Brazil, by Nobrega, in the high plains of Piratininga, about thirteen leagues from the colony of San Vicente. Anchieta was the school-master. The school was opened on the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, and the establishment, and the infant colony rising round it, received the name of the saint. St. Paul's has since grown to be one of the most important towns in Brazil. Its rich minerals, its iron-works, and other manufactures, but, above all, the high and free spirit of its inhabitants, who have taken the lead in every effort for the good of the country, distinguish it above all the southern towns of Brazil.

Anchieta, while he taught Latin to the Portuguese and Mamalucos,[11] and Portuguese to the Brazilians, learnt from these last their own tongue, and composed a grammar and dictionary for them. He had no books for his pupils, so that he wrote on separate leaves, in four different languages, the daily lesson for each. He served as physician, as well as priest and school-master, and practised and taught the most useful domestic arts. But the colony had, like all the others, to fight for its early existence; it was attacked by the Mamalucos of the neighbouring settlement of St. André, who regarded the instruction of the Indians as a step towards abolishing their slavery, and exclaimed against it as an infringement of what they called their right to the services of the natives. They engaged by other pretences some of the neighbouring tribes to assist them, but they were met and defeated by those of St. Paul's.

Meantime some disputes having arisen between the Governor and the Bishop, the latter resolved to return to Lisbon, but was wrecked on the coast at a place called the Baixos de San Francisco, and there seized, and with one hundred other white persons put to death by the Cahetes. The revenge of the Portuguese was horrible, the Cahetes were hunted, slaughtered, and all but exterminated.

In the year 1557, Joam III. died. His appointment of Mem de Sa, before his death, to the government of Brazil, prevented the country from immediately feeling the evils which a regency generally entails even in an established government, but which are sure to fall with tenfold weight upon a rising colony.

Mem de Sa was a man of more enlightened mind, and more humane principles than most of those to whom the government of the Brazilian provinces had been intrusted. He arrived at Bahia in 1558, and earnestly applied himself to learn the relations in which the Portuguese, the Creoles, the Indians, and the mixed race stood to each other.

His first acts were directed towards reclaiming the allied Indians from some of their most brutal practices, and to induce them to form settlements near those of the Jesuits. The selfish planters, interested in keeping up the feuds of the Indians, in order to procure slaves, exclaimed against these proceedings as violations of the freedom of the natives, and they were equally displeased at the orders issued, to set at liberty all the Indians who had been wrongfully enslaved. One powerful colonist alone refused to obey: Mem de Sa ordered his house to be surrounded and instantly levelled with the ground. Such an act was certainly calculated to inspire the Indians with confidence in his good intentions towards them, at the same time that his vigorous measures to punish them for any infraction of their engagements kept them in awe.

Meantime an adventurer of no ordinary stamp, had formed a settlement in the finest harbour of Brazil, namely, that of Rio de Janeiro. Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon was a native of Provins en Brie, and a Knight of Malta. In 1648, he had been employed by Mary of Guise, at the entreaty of the French court, to convey her daughter the young Queen of Scots to France: in 1651 he was engaged in the defence of Malta, against the Pacha Sinan and the famous Dragut Reis, and two years afterwards published an account of that campaign. Having visited Brazil in 1558, Villegagnon could not be insensible to the advantages that must arise to France from having a settlement there; and, on his return to Europe, he made such representations at court of these advantages, that Henry II. gave him two vessels, each of 200 tons, and a store ship of 100 tons, to convey the adventurers who might wish to leave France, and who at that time were numerous. Villegagnon, wishing to make use of Coligny's interest, gave out that the new settlement was to be a refuge for the persecuted Hugonots, and this answered the double purpose of securing the Admiral's friendship, and gaining a number of respectable colonists. With these he reached Rio de Janeiro, and made his first settlement in a low rock at the mouth of the harbour, where there is now a small fort called the Laje, but finding it not sufficiently elevated to resist the high tides, he pitched on an island within the harbour, where there is only one landing place, and whose form and situation is singularly adapted for safety, especially against such enemies as the Indians. Those, however, of the Rio had been long accustomed to trade with the French, who, if they had not taught them, had at least encouraged them, to hate the Portuguese, whom Villegagnon flattered himself that he should be able to keep aloof by the assistance of the Savages.

Meantime Coligny had exerted himself to send out assistance of every kind; provisions, recruits[12], and protestant ministers. But Villegagnon now imagined himself secure in his colony, and threw off the mask of toleration. He behaved so tyrannically that many of the Hugonots were obliged to return to France, and of them he made the most malicious complaints, and concluded by saying, that they were heretics worthy of the stake.

But nothing is so short-sighted as wickedness. Villegagnon's treachery was the cause of the ruin of his enterprise. Ten thousand protestants were ready to embark for Coligny, as the island, now called Villegagnon, was then named: but the report of those who had returned, stopped them, and the colony was left in a defenceless state.

At length the attention of the court of Lisbon had been drawn towards the French settlement, and orders were sent to the Captain General to examine into its state first, and then, if possible, to take it.

Accordingly, Mem de Sa, accompanied by Nobrega and two other Jesuits, attacked it in January, 1560, while Villegagnon was absent in France, and demolished the works, but had not sufficient force to attempt forming a settlement; and had Villegagnon succeeded in returning with the recruits he expected, he would have found it easy to re-establish and perhaps revenge himself. But his bad faith deterred the Hugonots from joining him, the civil war prevented the government from assisting him, and the French colony was lost.

In 1564, Estacio de Sa, nephew of Mem, was sent out from Portugal to form a settlement in Rio, but finding his means inadequate to contend with the Indians, led on by the few remaining French, he went to San Vincente for reinforcements; these, however, only enabled him to keep up the war, and to maintain himself in a post he had fortified[13], not far from the entrance of the harbour, and near the Sugar-loaf mountain, a bare and inaccessible rock, which, from a base of about four hundred feet, shoots up to a thousand in perpendicular height, on the west side of the bar. He therefore applied to his uncle for succour, who, collecting what force he could, led them in person, and arrived in the harbour on the 18th of January, 1567. On the