The considerable arraial of Piracruca, well situated near the small river of its name, forty miles distant from the mouth of the Longa, has the best church of the province. In its district there are copperas and the real Jesuits’ bark. The inhabitants have large plantations of cotton, mandioca, and sugar; from the latter rum and rapaduras are made.
The aldeia and Indian parish of St. Gonçalo d’Amarante, is in a well selected and fertile district, where any other class of people would ere this have rendered agriculture flourishing, lived in abundance, and have become rich. It is eighteen miles from the mouth of the Caninde, and seventy north of the capital; and was founded about the year 1766, for the habitation of nine hundred Guegues, who occupied the country about the heads of the Parnahiba, and sixteen hundred Acroas, who lived more to the southward. Some time having elapsed, the whole deserted: they were, however, subsequently re-conquered, and re-established in the same place, which has ever since been going into a state of decay.
The parish of the Lady of Merces, whose first inhabitants were mainly Jahico Indians, lies between the Itahim, and the small river Guaribas. All the parishioners live dispersed, the vicar being the only resident near the church, which is about seventy miles from the capital.
The two last parishes were created a few years ago, and formerly belonged to that of the capital; in whose extensive district there are yet to be remarked the chapel of Our Lady of Humildes, not far removed from the heads of the Caninde; that of St. Ignacio, near the same river, and thirty-five miles from the capital; that of St. Joam, near the origin of the Piauhy; and the Lady of Nazareth, upon the margin of the said river, forty miles from Oeyras; also the Lady of Conceiçao, in the situation of Bocayna, near the small river Guaribas.
The considerable arraial of Poti, advantageously situated near the embouchure of the river which affords it the name, has already some commerce, and might easily become a considerable povoaçao. All the people are within the diocese of the bishop of Maranham, who has a vicar-general at Oeyras. The literary subsidy, as it is denominated, arising from an impost upon cattle in this province, is important enough. But there was not till within this few years a single royal professor, as they are so imposingly styled, in any part of it, for either the primitive letters or Latin; but instead of any knowledge of the classics being diffused amongst the population of the Brazil, by these titled masters, it is altogether unlettered; in fact, I have seen some of those royal preceptors unattended by a single pupil.
CHAP. XXII.
PROVINCE OF MARANHAM.
First Donatory—Shipwreck of Persons intended for its Colonization—Establishment of the French—Retaken—Foundation of Capital—Taken by the Dutch—Retaken—Agricultural Company—Boundaries—Rivers, Ports, and Islands—Mineralogy—Phytology—Zoology—Indians—Povoaçoes—City of Maranham—Commerce—Exports of Produce.
John III. was more peculiarly attentive to the prosperity and improvement of the Brazil, than any other of the Portuguese sovereigns, with the exception of the present monarch, John VI. whose salutary administration of power in the Transatlantic part of his dominions, may be regarded as the result of those important events in Europe, which led to the removal of the Royal Family to this region, and the consequent introduction of a more liberal intercourse with other nations. But these benefits are but the dawnings of future civilization and improvement.
John III. in pursuance of his good wishes towards the Brazil, determined to partition the coast into capitanias, and that denominated Maranhao, was presented by his Majesty to the historian Joam de Barros. It is probable that this part of the coast had acquired that name from the circumstance of V. Y. Pinson, after his discovery of Cape St. Augustin, having entered a gulf or the mouth of a great river, which was unquestionably the Amazons, and whose waters not possessing the saline qualities of the ocean, he called Mara-non, (not sea.) Hence followed the Portuguese denomination of this territory Maranhao, and Maranham by the English, resulting from the false notion which the Portuguese at first entertained that it was the great river. Its donatory, Joam de Barros, being a man of noble spirit, and determined to do the utmost for the colonization of this important donation, united with his own inadequate means those of the Cavalheiros Fernando Alvarez and Ayres da Cunha. It was unanimously agreed that Ayres da Cunha should be intrusted with the settlement of the colony, which sailed from Lisbon in 1535, consisting of nine hundred persons, including two sons of the donatory, with the important addition of one hundred and thirteen horses.
This armament, comprising ten vessels, and considered the most powerful that had sailed for a long period from the Tagus, was unfortunately wrecked upon the shoals which surround the island of Maranham. Some persons escaped to the island of Medi or Boqueirao at the entrance of the bay; but which not being adapted for the foundation of the colony, they abandoned and returned to Portugal by the first vessel that appeared, excepting one individual, a blacksmith, called Pedro, or Pero, who remained among the Indians, and rendered himself highly important and exceedingly useful to them, in consequence of the variety of instruments he constructed of the iron taken from the fragments of the wreck that were washed upon the beach. A daughter of a cacique, or prince, was bestowed upon him in marriage, by whom he had two sons, both called Pedros, or Peros, from which the Indians thought the Portuguese all had this name, and they usually gave that nation the appellation of Peros.