Having thus given an outline of the place at which I had arrived, I may now leave my quarters on board the brig and be allowed to land, which I accomplished on the morning subsequent to that of our entrance into the harbour. I was received upon the quay by my friend, a young Portugueze with whom I had been intimate in England and at Pernambuco. He told me it was necessary to go to the palace, for the purpose of presenting my passport, as the regulations of the port had for some time been most strictly followed, and several indeed had been lately added. I then, for the first time, recollected that I had no passport, having forgotten to obtain one, owing to the haste with which I left Pernambuco. This produced a demur, as my friend was afraid that I should be imprisoned, the governor not being friendly to Englishmen; however I determined to call myself the supercargo of the brig. We proceeded to the palace, the entrance to which was guarded by two sentinels, and we passed several others in going up the stairs into the anti-chamber, where we were received by a gentlemanlike officer, who heard what I had to say, asked no questions, and soon dismissed us. I thought I had seen the great man himself, but was undeceived, and heard that he seldom honoured any one with an audience. The officer to whom we had spoken was the lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of regular infantry. The guard at the palace consisted of one company; the muskets were piled in front of the chief entrance and appeared to be in good order.
I soon discovered that St. Luiz was ruled with most despotic sway; the people were afraid of speaking, as no man knew how soon it might be his fate to be arrested, from some trifling expression which he might allow to escape him. The governor was so tenacious of the honours due to his situation, that he required every person who crossed the area in front of the palace to remain uncovered until he had entirely passed the whole building. Not that the governor was himself always in view, but this adoration was thought necessary even to the building within which he dwelt. The distinction, until then reserved, by the Romish church for its highest dignitaries, was however not thought by His Excellency too exalted for himself; the bells of the cathedral rang every time he went out in his carriage. Persons, even of the first rank in the place, were to stop, if in their carriages or on horseback, when they met him, and were to allow him to pass before they were again to move forwards.
I was introduced to several of the first merchants and planters, and particularly to the Colonels Joze Gonçalvez da Silva and Simplicio Dias da Silva; the latter is the sub-governor of Parnaiba, a small port situated about three degrees to the eastward of St. Luiz. They are both of them men of great wealth and of independent spirit. The former is an elderly man who has made a large fortune in trade, and latterly has increased it in planting cotton. He possesses between 1000 and 1500 slaves. On one occasion the mulatto driver of his carriage, though ordered by his master to stop, that the governor might pass, refused so to do. The following day an officer came to the old gentleman’s house with orders to arrest the man. The colonel sent for him and said, “Go, and I’ll take care of you,” adding to the officer, “tell His Excellency I have still several other drivers.” To the surprise of every person about the prison, two servants made their appearance in the evening with a tray, covered with a cloth which was handsomely embroidered, and filled with the best kinds of victuals; sweetmeats, &c. were not forgotten. All this was for the driver, and was repeated three times every day until the man received an order for his release.
The Colonel Simplicio had been sent for by the governor to St. Luiz. Had it not been for the circumstances in which he was placed, I should have gone down to his residence at Parnaiba; he has there a most noble establishment, part of which consists of a band of musicians, who are his own slaves; some of them have been instructed at Lisbon and at Rio de Janeiro. It is through such men as these that improvements are to be expected. I likewise became acquainted with a gentleman who had been imprisoned for a trifling breach of some new port regulation. Any of his friends were allowed free ingress to see him, and I passed some pleasant evenings with him and other persons who were in the habit of assembling there; he was allowed two small rooms in the prison, and was confined in this manner for several months. The Ouvidor of the province was also suspended from exercising the functions of his office, was removed from St. Luiz, and imprisoned in one of the forts. The Juiz de Fora, the second judicial officer, performed for the time the duties of the situation; he was a Brazilian, and a man of independent character, who spoke and acted freely, notwithstanding the ostensible place he held, and the danger of it under such a government. The master of an English merchant ship, I was told, had been arrested for some breach of port regulation, and was confined in a miserable dungeon for three days. I heard many more stories of the same nature; but these will, I think, suffice to shew the state of the city of St. Luiz at the time and just before I visited that place.
Fishing Canoe.
The governor was a very young man, and a member of one of the first noble families of Portugal[65]. There are few situations in which it is so greatly in a man’s power to be much beloved or much disliked as that of governor of a province in Brazil; in which a man may be either the benefactor or the scourge of the people over whom he is sent to rule.