[Footnote 72: There is no reason for supposing that this viceroy had any greater dislike to our countrymen than to any other, or that he acted otherwise towards them than he was accustomed to do in similar cases. Bougainville complains of him much, and represents him as a turbulent ill-mannered fellow. "Having," says he, "on one occasion, upon the repeated leave of the viceroy, concluded a bargain for buying a snow, his excellency forbad the seller to deliver it to me. He likewise gave orders, that we should not be allowed the necessary timber out of the royal dock-yards, for which we had already agreed; he then refused me the permission of lodging with my officers (during the time that the frigate underwent some essential repairs) in a house near the town, offered me by its proprietor, and which Commodore Byron had occupied in 1765, when he touched at this port. On this account, and likewise on his refusing me the snow and the timber, I wanted to make some remonstrances to him. He did not give me time to do it: And at the first words I uttered, he rose in a furious passion, and ordered me to go out; and being certainly piqued, that in spite of his anger, I remained sitting with two officers who accompanied me, he called his guards; but they, wiser than himself, did not come, and we retired, so that nobody seemed to have been disturbed. We were hardly gone, when the guards of his palace were doubled, and orders given to arrest all the French that should be found in the streets after sunsetting." According to this writer, it appears that neither the laws of nations, nor the rules of good breeding, were respected by this very important being, "vain of his authority."--E.]
This promise was performed, and on the next morning, the 14th, I went on shore, and obtained leave of the viceroy to purchase provisions and refreshments for the ship, provided I would employ one of their own people as a factor, but not otherwise. I made some objections to this, but he insisted upon it as the custom of the place. I objected also against the pulling a soldier into the boat every time she went between the ship and the shore; but he told me, that this was done by the express orders of his court, with which he could in no case dispense. I then requested, that the gentlemen whom I had on board might reside on shore during our stay, and that Mr Banks might go up the country to gather plants; but this he absolutely refused. I judged from his extreme caution, and the severity of these restrictions, that he suspected we were come to trade; I therefore took some pains to convince him of the contrary. I told him, that we were bound to the southward, by the order of his Britannic majesty, to observe a transit of the planet Venus over the sun, an astronomical phenomenon of great importance to navigation. Of the transit of Venus, however, he could form no other conception, than that it was the passing of the north star through the south pole; for these are the very words of his interpreter, who was a Swede, and spoke English very well. I did not think it necessary to ask permission for the gentlemen to come on shore during the day, or that, when I was on shore myself, I might be at liberty, taking for granted that nothing was intended to the contrary; but in this I was unfortunately mistaken. As soon as I took leave of his excellency, I found an officer who had orders to attend me wherever I went: Of this I desired an explanation, and was told that it was meant as a compliment; I earnestly desired to be excused from accepting such an honour, but the good viceroy would by no means suffer it to be dispensed with.[73]
[Footnote 73: Mr Barrow notices the extreme jealousy and circumspection of the government, as to strangers. None, he says, is permitted to walk the streets in the day time, unless a soldier attend him. Bad governments are usually fearful, and often expose their weakness by the very means they employ to conceal it. On this principle, admitting its truth, the policy of the Portuguese in general forfeits all claim to admiration. What changes have been wrought in it, since the transatlantic emigration of the royal family, remain to be elucidated.--E.]
With this officer, therefore, I returned on board, about twelve o'clock, where I was impatiently expected by Mr Banks and Dr Solander, who made no doubt but that a fair account of us having been given by the officers who had been on board the evening before in their paper called a Practica, and every scruple of the viceroy removed in my conference with his excellency, they should immediately be at liberty to go on shore, and dispose of themselves as they pleased. Their disappointment at receiving my report may easily be conceived; and it was still increased by an account, that it had been resolved, not only to prevent their residing on shore, and going up the country, but even their leaving the ship; orders having been given, that no person except the captain, and such common sailors as were required to be upon duty, should be permitted to land; and that probably there was a particular view to the passengers in this prohibition, as they were reported to be gentlemen sent abroad to make observations and discoveries, and were uncommonly qualified for that purpose. In the evening, however, Mr Banks and Dr Solander dressed themselves, and attempted to go on shore, in order to make a visit to the viceroy; but they were stopped by the guard-boat which had come off with our pinnace, and which kept hovering round the ship all the while she lay here, for that purpose; the officer on board saying, that he had particular orders, which he could not disobey, to suffer no passenger, nor any officer, except the captain, to pass the boat. After much expostulation to no purpose, they were obliged, with whatever reluctance and mortification, to return on board. I then went on shore myself, but found the viceroy inflexible; he had one answer ready for every thing I could say, That the restrictions under which he had laid us, were in obedience to the king of Portugal's commands, and therefore indispensable.
In this situation I determined, rather than be made a prisoner in my own boat, to go on shore no more; for the officer who, under pretence or a compliment, attended me when I was ashore, insisted also upon going with me to and from the ship: But still imagining, that the scrupulous vigilance of the viceroy must proceed from some, mistaken notion about us, which might more easily be removed by writing than in conversation, I drew up a memorial, and Mr Banks drew up another, which we sent on shore. These memorials were both answered, but by no means to our satisfaction; we therefore replied: In consequence of which, several other papers were interchanged between us and the viceroy, but still without effect. However, as I thought some degree of force, on the part of the viceroy, to enforce these restrictions, necessary to justify my acquiescence in them to the Admiralty, I gave orders to my lieutenant, Mr Hicks, when I sent him with our last reply on Sunday the 20th, in the evening, not to suffer a guard to be put into his boat. When the officer on board the guard-boat found that Mr Hicks was determined to obey my orders, he did not proceed to force, but attended him to the landing-place, and reported the matter to the viceroy. Upon this his excellency refused to receive the memorial, and ordered Mr Hicks to return to the ship; when he came back to the boat, he found that a guard had been put on board in his absence, but he absolutely refused to return till the soldier was removed: The officer then proceeded to enforce the viceroy's orders; he seized all the boat's crew, and sent them under an armed force to prison, putting Mr Hicks at the same time into one of their own boats, and sending him under a guard back to the ship. As soon as he had reported these particulars, I wrote again to the viceroy, demanding my boat and crew, and in my letter inclosed the memorial which he had refused to receive from Mr Hicks: These papers I sent by a petty officer, that I might wave the dispute about a guard, against which I had never objected except when there was a commissioned officer on board the boat. The petty officer was permitted to go on shore with his guard, and, having delivered his letter, was told that an answer would be sent the next day.
About eight o'clock this evening it began to blow very hard in sudden gusts from the south, and our long-boat coming on board just at this time with four pipes of rum, the rope which was thrown to her from the ship, and which, was taken hold of by the people on board, unfortunately broke, and the boat, which had come to the ship before the wind, went adrift to windward of her, with a small skiff of Mr Banks's that was fastened to her stern. This was a great misfortune, as, the pinnace being detained on shore, we had no boat on board but a four-oared yawl: The yawl, however, was immediately manned and sent to her assistance; but, notwithstanding the utmost effort of the people in both boats, they were very soon out of sight: Far indeed we could not see at that time in the evening, but the distance was enough to convince us that they were not under command, which gave us great uneasiness, as we knew they must drive directly upon a reef of rocks which ran out just to leeward of where we lay: After waiting some hours in the utmost anxiety, we gave them over for lost, but about three o'clock the next morning had the satisfaction to see all the people come on board in the yawl. From them we learnt, that the long-boat having filled with water, they had brought her to a grappling and left her; and that, having fallen in with the reef of rocks in their return to the ship, they had been obliged to cut Mr Banks's little boat adrift. As the loss of our long-boat, which we had now too much reason to apprehend, would have been an unspeakable disadvantage to us, considering the nature of our expedition, I sent another letter to the viceroy, as soon as I thought he could be seen, acquainting him with our misfortune, and, requesting the assistance of a boat from the shore for the recovery of our own; I also renewed my demand that the pinnace and her crew should be no longer detained: After some delay, his excellency thought fit to comply both with my request and demand; and the same day we happily recovered both the long-boat and the skiff, with the rum, but every thing else that was on board was lost. On the 23d, the viceroy, in his answer to my remonstrance against seizing my men and detaining the boat, acknowledged that I had been treated with some incivility, but said that the resistance of my officers, to what he had declared to be the king's orders, made it absolutely necessary; he also expressed some doubts whether the Endeavour, considering her structure and other circumstances, was in the service of his majesty, though I had before shewed him my commission: To this I answered in writing, That to remove all scruples, I was ready to produce my commission again. His excellency's scruples however still remained, and in his reply to my letter he not only expressed them in still plainer terms, but accused my people of smuggling. This charge, I am confident, was without the least foundation in truth. Mr Banks's servants had indeed found means to go on shore on the 22d at day-break, and stay till it was dark in the evening, but they brought on board only plants and insects, having been sent for no other purpose. And I had the greatest reason to believe that not a single article was smuggled by any of our people who were admitted on shore, though many artful means were used to tempt them, even by the very officers that were under his excellency's roof, which made the charge still more injurious and provoking. I have indeed some reason to suspect that one poor fellow bought a single bottle of rum with some of the clothes upon his back; and in my answer I requested of his excellency, that, if such an attempt at illicit trade should be repeated, he would without scruple order the offender to be taken into custody. And thus ended our altercation, both by conference and writing, with the viceroy of Rio de Janeiro.
A friar in the town having requested the assistance of our surgeon, Dr Solander easily got admittance in that character on the 25th, and received many marks of civility from the people. On the 26th, before day-break, Mr Banks also found means to elude the vigilance of the people in the guard-boat, and got on shore; he did not however go into the town, for the principal objects of his curiosity were to be found in the fields: to him also the people behaved with great civility, many of them invited him to their houses, and he bought a porker and some other things of them for the ship's company; the porker, which was by no means lean, cost him eleven shillings, and he paid something less than two for a Muscovy duck.
On the 27th, when the boats returned from watering, the people told us there was a report in town, that search was making after some persons who had been on shore from the ship without the viceroy's permission; these persons we conjectured to be Dr Solander and Mr Banks, and therefore they determined to go on shore no more.
On the first of December, having got our water and other necessaries on board, I sent to the viceroy for a pilot to carry us to sea, who came off to us; but the wind preventing us from getting out, we took on board a plentiful supply of fresh beef, yams, and greens for the ship's company. On the 2d, a Spanish packet arrived, with letters from Buenos Ayres for Spain, commanded by Don Antonio de Monte Negro y Velasco, who with great politeness offered to take our letters to Europe: I accepted the favour, and gave him a packet for the secretary of the Admiralty, containing copies of all the papers that had passed between me and the viceroy; leaving also duplicates with the viceroy, to be by him forwarded to Lisbon.
On Monday the 5th, it being a dead calm, we weighed anchor and towed down the bay; but, to our great astonishment, when we got abreast of Santa Cruz, the principal fortification, two shot were fired at us. We immediately cast anchor, and sent to the fort to enquire the reason of what had happened: Our people brought us word, That the commandant had received no order from the viceroy to let us pass; and that, without such an order, no vessel was ever suffered to go below the fort. It was now, therefore, become necessary, that we should send to the viceroy, to enquire why the necessary order had not been given, as he had notice of our departure, and had thought fit to write me a polite letter, wishing, me a good voyage. Our messenger soon returned with an account, that the order had been written some days, but by an unaccountable negligence not sent.