A few years after this occurrence, the Dutch, finding Cayenne forsaken, occupied it in the name of the West India Company. This settlement promised favourably; its commander, named Guerin Spranger, fulfilled all the conditions required for forming a profitable colony; but Louis XIV., at this period, gave to a new French company the country between the two great rivers, appointing M. le Hevre de la Barre governor of Cayenne. Five vessels were sent out, having on board a thousand persons, and Spranger had no alternative but to submit. His country was not then at war with France, but high-handed proceedings were the order of the day. The French were so fortunate as to find themselves in possession of a ready-made colony. Two years later it was laid waste by the English; but it was immediately re-occupied by the French. In the war which succeeded the peace of Breda, Cayenne was again taken by the Dutch; but in 1676 it was once more captured by the French under the Comte d’Estrees.
Cayenne once more a French settlement, its guiding spirits lost no time in directing their attention towards the possessions of their neighbours. Their attempt to enter the Amazons was forbidden by the captain of Curupá, whilst five Frenchmen were found by the Jesuits trading for slaves in the interior.
1687.
About the year 1687 the province of Ceará was so infested by the neighbouring savages that it was declared lawful and necessary to make war against them; and the hostilities were prosecuted with such vigour as to free the province from their presence for the future.
1688.
1694.
In proof that the trade of Brazil was steadily increasing, it is stated that, in 1688, the fleet which sailed from Bahia was the largest which had ever left that port, and yet that it did not contain tonnage sufficient for the produce. A trade had sprung up between Buenos Ayres and Brazil, and when it was prohibited, alike by the Spanish and by the Portuguese Governments, goods to the amount of three hundred thousand cruzados were left on the merchants’ hands at Nova Colonia, and of double that amount at Rio de Janeiro. The Government showed their appreciation of the importance of Bahia by putting its forts in a proper state of defence. Three additional settlements in the Reconcave were now large enough to be formed into towns; and the currency in Brazil was now put upon a proper footing by a regulation which permitted only milled pieces to pass, the practice of clipping having been hitherto prevalent.
The escaped negroes who had taken refuge in the Palmares or palm forests, in the interior of Pernambuco, have already been mentioned. In the course of threescore years they had acquired strength and daring. Not contented with being left unmolested, they infested several Portuguese settlements; one of their chief reasons being to carry off women. They were under the government of a chief who was elected, and who listened to such whose experience gave them the right to counsel him. He was obeyed implicitly. His people did not abandon the sign of the cross. They had their officers and magistrates; and the greater crimes were punished with death. As they carried on a regular intercourse with the Portuguese settlements by means of their slaves, the evil arising from them as a place of refuge became so great that it was necessary to make an effort to put an end to it.
The negro settlement in the Palmares was reputed to be so strong that the authorities of Pernambuco long hesitated to attack it; but at length Caetano de Mello determined to make a vigorous effort with the object of exterminating this formidable organization. With this end he solicited from the Governor-General the aid of the camp-master of a regiment of Paulistas, and that officer was accordingly directed to proceed to join him. On his way, however, at the head of a thousand men, he unwarily resolved to reconnoitre the Palmares, and found himself in front of a double palisade of hard wood, enclosing a circle four or five miles in extent, and within which were some twenty thousand persons. The enclosure contained a rock which served as a look-out station; and it was surrounded by a number of smaller settlements, in which were stationed selected men.
1665.