On the following day a large party of Portuguese passed to the other side, in order to traffic with the Indians, without any kind of arms, imprudently confiding in the apparent demonstrations of sincerity which they had evinced; when, about nine o’clock, those who had remained with Medeiros in the squadron perceived a tumult amongst the savages, which convinced them that their comrades were lost. They immediately fired upon them, when the traitors instantly fled, fifty Christians remaining dead upon the field. This disaster terminated all hopes of a friendly negotiation.
In 1744 the Indians were routed by the Paulista fleet, without the Christians sustaining more loss than one negro, from the wound of a lance. Notwithstanding the disaster which the savages experienced on this occasion, they boldly advanced up the Paraguay the same year, as far as the passage from Cuiaba to Matto Grosso; and, disembarking at an early hour near the establishment of Joam d’Oliveira, set fire to his house, and killed several people.
On the 24th of September, in this year, at mid-day, in clear weather, a subterraneous noise was heard, and the earth immediately quaked, continuing to experience various tremulous agitations, which produced considerable alarm in all places of Matto Grosso and Cuiaba. At this period, a drought already prevailed, which lasted till 1749. All the woods were parched up, and no longer exhibited any foliage; the atmosphere was now only the vehicle of smoke; all living creatures suffered from famine and other calamities; and death stalked in universal triumph.
The earthquake, which, in October two years afterwards, 1746, agitated the territory of Peru, and destroyed the city of Lima, its capital, was here very sensibly felt; filling every living creature with sudden dread, but unattended with worse consequences.
Before the conclusion of this same year, the Captain Joao de Souza, descended the Arinos, Tapajoz, and the Amazons, to Para, and returned the following year by the Madeira, with European merchandise; after his arrival, other dealers departed by the same route, which has been frequented to this day, in spite of the great difficulties to which this prolonged voyage has hitherto been subject.
Two years had almost elapsed, before the rains had reanimated the face of the country, given verdure to the foliage of the unbounded woods, renovated the springs, arrested the ravages of death, and facilitated journeys by land; when, about the beginning of January, 1751, a numerous fleet arrived at Cuiaba, accompanied by Don Antonio Rolin de Moura, as governor of the new province, a Juiz de Fora, (Theotonio de Sylva Gusmao,) two Jesuits, and a troop of dragoons. At the end of this year, the governor proceeded to the mines of Matto Grosso, with the intention of promoting the navigation discovered by Manuel de Lima to Gram Para, and to compel the retrocession of the Spanish Jesuits established on the right margin of the Guapore. D. Antonio Rolin, commanded to found a town in the situation best adapted for the effectuating those projects, selected for its site a place called Pouzoalegre, founded and named it on the 19th of March, 1752; and, on the 25th of November, by order of the bishop of Rio de Janeiro, the hermitage of St. Anna was converted into its mother church.
With the opening of the roads to Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, and with the new navigation of Gram Para, that of Camapuan began to be less frequented. The miners who were interested in proceeding to St. Paulo by this fatal way never accomplished it, except with a considerable number of canoes, equipped with chosen men, and armed with the best instruments of defence; and occasionally accompanied by canoes of war to a certain situation in the river Tocoary, where they waited for the Paulista fleet to protect them through the passage of the Pantanos.
Subsequent to the separation, already mentioned, of the two nations, one of the most disastrous hostilities which the Portuguese experienced from the Guaycurus was in May, 1775, when they proceeded up the Paraguay, in twenty canoes, nearly to Villa Maria, where they assassinated sixteen persons, and carried off many others prisoners.
The foundation of the prezidio, or garrison, of Nova Coimbra, in the same year, upon the western margin of the Paraguay, ought to have been, according to the order of General L. d’Alburquerque, forty leagues further to the south, at the place called Fecho dos Morros, where it would have contributed to the protection of the navigators of St. Paulo. The author of the Guaycurus, (written in this prezidio by one of its governors,) says, that he could but partially embarrass the passage of the Indians, or prevent the flight of deserters; and that its founder had committed an error, from whence resulted the entrance of the Spaniards into the dominions of his faithful Majesty, where they founded Villa Real, St. Carlos, and St. Joze.
The last hostility which the Portuguese sustained from the Guaycurus, was the atrocious assassination of fifty soldiers in a plain fronting Nova Coimbra, in January, 1781, at the time they were bartering some articles with the barbarians who had been there twice before with demonstrations of friendship.