The Jesuits had a magnificent college (the front of whose church is of European stone) occupying the best situation of the city, now converted into a military hospital, with a chapel in the interior ornamented with many paintings that represent the life of S. Estanislaw Kosca, and a school of surgery. The religious processions and festivities are much the same here as at Rio de Janeiro. The palace of the governor on one side commands a view of the port and the lower city, and fronts into the Praca da Parada, the eastern part of which is formed by the camara or council house. The archiepiscopal palace is of two stories, one side facing to the sea, and with a passage to the cathedral, which has a spacious nave: the chapter consists of eighteen canons.
There is a mint, a port admiral, an intendant of gold, a civil court of relaçam, presided by the governor, at present the Count de Palma. This court, created here by Philip I. in 1609, was abolished by Philip II. and re-established by John IV. in 1652. There is also an ecclesiastical court and a junta da fazenda real, (the treasury,) for the administration of the affairs of the province, composed of five deputies, viz. the chancellor of the relaçam, the port admiral, the procurator to coroa, (attorney-general,) the treasurer, and the escrivam, (chief of the treasury,) also presided by the governor; likewise another, called the house of inspection relative to commerce and agriculture, with an equal number of deputies, consisting of two merchants and two planters, one of tobacco the other of sugar, with a secretary; the intendant of gold is president. There are eight royal professorships of philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, Greek, Latin, &c. but they are far from diffusing the knowledge their high-sounding denominations would warrant the expectation of. There is also a public library in the ex-Jesuitical college, a printing press, the only one in the Brazil excepting one at Rio, a manufacture of glass, and a seminary for the meninos orfaos (young male orphans.)
Various forts defend this city on the sea side; amongst which may be remarked that of St. Marcello, of a circular form, with two batteries situated in the centre of the anchorage place. On the land side there is an extensive and deep lake, which, for a considerable period, served as a fosse, called the Dique, and where there are many alligators. This city was taken by the Dutch in 1634, and cannonaded by a force under Prince Nassau, without a similar result, in the year 1636.
In its eastern suburb is the hospital of Lazaretto, which was a house of recreation belonging to the Jesuits, and where there is a plantation of Malabar pimento trees, the finest, it is said, in the Brazil. The suburb of Bom Fim took its name from a chapel of that title, very agreeably situated. About two miles to the east is the parish of Our Lady of Penha, in the extremity of a peninsula where the archbishops have a country house, and where there is a dock-yard for the construction of large ships. This situation, called Tapagype, is beautified with a profusion of the airy cocoa-nut trees.
In the suburb of Victoria is the before-mentioned entertaining house of the Benedictines, in whose church of Our Lady of Graca is an epitaph relative to D. Catharina Alvarez, the daughter of an Indian chief, and one of the wives of Diogo Alvarez Correa, the Caramuru. She accompanied Correa to Europe, where they remained a short period and excited much interest at the French court, where she was christened, and called after Queen Catharine, relinquishing her name of Paraguassu, derived from the river already described. The epitaph is comprised in the following words:—
“Sepultura de D. Catharina Alvarez, Senhora desta Capitania da Bahia, a qual ella, e seu marido Diogo Alvarez Correa, natural de Vianna, deram aos Senhores Reys de Portugal: Fez, e deu esta Capella ao Patriarca St. Bento. Anno de 1582.”[29]
The society of this city is considered superior to that of Rio de Janeiro, and the families appear to maintain a more social intercourse with strangers. Its population may be estimated at nearly one hundred and ten thousand, upwards of two-thirds of which are negroes, who, being of one nation and speaking the same idiom, with greater facility planned their insurrections, which till lately have frequently occurred, making it requisite for the governors to maintain a very rigid discipline over them. In the government of the Count de Ponta an order was issued that no negro should appear in the streets after Avi-Maria without a ticket from his owner, stating the object of his business; in default of which the penalty was one hundred and fifty lashes. This order had the salutary effect of preventing a great portion of them from wandering into the streets without some proper object.
The arrival of the late Queen and the present King here, in the year 1808, on their way to Rio de Janeiro, produced great joy, and the inhabitants voluntarily offered to erect a palace at their own expense for the royal family, if they would establish their court in this city.
The negroes conceived that the arrival of the Prince Regent relieved them from the restraints which they had been subjected to; and the bold and audacious character peculiar to this nation of Africans immediately led them to the determination of disclaiming the right of the governor to inflict the one hundred and fifty lashes, now that the Lord of the territory was come, and they ingeniously communicated their resolution to the governor in the two following poetical lines.
Don de Terra chegou,