Journal Of A Voyage To Brazil Part 16

_16th_.--Yesterday afternoon the mercury in the barometer sunk in a very short s.p.a.ce of time a whole inch, and we had a gale of wind. The cold is sensibly increased. Fahrenheit's thermometer often stood at 92 in Rio harbour; it is now 68, and we have many sick. B. is getting better.

_17th_.--Wind and sea abated, and the barometer rising once more; the mercury stands at 30 inches and two-tenths. I have lain down at four o'clock these two mornings, Glennie having kindly relieved my watching at that hour. We have removed the dead-lights from the cabin windows.

_18th_.--Every thing better. The young people again at school. Some lunars taken. We are in 36 55' S. lat.i.tude, and the thermometer is at 68.; barometer 30-2.

On the 19_th_ and 20_th_ the mercury in the barometer sunk gradually from 30 to 29-02, and rose again as before on the 21st. It blew hard; the thermometer fell to 58, in lat.i.tude 42 S. There are many albatrosses and stormy petrels about the s.h.i.+p.

_22d_.--Lat.i.tude 46 25' S., longitude 52 40' W. The weather very cold, though the thermometer is at 56, barometer 29-08; a very heavy swell.

Great numbers of the Cape pigeon about the s.h.i.+p.

_24th_.--Lat.i.tude 50 30'; thermometer 44 morning and evening, 47 at noon. Seeing two penguins to-day, we supposed some land must be near, but found no bottom with 100 fathoms line. The cold weather seems to have a good effect on our invalids. The barometer fell suddenly, and a strong S.W. wind succeeded, and we were glad to light a fire in the cabin.

I am sorry we have pa.s.sed so far out of sight of the Falkland Islands, Sir John Hawkins's maiden land. The idea of seeing a town left standing as it was, by all its inhabitants at once, and of the tame animals becoming wild, had something romantic. It seemed like a realisation of the Arabian tale of the half-marble prince, and in real interest comes near the discovery of the lost Greenland settlements. I do not know any thing that gratifies the imagination, more than the situations and incidents that by bringing distant periods of time together, places them, as it were, at once within our own reach. I remember some years ago spending a whole day with no companion but my guide at Pompeii, and becoming so intimate with the ancients, their ways, and manners, that I felt, when I went home to Naples, and its lazaroni, and its English travellers, as I suppose, that one of the seven sleepers to have done, who went to purchase bread with money five centuries old. As to the marble cities of Moorish Africa, when we consider their exposure to the sirocco, and read Dolomieu's Experiments on the Atmosphere, during the prevalence of that wind at Malta, we shall find but too probable a reason for their existence as reported.

_25th_.--Lat.i.tude 51 58' S., longitude 51 W., thermometer 41. Strong south-westerly gales and heavy sea. Just as our friends in England are looking forward to spring, its gay light days and early flowers, we are sailing towards frozen regions, where avarice' self has been forced to give up half-formed settlements by the severity of the climate. We are in the midst of a dark boisterous sea; over us, a dense, grey, cold sky.

The albatross, stormy petrel, and pintado are our companions; yet there is a pleasure in stemming the apparently irresistible waves, and in wrestling thus with the elements. I forget what writer it is who observes, that the sublime and the ridiculous border on each other; I am sure they approach very nearly at sea. If I look abroad, I see the grandest and most sublime object in nature,--the ocean raging in its might, and man, in all his honour, and dignity, and powers of mind and body, wrestling with and commanding it: then I look within, round my little home in the cabin, and every roll of the s.h.i.+p causes accidents irresistibly ludicrous; and in spite of the inconveniences they bring with them, one cannot choose but laugh. Sometimes, in spite of all usual precautions, of cus.h.i.+ons and clothes, the breakfast-table is suddenly stripped of half its load, which is lodged in the lee scuppers, whither the coal-scuttle and its contents had adjourned the instant before: then succeed the school-room distresses of _capsized_ ink-stands, broken slates, torn books, and lost places; not to mention the loss of many a painful calculation, and other evils exquisite in their kind, but abundantly laughable, especially, as it happened just now, if the school-master is induced to measure his length on the deck, when in the act of reprimanding the carelessness which subjects the slates and books to these untoward chances.

_28th_.--Lat.i.tude 55 26' S., longitude 56 11' W. Captain Graham and the first lieutenant still both very ill. At one o'clock this morning the mercury in the barometer sunk to 28-09; at seven it rose again to 29-01. The thermometer is at 38 of Fahrenheit, and we have had squalls of snow and sleet, and a heavy sea. There are flocks of very small birds about the s.h.i.+p, and we have seen a great many whales.

_30th_.--Lat.i.tude 56 51' S., longitude 59 W.; the thermometer at 30 this morning, and 32 at noon. A violent gale of wind from the south-west; the only thing like a hard gale since we left England. I had breakfast spread on the cabin deck, as it was not possible to secure any thing on a table. Clarke, one of the quartermasters, had two ribs broken by a fall on deck; and Sinclair, a very strong man, was taken ill after being an hour at the wheel. We have made gloves for the men at the wheel of canva.s.s, lined with dreadnought; and for the people at night, waistbands of canva.s.s, with dreadnought linings. The snow and hail squalls are very severe; ice forms in every fold of the sails. This is hard upon the men, so soon after leaving Rio in the hottest part of the year.

Yesterday morning, about an hour before sunrise, a bright meteor was seen in the south-west. It was first taken for the signal lanterns of a large s.h.i.+p; then the officer of the watch thought it was a blue light, and we made no doubt of its being Sir T. Hardy in the Creole. It remained a long time stationary; then it was lost behind the clouds, and reappeared between them about 10 high, when it disappeared.[93]

[Note 93: Frezier mentions seeing such a meteor in lat.i.tude 57 30'

S., and longitude 69 W., in 1712.]

_April 1st_.--Lat.i.tude 57 46'; the weather much more mild and moderate.

Our young men have caught a number of birds, princ.i.p.ally petrels; the P.

Pelagica, or Mother Cary's chicken, is the least; the P. Pintado is gayest on the water; but the P. Glacialis, or fulmer, is most beautiful when brought on board: I cannot enough admire the delicate beauty of the snow-white plumage, unwet and unsoiled, amid the salt waves. The poets have scandalised both the arctic and antarctic regions as

"A bleak expanse, s.h.a.gg'd o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless and _void Of ev'ry life_;"

yet, on Capt. Parry's approach to the north pole, he found the solitude teeming with _life_; and the farther south we have sailed, the more _life_ we have found on the waters. Yesterday the sea was covered with albatrosses, and four kinds of petrel: the penguin comes near us; shoals of porpoises are constantly flitting by, and whales for ever rising to the surface and blowing alongside of the s.h.i.+p.

With the thermometer not lower than 30, we feel the cold excessive.

Yesterday morning the main rigging was cased in ice; and the ropes were so frozen after the sleet in the night, that it was difficult to work them. I never see these things but I think of Thomson's description of Sir Hugh Willoughby's attempt to discover the northwest pa.s.sage, when

"He with his hapless crew, Each full exerted at his several task, Froze into statues; to the cordage glued The sailor, and the pilot to the helm."

I was glad to-day, when the dead-lights were removed, to see the bright, blue, but still boisterous sea, spreading with ample waves curled with snowy tops, in the suns.h.i.+ne; it is many days since we have seen the sun, and the white birds flying and chattering, or wrestling on the water, while the s.h.i.+p, like them, sometimes bravely mounts the very top of the wave, and sometimes quietly subsides with it. These are the things we behold "who go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, "and occupy our business in the great waters." No one can imagine, who has not felt, the exhilaration of spirits produced by a dry clear day of suns.h.i.+ne at sea, after a week of rain and snow.

_April 2d_.--A few minutes after noon, an iceberg was reported on the lee-bow. As I had never seen one, I went on deck for the first time since we left Rio to see it.[94] It appeared like a moderately high conical hill, and looked very white upon the bleak grey sky; it might be about twelve miles from us. The temperature of the water was 36 of Fahrenheit's thermometer, that of the air 38, when the ice was nearest.

[Note 94: We pa.s.sed another on the 8th, which Glennie calculated to be 410 feet high; it was near enough for us to see the waves break on it. In conversing on this subject with the officers since,--for at the time I was indeed unable to think of it,--I find there is reason to think that, instead of an iceberg, we saw land on the 8th. It was seen in the lat.i.tude and longitude of an island visited by Drake, marked in the old charts.]

For some few days the violent motion of the s.h.i.+p, occasioned by the heavy sea, has rendered writing and drawing irksome; for, as Lord Dorset's song has it,

"Our paper, pens, and ink, and we, Roll up and down our s.h.i.+ps, at sea."

Nevertheless we are not idle. As the cabin has always a good fire in it, it is the general rendezvous for invalids; and the mids.h.i.+pmen come in and out as they please, as it is the school-room. In one corner Glennie has his apparatus for skinning and dissecting the birds we take; and we have constantly occasion to admire the beautiful contrivances of nature in providing for her creatures. These huge sea-birds, that we find so far from any land, have on each side large air-vessels adapted for floating them in the air, or on the water; they are placed below the wings, and the liver, gizzard, and entrails rest on them. In each gizzard of those we have yet opened, there have been two small pebbles, of unequal size; and the gizzard is very rough within. We have found more vegetable than animal food in their stomachs.

_20th April, 1822_.--To-day we made the coast of Chile. I had continued to write my Journal regularly; but though nearly two years are past since I wrote it, I cannot bring myself to copy it: from the 3d of April it became a register of acute suffering; and, on my part, of alternate hopes and fears through days and nights of darkness and storms, which aggravated the wretchedness of those wretched hours. On the night of the ninth of April, I regularly undressed and went to bed for the first time since I left Rio de Janeiro. All was then over, and I slept long and rested; but I awoke to the consciousness of being alone, and a widow, with half the globe between me and my kindred.

Many things very painful occurred. But I had comfort too. I found sympathy and brotherly help from some; and I was not insensible to the affectionate behaviour of _my boys_, as the mids.h.i.+pmen were called. And I had the comfort to feel that no stranger hand had closed his eyes, or smoothed his pillow.

Mr. London and Mr. Kift, the surgeon and a.s.sistant surgeon, never left the bed-side; and, when my strength failed, my cousin Mr. Glennie, and Mr. Blatchly, two pa.s.sed mids.h.i.+pmen, did all that friends could do.

Mr. Dance, the second lieutenant,--though, from the illness of the first lieutenant, the whole business of the s.h.i.+p devolved on him,--found time to be near his friend's death-bed; and, whether at noon or midnight, was never absent where kindness could be shown.

But what could any human kindness do for me? My comfort must come from him who in his own time will "wipe off all tears from our faces."

SECOND VISIT TO BRAZIL.

Before I begin the Journal of my Second Visit to Brazil, from which I was absent a year and three days, it will be necessary to give a short account of the princ.i.p.al events which took place during that year, and which changed the government of the country.

The Prince Regent had in vain sent the most pressing representations in favour of Brazil to the Cortes. No notice whatever was taken of his despatches; and the government at Lisbon continued to legislate for Brazil as if it were a settlement on the coast of savage Africa. The ministers who had served Don John had seen enough of the country, during their residence in it, to be persuaded that Brazil, united, was at any time competent to throw off all subjection to the mother country; the object, therefore, became to divide it. Accordingly a scheme for the government of Brazil was framed, by which each captaincy should be ruled by a junta, whose acts were to be totally independent on each other, and only recognisable by the authorities in Portugal; and the Prince was ordered home in a peremptory and indecent manner. I have mentioned in my Journal the reception those orders had met with, and the resolution His Royal Highness had adopted of staying in Brazil. As soon as this resolution became known to the provinces, addresses and deputations poured in on all sides from every town and captaincy, excepting the city of Bahia and the province of Maranliam, which had always had a government independent of the rest of Brazil.

In December, 1821, the King had appointed General Madeira governor of Bahia and commander of the troops. He entered on his office in February; and shortly afterwards the first actual warfare between the Portuguese and Brazilians began in the city of St. Salvador, on the 6th of the month, when the Brazilians were defeated with some loss.[95] Meantime, the province of St. Paul's had made every exertion to raise and arm troops; and early in February 1100 men marched towards Rio, to put themselves at the disposal of the Prince. Some recruits for the seamen and marine corps were raised, and a naval academy established, the object of all which was to prevent the carrying away the Prince by force. It was now thought advisable that the Prince should visit the two most important provinces, St. Paul's and the Mines; and on the 26th or 27th of March he left Rio for that purpose, leaving the executive government in the hands of the minister Jose Bonifacio. His Royal Highness was received every where with enthusiasm, until he arrived at the last stage, on his way to Villa Rica, the capital of the province of Minas Geraes; there he received intelligence of a party raised to oppose his entrance by the Juiz de Fora, supported by a captain of one of the regiments of Cacadores. He immediately caused some troops to be a.s.sembled and joined with those which accompanied him, and then remained where he was, and sent to the camara of the town, to say he was able to enter by force, but had rather come among them as a friend and protector. Several messages pa.s.sed; the conspirators discovered that the Prince was, indeed, sufficiently strong to overpower them; and besides, they met with no support, as they had hoped, from the magistrates or people. His Royal Highness, therefore, entered Villa Rica on the 9th of April, and on the magistrates and people attending to compliment him, he addressed them thus:--

"Brave Mineros! The shackles of despotism, which began to be loosened on the 24th of August in Porto, are now bursting in this province. Be free,--be const.i.tutional! Unite with me, and proceed const.i.tutionally. I rely entirely on you. Do you depend on me. Let not yourselves be deluded by those who seek the ruin of your province, and of the whole nation.

Viva, The Const.i.tutional King!

Viva, Our Religion!

Viva, All honest men!

Viva, The Mineros!"

[Note 95: On the 25th of May following a solemn ma.s.s was performed for the souls of those who had fallen on both sides, at the expense of the Bahians resident at Rio, in the church of San Francesco de Paulo.

The cenotaph raised in the church was surrounded by inscriptions, in Latin and Portuguese; one of the most striking is, "Eternal glory to those who give their blood for their country."

("He quha dies for his c.u.n.tre Sal herbyrit intil bewyn be," says _Barbour_.)

The day was one of those Brazilian rainy days, when it should seem another deluge was coming: but the Prince and Princess were the first at the ceremony.]

The next day the Prince held a general court, and remained eleven days at Villa Rica. The only punishment inflicted on the conspirators, was suspension from their offices; and this royal visit attached this province to him, as firmly as those of St. Paul's and Rio.

He returned to Rio de Janeiro on the 25th, where he was received in the most flattering manner, and where he became daily more popular; and on the 13th of May, King John's birth-day, the senate and people bestowed on him the t.i.tle of Perpetual Defender of Brazil, and thenceforward his style was, CONSt.i.tUTIONAL PRINCE REGENT, AND PERPETUAL DEFENDER OF THE KINGDOM OF BRAZIL.

The impossibility of continuing united to Portugal had become daily more apparent. All the southern provinces were eager to declare their independence. Pernambuco and its dependencies had long manifested a similar feeling, and the province of Bahia was equally inclined to freedom although the city was full of Portuguese troops under Madeira, and receiving constant reinforcements and supplies from Lisbon.

The Cortes seemed resolved on bringing matters to extremities; the language used in their sessions, with respect to the Prince, was highly indecent. Such commanders either by sea or land as obeyed him, unless by force, were declared traitors, and he was ordered home anew within four months, under pain of submitting to the future disposition of the Cortes; and they decreed that the whole means of government should be employed to enforce obedience. The Brazilian members did indeed remonstrate and protest formally against these proceedings; but they were over-ruled; and the spectators in the galleries, on one occasion, went so far as to cry, "Down with the Brazilian!"

In the months of June and July, Madeira began to make sallies into the country around Bahia, as if it had been possessed by an enemy; and, indeed, he quickly found one most formidable. The town of Cachoeira, large and populous, and intimately connected with the hardy inhabitants of the Certam, soon became the head-quarters of crowds of patriots, who a.s.sembled there, and resolved to expel the Portuguese from their capital.

They began to form regular troops; but though they were abundantly supplied with beef and other provisions, they were in want of arms and ammunition, and sent to Rio de Janeiro to represent their situation to the Prince, and request a.s.sistance. They were also in great distress for salt to preserve their provisions; and as to accoutrements, raw hides supplied the place of almost every thing. An apothecary, in Cachoeira, shortly began to boil sea-water in sugar-coppers, to make salt, and soon reduced the price of that article, so that the quant.i.ty at first sold for ten pataccas (eighteen s.h.i.+llings) fell to seven vintems (seven pence). The same apothecary, collecting all the salt-petre in the neighbourhood, applied himself to making of gunpowder, and a fortunate discovery of some hundred barrels smuggled into Itaparica by some English, was of essential use to them. But they had no cannon, no lead for ball for their muskets and matchlocks; the lead, indeed, and a quant.i.ty of gun-locks, their friends within the city contrived to smuggle to them; and their guns were supplied in the following manner.

In each engenho, there was an old gun or two for the purpose of balancing some part of the machinery; these were at once sent to Cachoeira, where, being cleaned and bushed by an ingenious blacksmith, they were rendered serviceable; and the patriots ventured to take the field against Madeira's parties, even before the arrival of any a.s.sistance from Rio.