, in French braise, and in Spanish and Portuguese brazil, and gradually the “land of the brazil tree” came to be known simply as Brazil.
The first white settler in Brazil of whom there is any authentic record was Diogo Alvarez Correa, a Portuguese sailor whose ship was wrecked near the present site of Bahia. His companions are said to have been killed by the aborigines, but Diogo won their interest or fear by means of a long implement he carried which belched fire at a magic word from its owner and brought death upon anyone at whom he pointed it. The Indians named this extraordinary being “Caramurú,” which in their language meant something like “producer of lightning” or “sudden death,” and welcomed him into their tribe. Diogo made the most of his opportunities and had already established a considerable colony of half-breed children when he passed on to new explorations in another world. His good work was continued by fitting successors, since, to put it in the simple words of a Brazilian historian, “the first arrivals found no difficulty in procuring companions among the Indian women, as the latter had a peculiar ambition to possess children by a race of men whom they at first deemed demigods.” Thus the landing-place of “Caramurú” came in time to be the capital of all Brazil.
Meanwhile João Ramalho had established the village of Piratinanga, destined afterward to move its site and become São Paulo, and de Souza began the present Santos by building the fort of São Vicente, while in the north Olinda and Recife were showing the rivalry which has culminated in the city now called Pernambuco. In 1516 Solis drifted into a harbor which he named “River of January,” evidently so incensed at its lack of length or at the heat of Brazil’s most torrid month as to refuse to give it one of the customary saints’ names. His mistake was not discovered until de Souza explored the bay sixteen years later and found it no river at all. The French soon began to make settlements along the coast and Durand de Villegaignon of the French navy, sent out by Coligny, took possession of the island in Rio harbor which still bears his name; but the Portuguese Mem da Sá at length drove him out and clinched the expulsion by founding a fortress and thatched village on the mainland, which he named, in honor of the day’s saint, “São Sebastião.” Soon this became a worthy rival of Bahia and Olinda and by the end of the sixteenth century it was recognized as the capital of the southern part of Portugal’s possessions in the new world.
For a time these promised to remain less extensive than they finally became. The French founded a settlement called St. Louis on the island of Maranhão off the north coast of Brazil and gave evidence of a desire to conquer more territory. In 1624 the Dutch formed a “West India Company” and took the capital, Bahia, which was recovered by the Spaniards two years later, both Portugal and Brazil being under Spanish dominion for sixty years at that period. In 1630 the Dutch took Pernambuco and all Brazil north of the River São Francisco, and had high hopes of annexing the entire country. By 1661 luck had turned, however, and a treaty gave the enormous tract now known as Brazil to Portugal for the payment of eight million florins to the Dutch and allowing them free commerce in everything except the principal export, the fiery brazil wood. At the end of the seventeenth century this valuable product was cast in the shade by the discovery of gold in the interior of the country.
When the Conde da Cunha was sent out by Pombal as viceroy in 1763 he was instructed to move his capital from Bahia to São Sebastião on the “River of January,” the latter having become more important because of its proximity to the mines of Minas Geraes and to the River Plata, where fighting with the Spaniards was frequent. About the same time the coffee berry was introduced into the hitherto unimportant state of São Paulo, noted until then chiefly for the energy and ferocity of the cattle-raising Paulistas in the stealing and enslaving of Indians from the adjacent Spanish colonies. Great numbers of negro slaves had been introduced into the country, particularly in that paunch-like portion of it jutting farthest out into the Atlantic toward Africa and where the planting of sugar-cane made a large supply of labor necessary. Soon after the coming of da Cunha the further introduction of negroes into Portuguese territory was forbidden, but the decree was never seriously enforced, and the natural increase of the bondsmen, abetted by such customs as freeing any female slave who produced six children, caused in time the preponderance of African blood.
When Rio de Janeiro was made the national capital of Brazil in 1763 it had some thirty thousand inhabitants. Nor did it increase greatly during the half century that followed. Its chief growth and development dates from the arrival of the court in 1808. João VI of Portugal, driven out of his own land by Napoleon, fled on a British ship “with all the valuables he could lay hands on,” after the way of kings, and landed in Bahia, soon afterward moving on to Rio and setting up his court under the title of “King of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve.” He opened the country to foreign commerce, imported the royal palm, and carried out certain reforms in the formerly colonial government. The way having been cleared for him, he returned to Portugal in 1821, leaving his son behind as regent. On September 7th of the following year this son declared Brazil independent and proclaimed himself emperor under the title of Pedro I. He was soon succeeded, however, by his infant son, Pedro II, whose reign of half a century was punctuated by a three years’ war against Rosas, the tyrant of the Argentine, and by the war of 1864 in which Brazil joined the Argentine and Uruguay against the despot Lopez of Paraguay. This second conflict cost the country thousands of men and £63,000,000 in money—which, by the way, has not yet been paid—but it established the free navigation of the Paraguay River and put Rio de Janeiro into communication with the great wilderness province of Matto Grosso.
During the reign of Pedro II there had been much criticism of the country’s anachronistic custom of negro slavery. This culminated in 1888 in a decree of emancipation signed by the Princess Isabel, who was acting as regent during her father’s illness. By this time the Frenchman Comte had won many Brazilian disciples for his “positivist” philosophy, and certain other factions were showing a growing enmity to the monarchy. These elements and the leading planters, disgruntled at the loss of their slaves even though they were reimbursed for them from the public funds, formed a republican party. Finally the church, according to a native writer, “seeing which side was going to win, withdrew her weight from the crown and threw it into the other side of the balance,” and on November 15th, 1889, Brazil was declared a republic.
Like the abolition of slavery the year before, the change was entirely without bloodshed. The ostensible leader of the revolt was “Deodoro the tarimbeiro” (tarimba being the cot of a private soldier), a bluff old military commander who had the army behind him; but the real head of the movement was Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães, who owed his given name to his father’s admiration for a certain French writer. Constant was a Positivist, as were several others of the leading republicans, and many hints of Comte’s religion, if it may be so called, crept into the new government. To a Positivist was given the task of designing a new national flag, so that the banner of republican Brazil is not merely green, Comte’s chosen color, but bears the words, from the Positivist motto, “Ordem e Progresso”—to which the northern visitor feels frequently impelled to add, “e Paciencia.” Unnecessary violence, however, is contrary to the Positivist creed, and the former opponents of the new régime did not suffer the fate so frequent in South American revolutions. Harmless old Dom Pedro II was put aboard a ship in the harbor with his family, his retainers, and his personal possessions, and “the bird of the sea opened its white wings and flew away to the continent whence kings and emperors came.”
The Brazilian constitution of 1891 is an almost exact copy of that of the United States, and under it and the half dozen presidents who have succeeded Deodoro, Brazil has prospered as well as could perhaps be expected of a tropical and temperamental, young and gigantic country. Barely a year after the adoption of the constitution a revolution broke out in the southernmost state and the Republic of Brazil came near dying in its infancy. But with the ending of civil war and the beginning of reconstruction under Moraes, this setback was regained, and the frequent threats of secession of both the north and the south have thus far come to naught. During this same term a boundary dispute between the Argentine and Brazil was arbitrated by the United States, and in 1898 the present frontier between French Guiana and the state of Pará was established, leaving Brazil as nearly at peace with her neighbors as is reasonable in South America. Her credit abroad was helped by the burning of her old paper money; under an energetic Paulista president railroad construction was greatly increased at the beginning of the present century; Rio was largely torn down and rebuilt, and the vast country was knitted more closely together. To-day an “unofficial compilation” credits Brazil with 30,553,509 inhabitants, and though the skeptical may be inclined to question that final 9, there is no doubt that it is second only to the United States in population in the western hemisphere, with Mexico a lagging third and the Argentine a badly outdistanced fourth. The population of the Federal District, which includes little more than the capital, is estimated at 1,130,080, “based on a count of houses and crediting each residence with ten inhabitants”; which is perhaps a fair enough guess, for Brazilian families are seldom small—and it would of course be hot and uncomfortable work, as well as an intrusion upon “personal liberty,” really to take a census in Brazil or its capital.
As late as 1850, according to an old chronicle, “the habits of the rich of Rio de Janeiro were distressing and those of the lower orders abominably filthy. Monks swarmed in every street and were at once sluggards and libertines. The ladies of that time usually lolled about the house barefoot and bare-legged, listening to the gossip and scandal gathered by their favorite body-women.” Even at the beginning of the present century Rio was far from being what it is to-day. The narrow cobbled streets were worse than unclean, dawdling mule-cars constituted the only urban transportation, and yellow fever victims were often so numerous that there were not coffins enough to go round. Those obliged to come to Rio made their wills and got absolution for their sins before undertaking the journey. In 1889, when the monarchy was overthrown, it was seriously contemplated moving the capital away from Rio because of the constant scourge of “Yellow Jack.” In fact, the constitution fixes the capital of the republic in its geographical center at a selected spot in the wilderness of the state of Goyaz, and a syndicate offered to build everything from a new presidential palace to the necessary railroads, if given a ninety-year concession and monopoly; but like so many well-reasoned schemes this one ran foul of many unreasonable but immovable facts and has never advanced beyond the theory stage.