Miss Edgeworth's views of this matter are to us entirely incompre hensible, and we have only to hope that she will learn to appreci ate more justly the effect which may be produced by the sublimest

motives that can influence human character:

Else wherefore breathes she in a Christian land.'

But we must conclude: we opened these volumes with confident expectations of amusement and instruction,-we have read them (except in the important article to which we have just alluded) without disappointment; and we now close them with anxious hopes that Miss Edgeworth by the general approbation which we have no doubt they will receive, may be encouraged to continue, and, in one point, to improve, so useful an exercise of her eminent talents.

ART. IX. Travels in the Interior of Brazil; particularly in the Gold and Diamond Districts of that Country, including a Voyage to the Rio de la Plata. By John Mawe. London.

1812.

IT may furnish amusement of no uninteresting kind to speculate on the degree of civilization and improvement likely to be ob tained respectively by the Spanish and Portugueze colonists of South America, who, after an equally long series of grievances and discouragements, may be said to begin together a new career, under circumstances altogether different. At the moment that one of these colonies is endeavouring to shake off the trammels of the parent state, the other is receiving into her bosom her expatriated monarch. The result of these two events, and their influence ou so large a portion of the human race, cannot fail of being highly important. Both colonies will, no doubt, finally profit by them, but the impulse communicated by the vigour and spirit of revolutionary principles will probably give the lead to Spanish America; while the old government of Portugal will tardily admit new regu lations, however obvious their advantages may appear. Indeed, it is not at all improbable that, in the hope of reoccupying the throne of Portugal, the advisers of the Prince Regent will recommend the continuance of the present discouraging and repressive system. These men have estates in Portugal, to which they still hope to return, whatever power may ultimately possess it; and a narrow policy prevents them from seeing that, in spite of their efforts, Brazil must ultimately follow the fate of Spanish America.

There are, perhaps, no people in the world more attached to the person of their sovereign than the Portugueze his arrival at Bahia, therefore, was hailed with the warmest and most lively feelings of joy and gratitude; as if, instead of seeking an asylum among them,,

he

he had undertaken the voyage for no other purpose than to advance their happiness. He was received with all the magnificence which they had the means of displaying, and an immediate offer was made to subscribe a sum of money equal to half a million sterling, to build a suitable palace for the royal family, provided he would condescend to reside there. The inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro were equally well disposed to hail the arrival of the royal visitor; and were beginning their preparations, when the impolitic and arbitrary proceedings of his ministers turned their loyal and patriotic feelings into those of disgust, even before the appearance of their prince among them. Agents had been sent forward to take forceable possession of the best houses in the town for the use of the regent's suite. The consequence of this ill-judged measure was, that many people of the first rank and respectability, thus dispossessed of their property, abandoned the town altogether, and retired to their farms, from whence the greater part never returned. Another arbitrary act was that of forestalling the market for the use of the palace, by ordering all the daily supplies to be brought thither before they were exposed to the public.

No material improvements have as yet followed the prince into America. The inquisition, it is true, has been formally abolished, but its effects were neither felt nor dreaded in the Brazils. The general condition of the people appears to be the same as before. The same wretched system of agriculture still prevails; the same difficulty of communication between the various parts of the colony still exists; and the same vexatious restrictions and impositions still continue. There is some consolation, however, in being assured, that the regent has indicated a disposition to patronize every attempt to diffuse among his transatlantic subjects a taste for useful knowledge; that he has already adopted measures for effecting a reform in the institutions for public instruction; and that he has evinced a love of science by establishing a lectureship on chemistry, to which our countryman Doctor Gardner has had the honour of being appointed. The estimation in which Mr. Mawe himself was held by the prince; the missions upon which he was employed; and the ready manner in which all his wishes were gratified, certainly bespeak, in the mind of the regent, a desire to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, and to promote the welfare of the colonists: but he is unfortunately surrounded by men of contracted and illiberal views.

We now proceed to lay before our readers some account of the book which has given rise to the preceding observations. Mr. Mawe, it appears, undertook in 1804 a voyage of commercial experiment to the Rio de la Plata, with a British licence, and under Spanish colours. His destination was Buenos Ayres; but the

master

master, ignorant of the navigation of the river, put into the bay of Monte Video, where, by a blundering report made to the governor, he was discovered to be an Englishman; in consequence of which, his property was seized, his papers taken away, and himself thrown into prison. The governor, Pasqual Ruis Huidobro, and his official advisers, were particularly severe against Mr. Mawe, who, in return, consoles himself by reflecting, that they were a set of vagabonds and criminals, refugees from Old Spain, and that their associates were the officers of two Spanish privateers, all Frenchmen, who did not fail to exasperate the antipathy which the governor had imbibed against our countrymen. The consignee of the cargo joined in the persecution of Mr. Mawe, that he might be allowed to get possession of the property; the proceeds of which he afterwards withheld, on the ground that he was not authorized to pay them over to a prisoner. At length, however, he was released from confinement on the intercession of an old lady, who procured two Spaniards to become responsible for his appearance. But his troubles did not end here: in returning to his lodgings, he happened to cast his eye on a placard, which the wind and the rain had nearly detached from the side of a wall, and which he inconsiderately tore off and put in his pocket. The same night he was seized in his bed and again hurried to prison, where he remained in close confinement for six weeks, and was then released on paying the fees, which amounted to three hundred dollars.

Being now at large, and without employment, his attention was turned to the acquirement of some information respecting Monte Video. It is situated, he tells us, on a basis of granite, rising with a gentle slope to a considerable elevation, at the extremity of a small peninsula; its population is about 20,000 souls. The inhabitants (except the governor and the French party) are described as humane and polite, the ladies affable, fond of dress, and very neat in their persons; full of vivacity, and courteous to strangers. Provisions cheap and abundant. The environs of the town are agreeably diversified with gently sloping hills and narrow vallies, watered by delightful rivulets; exhibiting, however, few traces of cultivation, except in some small enclosures occupied as gardens by the principal merchants.

Mr. Mawe had not much time to examine the mineralogy of the peninsular mountain of Monte Video; his evil genius still pursued him; and, on the arrival of General Beresford's expedition, he was once more ordered into close confinement; but released on stipulating to proceed into the interior, and not to approach within forty leagues of the town. He took up his residence at the establishment of Don Juan Martinez, situate on the river Barriga Negra, in the midst of a mountainous country, well watered, and, .

not

not destitute of wood. In this district are several great breeding estates, some of which are said to be stocked with 60,000, and others even with 200,000 head of cattle. These herds are managed by a particular race of people from Paraguay, called peons. Sheep are very scarce, and kept merely for the sake of their wool, which is made into flocks for bedding: their flesh is never eaten. Indeed the inhabitants subsist almost entirely on beef; and, in the midst of innumerable herds, know not the taste of milk, butter, or cheese. The hovels of the peons consist of a few upright posts wattled with twigs, and plastered with mud: a green hide stretched on sticks serves for the door, a dried hide for a bed, and a horse's skull for a chair. A rod of wood or iron stuck in the ground, and inclining over the fire, is the only utensil for cooking; the juices of the beef keep up the blaze till they are exhausted, when the extinction of the fire is the test that the meat is sufficiently roasted. We cannot say much in favour of this mode of cookery; nor are we sure that we should think the taste of the viands remarkably improved by the nature of the fuel employed on it, which Mr. Mawe assures us, with an air of perfect sincerity, consists of the carcasses of mares,' who are bred in great numbers for this purpose.

Nothing can be more wretched than the state of agriculture in this part of Spanish America. The few patches of arable land which the colonists hold are uninclosed; a crooked piece of wood dragged by a couple of oxen serves as a plough; the grain comes up amidst a thousand noxious weeds, which choke its growth and prevent its ripening. The whole is cut down together, and carried to a circular pen, into which a troop of mares are turned, and kept on the gallop, till the grain is supposed to be freed from the stalk. So little understood, indeed, are all the concerns of agriculture, that the proprietor of an estate worth 20,000 dollars, (a very large one in this country,) can barely subsist upon it. The consequence is, that there are few marriages. Mr. Mawe informs us, that it is not uncommon to find estates larger than an English county with hardly more than a hundred labourers upon them, all men, who subsist on the sale of a little corn, which each is permitted to raise.

The population is composed of 1. European Spaniards; 2. Creoles, the legitimate descendants of Spaniards; 3. Mestizos, the offspring of European and Indian parents; 4. Indians, almost all of whom have some mixture of Spanish blood; 5. Brown, mixtures of Europeans and African negroes; 6. Mulattoes of various degrees. All these intermix without restraint, producing new and ever-multiplying varieties. They have all the vices of the European settlers, (who are not generally of the best description,) without any of the virtues which education confers. A rigorous government, an intolerant priesthood, and the pernicious example

example of slavery, have stamped on them the character of an ignorant, superstitious, and slothful people.

We have no intention to accompany Mr. Mawe, whom the fall of Monte Video had once more released, to the attack of Buenos Ayres, nor to repeat, after him, the causes of the failure of that ill-advised and worse conducted expedition. May no memorial of it remain to interrupt the friendship which has since happily sprung up between the two nations! We shall be better pleased to attend him to Rio de Janeiro, and thence to the gold and diamond mines of Minas Geraes, to which, we believe, he is the first Englishman who ever found admittance. The extreme. jealousy of the Portugueze would not, till very recently, allow a foreigner, touching at any of the ports of Brazil, to sleep on shore, nor even to walk about in the day time, without a soldier at his heels the interior of the country was a terra incognita, completely sealed up by a succession of guard houses, which the colonists themselves were not permitted to pass without leave from the highest authority. The same jealousy, added to the general ignorance of the people, has hitherto prevented any authentic information of this magnificent colony from being communicated to the world. The little that we have is generally derived from Spanish writers, seldom just to the Portugueze, and from the hasty visits of navigators to the sea-port towns, necessarily defective, and almost always inaccurate. Every account of it, therefore, drawn from actual observation, however meagre, must be acceptable, and will be read with interest.

The first place on the coast at which Mr. Mawe touched, after his departure from Monte Video, was the island of St. Catherine's. In the general appearance of the town on this beautiful island, and in the manners of its inhabitants, a manifest superiority was observable over those which he had just left. The houses were well built and provided with neat gardens. Every article of provisions was abundant and cheap. The detailed account of this charming spot agrees pretty nearly with that already given by the few navigators who have touched there for refreshments: but when Mr. Mawe terms it a free port,' we would wish to refer him to an article in a former number, where he will find, on the authority of Captain Krusenstern, how little it deserves the name. Were it really so, it is scarcely credible that, at the distance of two miles from the town of St. Catherine's, a neat house, a small orangery, and ground clear of brushwood, capable of forming a pretty plantation, should be offered for sale at one hundred dollars; or that on the skirts of the opposite continent, close to the harbour, grounds which oc

* No. XII. Art. II.

cupy