The news of this supposed encroachment, added to the ever increasing poaching of the French, proved what was needed to stimulate the Portuguese at last to make a serious attempt at colonization in Brazil. One Christovão Jaques and a few settlers had already established a small sugar factory in the neighborhood of the present site of Pernambuco, and it had been found that much of the land in the northern part of the country was admirably adapted to the cultivation of that staple, the demand for which in Europe was constantly increasing. Five vessels were sent out, therefore, under the command of Martim Affonso da Souza. Early in 1531 he drew near Cape St. Roque, captured three French ships laden with brazil wood, sent part of his own fleet north to explore the coast beyond, and with the other ships sailed south and dropped anchor near the site of what is now the great coffee port of Santos. There he established São Vicente, the first permanent colony in Brazil.
There also they came across one João Ramalho, a former sailor who had been put ashore for mutiny years before by a ship on its way to India and was living among the natives of the neighborhood with his half-breed children. Glad enough to welcome his countrymen, he disposed the Indians to peace and showed the Portuguese the way up the mountains to the vast plateau that begins only a few miles from the sea. There, near the present site of São Paulo, was founded another settlement, from whence they could stretch out in all directions over what was destined to become the greatest coffee-producing country in the world.
A year or two afterward, encouraged by Da Souza’s success, Duarte Coelho set out with a carefully selected and more numerous company and founded the colony of Pernambuco. Here, as in the south, the country back of the coast was fertile and easily accessible and there was little trouble with the Indians. Sugar planting proved wonderfully profitable, Coelho turned out to be a good manager, and so politic was he in the relations with the mother country that within a few years the colony had become self-supporting and, like the other, possessed of all the elements of permanence and prosperity. Soon afterward São Salvador da Bahia was established. With such a beginning, it was not long before the Portuguese began flocking to Brazil as the Spaniards had to the Caribbean.
V
In the meanwhile in this region of the Caribbean much progress had been made. Towns had been built, not only in Española, but in Cuba, Jamaica, Porto Rico and in Darien and other places on the Isthmus, landed estates (repartimientos) had been apportioned, as rewards for services, among such as desired to cultivate them, mining rights had been allotted. These plantations and the mines were being worked by natives impressed into slavery, some of the communities had become large and thriving, in Spain a Council of the Indies and in the islands local governmental tribunals (Real Audiencias) had been created.
Whole fleets of ships plied back and forth across the Atlantic, those setting out from Spain laden with implements of agriculture and war, clothes, and fresh companies of adventurers, coming over as colonists, or to continue the work of conquest and the search for treasure; those returning, laden with the products of the tropics and with gold and precious stones. Emeralds had been found near the coast of Colombia, and Balboa had discovered in the Gulf of San Miguel—that famous group of islands where, as Mozans tells us, “pearls were so common that the natives used them for adorning the paddles of their canoes”—pearls “as large as filberts and of exceeding beauty of form and luster,” many of which, “found in the same fisheries a short time subsequently, at once took place among the largest and most perfect of the world’s gems.”
Nevertheless, neither there nor anywhere else in the Caribbean region, had any vast wealth and civilization comparable to that of the Mexicans been discovered. Balboa, however, had married, according to the Indian custom, the daughter of a cacique (native chief), and, being in the confidence of the Indians of his province, had heard rumors, even before the conquest of Mexico, of a rich and powerful empire to the south (the same that were afterward heard by Cabot); and, after he had been succeeded as Governor by his jealous rival, the notorious Pedrarias Davila, was commissioned to take charge of an expedition to go in search of it. Already he had accomplished the unheard-of task of taking four ships to pieces on the Caribbean shore, transporting them across the Isthmus and reconstructing them on the shore of San Miguel, and, when about to sail, had been arrested by order of Pedrarias, tried on a charge of treason, and executed before he could appeal to Spain. Some years later, having forestalled his great rival in that summary way, Pedrarias entrusted the venture to one Francisco Pizarro, an opportunist, without money, rank, or credit, and then nearly fifty years old, yet one who startled the world by an achievement equaled only by Cortés’ own.
Francisco Pizarro had been but a swineherd in his boyhood, but later had served under Gonzolo de Cordova (El Gran Capitan) in that splendid body of infantrymen which fought its way to the foremost rank in Europe, and was a son, too, though an illegitimate one, of a Spanish officer of noble blood. For such a man, as Dawson says, “an admirable soldier, conscious that he possessed powers of the highest order yet hopelessly handicapped in old Europe by his base birth and illiteracy, the discovery of the new world opened up a field for his talents” that led him “eagerly to embrace the opportunity to embark with Alonso de Ojeda in 1509 for the Darien gold mines.” His first appearance in history is as a member of the party that went with Balboa to search for the Pacific; afterward he was among the first of “the adventurers that flocked to the new city of Panama, looking over the mysterious sea, like a pack of wolves eager for a share in the spoils of its unknown shores;” later he happened to be the officer chosen by Pedrarias for Balboa’s arrest.
As he had no funds of his own, and since it was the custom of the times for the Conquistadores who undertook such expeditions to do so at their own expense, he associated with him a priest named Hernando de Luque, who had some capital, and Diego de Almagro, a soldier of still more advanced age but of ability and good reputation. It was agreed that the Padre de Luque should contribute the funds, that Almagro should attend to the collecting and forwarding of troops and supplies, and that Pizarro himself should have the active command. Whereupon they bought one of the ships that had been carried across the Isthmus by Balboa and set out on their first expedition in 1524. As so frequently occurred in such cases, however, inadequacy of provisions caused the venture to fail.
