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BRAZIL — The Illustrated Guide to the Novel

Part One

The Tupiniquin

The Portuguese

The Jesuit

The Bandeirantes

Republicans and Sinners

Sons of the Empire

The Brazilians

Candangos

Afterword

Genealogical Charts

Maps

[Guide - Part Two]

Slave Market at Rio de Janeiro

A free online guide with a wealth of photos and illustrations giving a unique insight into the novel and its creativity.

I searched for the story of Brazil for five years, a literary pathfinder in quest of the epic of the Brazilian people. In this guide, I share my private journal kept on a mighty trek of twenty thousand kilometers across the length and breadth of a vast country.

Discover the magic that goes into the making of a monumental novel with a first draft of three-quarters of million words written in the old-fashioned way, by hand! A quest driven by a passion for writing and storytelling.

Links to the Illustrated Guide to Brazil can be found at the end of each Book Section enhancing the reader's enjoyment of a spellbinding saga "with the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover."

Errol Lincoln Uys

Boston, 2014

IMAGE CREDITS APPEAR AT END OF GUIDE

Captions from the text of BRAZIL ©2014 Errol Lincoln Uys

Prologue : The Tupiniquin

The village below was the largest his people had built, and had been enclosed by a double stockade of heavy posts lashed together with vines — two great circles that protected the five dwellings arranged around a central clearing. These malocas were no rude forest huts but the grand lodges of the five great families of the clan.

Now the men in the clearing began to dance around the pagé, stamping their feet in such a way that the seedpods tied around their calves shook in unison. from many mouths came the cries:"Now speak, O Voice of the Spirits."

Sex, above all, was the Nambikwara's delight. Making love was good, they said — and they did so with gusto whenever the opportunity arose.

Their passage was relatively easy except in those places where the river roared over a cataract and their small craft was shot through a narrow channel between the rocks.

They passed through two new moons, two men  and a boy, voyaging into the heart of a great continent, as much in harmony with this wilderness as the animals that sought the riverbanks, leaving scant trace of their presence as they moved from one bend of the stream to the next.

JOURNAL

But their innate suspicion of the evil that stalked humans in such mysterious places often made them fearful.

The jaguars rested between the canes, their cold yellow eyes unblinking as they peered into the darkness.

Among the objects in Tocoyricoc's cave was something even more magical to Aruanã — "the lines that remembered." They appeared to be a bunch of bowstrings of different colors and lengths knotted together untidily. Tocoyricoc used a word from his own language to describe them: quipu.

When Aruanã first saw the old man consult it, he'd picked out a red cord. "First knot," he said,"is battle of Black Valley, where a young Tocoyricoc fought. Two and one knots is the age he had, this is his place among the warriors, these, the number of enemy killed."

"What magic is this?"

"It is a away or remembering," he said. "To show what is past."

"This was the land where Master — one you would call Great Chief — arose. Son of the Sun. He came to change our world when I was your age .Before He-Who-Trans-forms, we were a miserable people living as those who see nothing but the forest." His voice shook with emption as he told Aruanã about this great sky-being. He showed the young man his own golden earplugs — "tears of the sun" — and said that they were pitiful things compared with what adorned the Master.

Yware-pemme struck again and again, and quickly there were three groups of women at work in the clearing.

The enemy were being dismembered with bamboo knives and stone ax. The trunks were split, the intestines removed and set aside: these would go with other parts of the viscera into a great broth, which all would sip, taking the strength of the enemy.

The butchers caroused and sometimes squabbled over the joints; the men danced in the clearing and sang with joy at having seen the suffering of the Cariri. So it would go, they warned, with any who dared gnaw the bones of Tupiniquin.

Juriti brought his son; he heard the strong cry and saw the robust little body and was enormously relieved that his efforts thusfar had succeeded. Encouraged, he faced his confinement.

On the beach where he walked for the shells, Aruanã

felt contentment at being alone. One man, alone, at the edge of his world, his bare feet making an impression along great curves of sand.

JOURNAL

And then, at the height of his happiness, came a premonition...

Tiny puffs of cloud had fallen to the end of the earth. Four...five...six...were bunched together just above the horizon. Otherwise the sky was perfectly clear.

They were there, darkening images now, these canoes that had come from the end of the earth.

Book One : The Portuguese

"Sixty-four days out of Lisbon," the fidalgo said, "forty days west of Cabo Verde, and still no Terra de Santa Cruz..."

Cavalcanti did not reply immediately. He was thinking of Gomes de Pina's use of the old name — Land of the Holy Cross — given to the territory by Pedro Álvares Cabral when he discovered it for Portugal in 1500. On the Lisbon waterfront, to men who knew better, it was Terra do Papagaio (Land of Parrots) or Terra do Brasil, named for the brazilwood taken from its wild shores.

What distinguished Sao Gabriel from those rakish caravels was her size — 120 tons against fifty or so; her broad, square sails spreading above a wide beam; her towering castles fore and aft.

Afonso de Albuquerque's name was already a byword for terror among the petty kings and sultans along the coast of India: O Terrível (The Terrible), they called him...

Sofala, Aden, Ormuz, Malacca — all were strategic points on the trade routes across the Indian Ocean, but none was so commanding as Goa. Let the Infidel hold the others, Albuquerque said, and the Indies could be conquered from Goa.

For eighty-four days the ships held out; on the eighty-fifth day, the monsoon over, they could finally weigh anchor. But it was not long before Albuquerque was back, this time in a great armada with 1,700 fighting men. By ten o'clock on the feast day of St. Catherine, the garrison at Goa had fallen.

For three days and three nights the fighting had raged in the city. By dawn on the fourth day, when O Terrível decreed a halt, they had slain six thousand disbelievers, men, women and children, for Portugal — and for Christ.

Gomes de Pina had ordered his vessels tarry in the river while he held a holy vigil in the new church of the Jeronymites, built at nearby Belém in gratitude to God for the passage to India. He'd assembled his family and hangers-on and proceeded to prayerful office — in the manner of great navigators like Vasco da Gama and Pedro

Álvares Cabral, who had knelt in the humble chapel that had stood on the ground now occupied by the majestic limestone monastery.

When his lonely appeal was over, Gomes de Pina had led his entourage to the water's edge, where a boat awaited to carry him to the ships. They were anchored close to the Tower of St. Vincent, a great bulwark that rose on a group of rocks in the Tagus.

Cavalcanti looked at the caravels in the distance, his eyes searching the vast expanse of moonlit sea.

Was it a night like this, in the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492, when Cristovão Colombo first saw Ilha San Salvador? O Santa Maria! The scheming Genoese adventure sailing for Castile and Aragon! O Portugal, robbed by Spanish dogs and the traitors who sail in their ships!

When Columbus was on his third voyage in 1498, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama reached India via the Cape of Good Hope...

Two years later, Pedro Álvares Cabral, commander of the second Indies fleet, veered far to the west, making an unexpected landfall ar Terra de Santa Cruz on April 22, 1500.

At last they stood in toward that wide, beautiful bay. Near the beach they saw the great cross raised by Cabral.

JOURNAL

Aruanã was remembering the day Cabral held the first devotions at this cross: As the pagés of the Long Hairs had gone about their sacred work, the Tupiniquin had followed their actions, kneeling when they knelt, standing with their hands uplifted, and breathing not a word when they were silent.

Who would acknowledge, for instance, that there was a black chief who called himself Affonso I, son of King João da Silva, (John of the Woods) and Queen Eleanor; who ruled his lands not with chiefs and elders but with nobles he addressed as his duques, marquezes, viscondes and baroes?

Cavalcanti's first impression of Mbanza, palace and place of justice of the ManiKongo, was one of confusion. He was taken back by the sight of a wall, like those in Portugal, raised before this city in the heart of Africa.

Affonso I, Lord of the Kongo, sat on a throne inlaid with gold and ivory and draped with leopard skins. He was dressed in the fashion of a Portuguese noble, with scarlet tabard, pale silk robe, satin cloak with embroidered coat of arms, and velvet slippers.

There were women, too, dressed as Portuguese donas, with veils over their faces and velvet caps and gowns. Their gold and jewels were such as few ladies of Lisbon possessed.

"Not east but south," the slaver said. "They are Khoi-khoi who bring copper and ostriches to the kingdom. They live near the Cape." — The Cape of Good Hope, at the tip of Africa.

Sancho de Sousa sent his customs officials to brand the captives, marking their breasts with a red-hot iron. When this was done, Padre Miguel had the slaves assembled and informed them that they were to be baptized.

"You will taste the salt of our faith," he told them. "Your souls, servants, will be free."

In the domed Sala das Armas of Sintra palace on a day in October 1534, the fidalgo Dom Duarte Coelho Pereira sat listening to the Keep of Records, Belchior da Silveira, read part of a petition taken from the royal archives....

JOURNAL

"I don't know this Cavalcanti," Dom Duarte repeated, "but it's obvious he's not fooled by parrots and logs: he sees the one thing that will bring a profit from Brazil."

"Which is?""Sugar! Sugar will be the treasure of our New World!"

Days passed in which Nicolau said little to his family about Dom Duarte's visit. He wandered off alone through the woods, to the very edge of the land, where the blue-gray Atlantic rolled against the rocks.

Cabo da Roça, Sintra

westernmost point of Europe

A start had been made at a settlement also called Santa Cruz, but soon the settlers had moved inland to this more elevated position, and named it Villa do Cosmos, for the saint. Shortly, however, they were seduced by the cadences of the native word Iguarassu (Big River) and had begun to use it for both "stream" and "village."

Dom Duarte had not been happy with this choice of Iguarassu as his main base. A few weeks before, he had seen his "Lisbon": on the coast twenty-five miles to the south, there were seven hills, from any one of which he could look far inland, and which could be admirably defended seaward.

There was at this time an old romance of chivalry and knighthood with its heroine, Olinda, a name meaning beautiful. Dom Duarte found this a perfect description for those seven hills facing the sea: Olinda

Book Two: The Jesuit

In Lisbon, Inácio never strayed far from Francis Xavier's side. When the time came for Xavier's departure, Inácio had wept openly. "Follow Simon Rodrigues," Xavier had consoled him. "Obey his instructions and the Lord will surely indicate His will for you."

Dom João III, entering middle age, was becoming increasingly concerned with the special duty demanded of a Most Catholic Majesty — the saving of his subject's souls. He was distressed when the two Jesuits informed him that his opulent and worldly Lisbon was as wicked and profane a locality as any they expected to encounter in some heathen land. While they waited for a ship, they announced, they would devote themselves to purging the capital.

Perceiving the young man's grace and devotion, Rodrigues had ordered him to Coimbra University — which João III had donated to the Jesuits — to commence the studies he would have followed at Paris. "Arm yourself, Inácio," Rodrigues had said,"to win the minds and hearts of others."

A sugar press stood beneath a palm-thatched roof at one side of the plaza, oxen straining against the great arms that turned the rollers into which men fed the cane stalks.

Near these workers, other blacks and natives of Santa Cruz labored at the molasses cauldrons.

"Build the new mill, Nicolau, not for Engenho Santo Tomas alone but for others...They'll have to bring every stalk they grow to your mill. And you take two out of every three stalks as compensation...."

Governor Tomé de Sousa was aware that beyond the Bahia in the forests of the hinterland were thousands of savage Tupinambá. "So many savages that they would never lack," the governor reported to Lisbon, "even if we were to cut them up in slaughter-houses." He did not balk at punishing those who dared interfere with his plans, and he took such action not for his sake alone but for the glory that should be promised King João in this land. "The Pious," as the king was now called, had made it clear that this time he would tolerate no nonsense from his native subjects.

Caramaru, "Fish Man," the sole survivor of the wreck of an Indies ship off the shoals north of the Bahia in 1510, had been found between the rocks by the Tupinamba. Caramaru had lived among the savages for more than two decades before the arrival of Dom Francisco Coutinho, one of Dom João's donatários. Dom Francisco had lost his life under a slaughter club. The Tupinamba had spared Caramaru, not only because he was their friend, but also because his wife, Paraguaçu, "Big River," was the daughter of their most powerful chief.

Medium in height, slightly plump and stiff-limbed, Governor Mem de Sá was not given to displays of emotion. Months before, when he learned that the savages had slaughtered his son, Fernáo, twenty years old he'd reacted by withdrawing to his quarters to pray for the child he'd personally ordered into battle.

"Compel them to come in!" the Gospel of St. Luke  urged, and it had become the rallying cry of the Jesuits.

Compel them....Inacio glanced at José de Anchieta, a young brother standing with the group. Brother José was eager to comply with this shibboleth. Anchieta wa often sickly. But his zeal was militant and inspiring, and his craving for the harvest of souls insatiable.

Padre Nobrega, Anchieta and others had gone back to Piratininga. Nine miles from the mameluco settlement, on January 25, 1554, they had established the aldeia of São Paulo de Piratininga.

"They should fear — the Tupiniquin. If they but knew the lessons taught the Tupinambá in these lands."

The lessons Anchieta spoke of had been raids led by Mem de Sá against the Bahia Tupinambá, not successfully pacified since the day of Tomé de Sousa, when they had eaten the degredados. One especially arrogant elder, Bloated Toad had mocked the new governor as the creature of a king who was a baby: He, Bloated Toad, was  man and would do as he had always done, and to prove it, he'd sent his warriors to seize a plump enemy, who was slain by him and eaten in the middle of his clearing. "Come and judge me!" Bloated Toad dared Mem de Sá.

The Tupiniquin simply refused to move. To Padre Inácio's pleas, they responded by showing that their fields were still productive, the thatch on their houses new, the clay of the great pots their women fashioned for beer as fresh as the brew they held. Their people had slain no Long Hairs — why should they move?

The horrors of plague and pox were raging at the malocas of natives not yet contacted by the Portuguese. Crushed as they were by the diseases, they had faced yet another torment — famine.

"If you could see the poor things," said a father reporting on the condition of these refugees," seeking a bowl of manioc. They arrive at a plantation begging the owner to take their children as slaves in exchange for a single meal."

In 1578, King Sebastião "the Desired," a flaxen-haired large-limbed twenty-year-old filled with a sense of grand destiny, assembled sixteen thousand men and set out to conquer Morocco.

At Alcacer-Quibir, south of Tangiers, the force was destroyed and Dom Sebastião himself slain. Less than fifty escaped.

The rout at Alcacer-Quibir had not ended in the sand of North Africa. Dom Sebastião died a bachelor, and the heir to the Portuguese throne was his aged grand-uncle, Cardinal Henriques. Eighteen months after his succession, Henriques died. Phillip II of Spain now claimed and won the throne of Portugal.

Not only had the Portuguese lost the independence of their homeland and empire; they gained new enemies — the English and the Dutch — with whom their new king, Phillip II, had long quarreled.

On the seventh day of their journey, their route took them out of the forest into open country, where the luxuriant vegetation quickly began to give way to an arid cover of spiky bushes and stunted plants. Clumps of bush, stick-dry and dead; spiny cactus bent into grotesque shapes; gnarled branches of stripped trees — caatinga, "the white forest," the natives called this ash-gray landscape.

JOURNAL

Book Three: The Bandeirantes

The bandeiras of medieval Portugal had been small raiding parties sniping at the Moors; at São Paulo, a bandeira was an organized force that set out for an expedition into the sertão, the backlands.

Antônio Raposo Tavares was thirty years old. He had come to São Paulo ten years ago from the plains of Alentejo, in central Portugal, where he spent his youth among the wheat fields and orange groves. Raposo Tavares was a tall, handsome, bearded man, powerfully built, decisive and confident. A born leader who devoutly believed he was destined to make great discoveries in Brazil, he was passionately eager for adventure.

Valentim Ramahlo's family belonged to a great clan of mamelucos related to João Ramahlo, the castaway who had settled the high plateau long before the Jesuits Nobrega and Anchieta arrived to establish São Paulo de Piratininga.

The colegio of the Jesuit fathers stood upon a good vantage point above the Piratininga plain. Here, too, were the Franciscans and Benedictines, their churches raised with care. But most of  São Paulo was a slum of mud-and-wattle hovels planted along dirt-strewn streets.

The Inquisition had not been established in Brazil, but occasionally Visitors were sent to examine the faith of the colonists and to investigate reports that Brazil was a haven for Jewish exiles and lax New Christians. The belief that there were significant numbers of crypto Jews was exaggerated, but Portugal had always been more tolerant of Jews than had Spain, and groups had come to the colony, particularly those with expertise in the sugar industry.

Philip II of Spain, son of the emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, had taken the Portuguese crown in 1581....

And now there was Philip IV, horseman, hunter, lover of art and letters, who, when not engaged in these pastimes, involved his country — and Portugal — in a vicious and exhausting conflict with England, France and Holland.

The Paulistas had been slave-raiding in these lands since long before Amador's birth, leading thousands of Carijo back to São Paulo.

Bernardo da Silva's upper body was encased in a sleeveless leather jacket quilted and padded with cotton twill thick enough to withstand an arrow. Below the waist he wore cotton breeches and boots that extended above the knee. On the belt that secured the quilted carapace was a good-sized pouch, a powder horn and ramrod for his musket, and a sword, knives and small battle-ax

São Paulo itself did not have a population as large as this Jesuit town. The Carijo lived in houses ninety feet long, partitioned into separate family quarters. Walking with the Paulistas toward the reduction square, Amador counted nine rows of houses on either side of the main thoroughfare.

For ten years, Amador da Silva marched with bandeiras that destroyed the remaining eight reductions of the province of Guiara and forced the fathers and the remnant of their great congregations to flee south in the direction of Buenos Aires.

The homestead was a one-storied whitewashed building, its rammed earth walls two feet thick. In the front were two large rooms, on either side of a spacious verandah... the roof made with half-round reddish tiles, pagoda-like, with graceful sloping sides.

JOURNAL

A Dutch armada reached Pernambuco, landing troops on a beach just north of Olinda — then a prosperous city of eight thousand settlers — and seizing the capital the same evening.

Those attending this night's festa included no less a personage than the governor of New Holland, Johan Maurits, count of Nassau Siegen. Capable solder and fine administrator, Maurits also showed himself to be a visionary. He assembled a group of forty-six scientists, scholars, writers and artists from all over Europe and solemnly declared their assignment: "to reveal to the world the wonders of paradise."

Opposite Recife on an island formed by two rivers, the governor was building a new capital, Mauritsstad, a well-fortified town with broad avenues and two canals.

Amador was in the grand house on the plantation he has seen from the ridge overlooking the valley — Engenho Santo Tomás, the property of Fernão Cavalcanti, of an old and illustrious Pernambucan family.

Ribeiro told Amador that during the guerilla war, he had served with two units, the first commanded by Felipe Camarão, a Potiguara chief, and the other by Henrique Dias, a free black.

"I was there when Henrique Dias lost his hand," Ribeiro said. "Oh the brave man — with a sword in the hand that remained, howling like a wild dog, for the Hollanders to come to him...

"And Dom Camarão — he deserves to be made a fidalgo for his services — Dom Camarão saw Affonso Ribeiro chop up three Hollanders, one after the other, with my machete."

In late November 1640, after an overland journey of four weeks from Engenho Santo Tomás, Amador and Segge reached the malocas of Nhandui, a powerful Tapuya chief

Segge cupped his chin in his hand, the tip of his index finger touching his nose. "What more does it need?"

"You're painting a cannibal — a flesh-eating, bone-grinding, mother of pagans. Show this."

One morning four weeks after their arrival, Amador saw that Segge had made some changes in the painting of the Tapuya girl: One hand, resting on her knee, grasped a severed human hand. Segge had given her a basket, which she carried on her back, and protruding from the basket was a human foot.

"Bravo!" Amador exclaimed. "Exactly! A savage for the world to see!"

"There is a lake close to the lands of the warrior women, where the boys are sent. Once a year they hold a ceremony. One boy is chosen to be Son of the Sun. When the Great rains end and the Sun is strongest, this Spirit Man is covered with gold dust. He is taken to the lake and bathes in it."

"The man the Spaniards call 'El Dorado."

Amador and Segge spent ten months, from September 1642 until July 1643, with the Paresí. Here, as Segge said, they were gods come down from Olympus...

"Who were the warrior women, Kaimari?" Amador asked eagerly.

"In the beginning, a race of women ruled earth. A man's only use was to lie with them. The girls born to these women were trained as ferocious warriors. The boys? No one knows what happened to the boys."

"What is your purpose in these lands...of Spain?"

"The purpose?"

"You have traveled far beyond the line," Juan Baptista added. (The line he referred to was the Tordesilhas demarcation of the world dominions of Portugal and Spain.)

"Certainly, Padre," Amador admitted. "Through lands held by savages. The purpose?" He nodded. "We sought Paraupava," he said, using the Tupi-Guarani word for the fabled lake of gold.

"And have you found it?"

Amador plucked at his deerskin breeches. "Had we discovered El Dorado would we be standing before you as beggars?"

"Guajara Mirim," he said, "Little Falls."

The canoes were moving with a strong current, some twenty yards from the left bank. The river was almost a mile wide, its flow north broken in several places by rocky, wooded isles.

JOURNAL

A colony of potbellied spider moneys fretted in the branches above them, chattering defiantly and baring their teeth in mocking grins. Coming downriver, Amador and Segge had seen monkeys of every description: capuchins, their hairstyle similar to the capuche of the Franciscan; the uakari, another monk of the forest; saki, boasting a splendid hood of hair; and the tiny squirrel monkeys, often one hundred together.

The grateful Mundurucu gave Amador and Segge each a shrunken head.

The skull and brains were carefully removed, the skin gently daubed with urucu, the lips sealed with fiber strands. The head was filled with sand and left until it dried and shrank to the size of a man's fist. Then it was ready to be worn around the neck of the warrior who had taken it: a medallion of honor.

The surface of the river would be painted in a way no mortal artist would emulate, passing through a spectrum of shades, from soft pinks and mauves to a fiery blaze that turned the waters of the Rio das Amazonas into molten gold.

JOURNAL

English and Irish parties made persistent attempts to gain a foothold on the northern banks of the lower Rio das Amazonas, the 1620 expedition having been led by Captain Roger North, an officer who'd served with Sir Walter Raleigh. Four years later, Abel O'Brien's cousin Bernard O'Brien settled a group of colonists 250 miles upriver at a place called Pataui, "Coconut Grove."

On Death-Bird Island, the urubu, which had taken flight at the first burst of musket fire, now began to circle back to their territory. And into the channel streamed piranha.

Men who lived to tell of this day would never forget the horror. The blood attracted thousands of the deep-bellied fish, their triangular shaped teeth snapping at those who thrashed about frantically to escape this ultimate enemy. The piranha feasted and the mighty Rio das Amazonas became a river of blood.

For ten years João Angola had served his master, Menezes, but when the Dutch invaded Pernambuco in 1630, João and forty slaves from Engenho Formosa ran into the sertão. As a fugitive, João Angola received another set of names from the Portuguese, a corruption of "Nganga Dzimba we Bahwe": "Ganga Zumba"

Not only had Ganga Zumba remained free these past fifteen years; he had attracted fourteen thousand runaways to his refuge. His capital, Shoko, was home to six thousand people, their huts lying along three avenues, each of which was a mile long.

He knew that Nayamunyaka envisaged walls and towers such as existed at Great Zimbabwe, but ten years of sporadic effort had produced no more than forty feet of loose foundation. Still the site was called Dzimba we Bahwe ("Place of Stones.)

The two contestants now wheeling and dancing toward each other were the same young men who had trapped the bird as a gift for the Nganga...The rhythms of the berimbau died away. The two men stopped their sparring and turned to face Nhungaza, their ebony skins glistening with sweat, their chests heaving.

Monte das Tobacas rose two hundred feet above ground level and offered a good vantage point in all directions. To the west and south of the hill flowed the Tapicura River; on the eastern side lay an old track used by brazilwood loggers.

Haus and his officers were in the main residence of this old and substantial plantation, the property of a widow, Dona Ana Paes. The dwelling, mill, slave quarters, and outbuildings were sited similarly to those at Santo Tomás; the big house was also double-storied but was built upon stilts.

At Pernambuco in April 1648, the patriots had defeated five thousand Hollanders and their native troops at the Guararapes, a series of hillocks outside Recife.

Far behind the slaves, Olímpio Ramahlo took up the rear of the column, with forty mules and their drivers. Amador's prejudice against his son's pack animals had lessened when he saw their surefootedness and the great burdens they were capable of carrying.

"I feel it in my bones, Olímpio," Procopio would say, and laughing, he would slap his wooden leg — carved by himself and adorned with two wide bands of silver filigree."There are riches here! Your father climbs the highest peaks, but the treasure is down here. Not emeralds. Not silver. Gold!"

Again and again they had found traces — enough to pay for their expedition — but it had taken eleven years before they came to a river, where a single day's work with the bateia produced one thousand oitavos! Procopio was back there now, guarding their precious claim, for many others had become convinced that gold in great quantities was to be found in the highlands of Terra do Brasil.

"Your father..."

Olímpio turned to look at Amador's still form. Immediately he knew. "Now! Here? So near the end?"

"He had his triumph," Procopio Almeida said quietly.

And so, in his sixty-seventh year, with his pouch of emeralds at his side, Amador Flôres da Silva died. In the sertão.

Book Four: Republicans and Sinners

Luis Fialho stood with his back to the others and was looking at Mafra. "Dear God, what a majestic pile! What would those Paulistas searching for El Dorado say? What would the believe but that here, before their eyes, was the palace of El Dorado!"

Marcelino Augusto laughed. "Every stone paid for with the gold and diamonds of Brazil."

Often Luis Fialho's lyrical contemplations had been followed by dark melancholy at the thought of Brazil. He had spoken on America as sensuous and corrupting. It was in Luis Fialho's carefully chosen words, "A hell for blacks, a purgatory for whites."

Crown officials proclaimed a "Forbidden District," some 130 miles in circumference, east of the range known as The Spine. A miner caught extracting diamonds without the king's authority could be thrown into jail or banished to Angola; illegal possession by a slave could bring up to four hundred lashes, often after forced ingestion of a purge of Malgueta pepper to flush out any gems he had swallowed.

The man sat sideways at one of the mahogany tables, an elbow resting on the surface...As arresting as his piercingly intelligent hazel eyes were the cleft in his chin, emphasizing the well-shaped mouth, and a white wig that flowed to his shoulders. He was Sebastião José Carvalho e Melo, and on this day in October 1755, no man in Portugal save the king was more powerful.

"Vieira did not lie," Carvalho e Melo said dryly, referring to the Jesuit who had labored along the Rio das Amazonas. "'Two million dead,' Vieira wrote sixty years ago. How many more since Vieira's day?" He shook his head."No, Vieira did not lie about the butchers of the Amazon," he repeated. "And what would he say if he were alive to see aldeias where hundreds are kept as serfs, where they do forced labor on plantations and roam the forest for products to enrich the Jesuits?"

The palaces of the king and the powerful Corte-Real family dominated the waterfront on the west side of the Terreiro do Paço, the palace square; east of the square was a magnificent quay, and behind it the customs building.

Lisbon had a medieval, congested appearance, its most striking feature its ninety convents, forty parish churches, and several basilicas ....Paulo and Luis Fialho were guests at Dona Clara's four-story house on a precipitous street northeast of Rossio Square in the heart of the city.

JOURNAL

Ten seconds later, there was a devastating shock. The houses opposite Paulo began to sway; the floor beneath him vibrated so violently that he struggled to keep his balance ....A thundering in the earth dulled Paulo's perception of these noises. Terremoto! The word crashed through Paulo's senses. "Earthquake!"

The force of the earthquake produced monstrous tidal waves that raced into the mouth of the Tagus from the southwest. Ships were torn from their moorings and splintered against wharves and quays. Small craft ;laden with refugees crossing to the south bank were swallowed up in the whirlpools.

Few were innocent; the quakes that leveled Lisbon seemed to have cast up from the depths an assembly of assassins, cutthroats, robbers and thieves.

Gazing toward a district where the fires were intense, Carvalho e Melo asked," When London burned, did the Englishmen abandon it?"

"No, Excellency."

"I will rebuild Lisbon," Carvalho e Melo said.

The mansion stood on the high ground that six generations of Cavalcantis had occupied since Nicolau and Helena built that first forlorn and forbidding blockhouse...It was not only its imposing size that gave the Casa Grande distinction but also the harmony with which it blended into the landscape.

Beyond the Casa Grande, the ground sloped gradually toward a river, beside which were located the sugar works, the distillery, and the senzala, the main slave quarters.

The intimate relationship between the slaves of the house and the sinhá and sinhazinha, as the slaves called Senhora Cavalcanti and her daughters, was sometimes subtle and secretive, with confidences no Cavalcanti male was every likely to hear.

From his birth, when the woman who bore him rested on a a soft hide, to burial, when death in a far place might bring internment in a rough shroud, the vaqueiro existed in a world of leather.

"I won't have you whipped or branded, but you'll spend your days and nights in the stocks. When you've served your punishment, you'll work like a young ox to fill the place of the slave who died because of you."

After ten days, Onias lost heart. Then he had sought to end his life in a way known to the 'Ngola of Angola: Sinking to his knees, he had consumed great mouthfuls of red dirt.

Graciliano took charge of the treatment of Onias, who was forcibly administered a powerful emetic. After three days he recovered.

Onias was led to the blacksmith. Here Onias was fitted with a contraption to prevent him from eating dirt: an iron mask that had apertures for his eyes and nose but not his mouth.

It was December 23, 1759. A week ago, a messenger from the Superior at Recife had brought the order that the two priests leave Rosário in compliance with the royal edict.

Leandro Taques spent eleven days along the road from Rosário to Recife. He intended no more than atonement for his sins and omissions, but in this last and darkest hour for the Jesuits of Brazil, the long walk of Leandro Taques was a small triumph.

Today there were thirty Yoruba slaves at the engenho, less than one-fifth of the Cavalcanti slaves. Despite their small number all at the senzala held Ama Rachel in veneration for she was a high priestess of the Yoruba, the yalorixa.

The Yoruba had not abandoned the gods of their people but had come to liken them to the divinities and saints worshipped by the Portuguese. Thus they identified Olurum with the Almighty; his son Oxala, known for his purity with Jesus Christ; and Yemanja, whom they begged to carry them safely across the ocean, with Our Lady.

Black Peter, the carpenter, received the first of 100 lashes. "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus....where is Black Peter who was free?" The knout stung his back. "Jesus, Jesus.... here I am a peça!"The thongs struck low across his back. The mulatto shifted position. The next blow landed on his right shoulder blade. "I was free with the padres."

For three weeks after the slaughter of Elias Souza Vanderley and Little George, militia patrols hunted for the fugitives extending their searches west and south toward the sertão but finding no trace of them.

The boards of the choir loft creaked as Padre Viana crossed to the right gallery. Three quarters of the way along the balcony, he stopped and stood with his hands on the railing, glancing down into the chapel, where several candles had been lit.

Bartolomeu Rodrigues was down on his knees, beside Paulo's coffin. His sobbing was interrupted by long silences.

"Hear his weeping, O Lord," Viana whispered. "Console his suffering, I beseech thee."

JOURNAL

In both spirit and boldness, the convoys were a continuation of the mighty pathfinding adventures of men like Amador and Raposo Tavares. A voyage of 3,500 miles to the mining camps, the seasonal river-borne convoys were called "monsoons."

Silva Xavier always traveled with his dental equipment.

"Courage, Senhor Benedito," André said. He flashed his own white teeth, "Joaquim has attended me. There's little pain."

"O my little Jesus."

"There!" Silva Xavier cried triumphantly when it was done, "It is out, senhor."

Benedito Bueno made a dreadful noise and bent to spit into a silver basin Silvestre held up for him.

"Did I speak of revolution?" Silva Xavier waved the sheet of paper in front of Silvestre."These truths are the voice of reason against turmoil. They were given by men claiming their natural rights to reject tyranny." He nodded. "Tiradentes," he said. "Of course, Silvestre, it's far better to save a tooth than to extract it." Then he smiled. "Sometimes, though, the decay is too advanced and there's no choice: The tooth has to be plucked."

Aleijadinho, "The Little Cripple," residents of Vila Rica had begun to call the mulatto since the onset of his affliction. His name was Antônio Francisco Lisboa, and he had designed and built this lovely Church of Saint Francis. His task this morning was to perfect a soapstone cherub above the doorway. Antônio Francisco's leprosy was getting progressively worse, but even as he worked on the small angel with the implements bound to his forearms, his thoughts were on two mighty projects for the future: twelve gigantic Prophets; and a depiction of the Passion of Christ with more than sixty wood-carved figures. "Oh, if God only wills it!" he said aloud.

"Maria was married to an ugly little man, Senhor Richard, a miniaturist of repute. All summer Senhor Jefferson courted Maria, but when winter came, her husband took her home. Her lover was left behind with a broken heart and a damaged wrist." He laughed. "The minister was promenading with lovely Maria in the Cours la Reine along the Seine when, out of joy, he leapt over a fence, fell, and cracked his wrist."

"Ai! The poor thing! I love him for it. This god of liberty, with a heart for sweet romance."

Macedo's payments to the treasury were now 750,000 milreis in arrears — an equivalent of no less than 4,800 pounds in gold. The second great debtor, Joaquim Silvério dos Reis, a tax farmer notorious for suborning and bribing the queen's officials, owed 220,000 milreis, or some 1,400 pounds of gold.

They left Vila Rica with the tropeiros on May 19, 1789, heading south on the road to São João del Rei. The two muleteers were hard-drinking, taciturn men, who asked few questions about André's request to accompany them, though they suspected it was connected with the excitement at Vila Rica.

Silva Xavier wore the garb of a penitent, a plain white robe of coarse cloth that reached his ankles. A length of heavy rope was wound round his neck and tied in a knot above his chest, with the two ends trailing almost to the ground.He walked barefoot, having given his boots to a jailer.

"The criminal Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as the Tooth-puller, is condemned to be paraded with hangman's noose through the streets of Rio de Janeiro to the gallows, where he will be executed by hanging. When the criminal his dead, his head will be cut off and his body divided into quarters. The head is to be transported to the city of Vila Rica, where it will be fastened to a tall pole in the most public place to remain there until consumed by time. The legs will be attached to poles along the road to Minas Gerais; the arms will be exhibited at other places where the criminal sowed the seeds of revolution."

Silva Xavier accepted the sentence with quiet dignity, not the slightest trace of fear in his uncompromising blue eyes.

Top

To Part Two

Image credits

Titlepiece

[1] "Slave Market at Rio" from Journal of a Voyage to Brazil And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823, Martha Graham,  The Project Gutenberg EBook

The Tupiniquin

[1] Woodcut from Hans Staden: True Story and Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World, America, 1557

[2] Bry, Theodor de. Collection des Grands and Petits Voyages.1592 London: Molins, Ltd., 1921, copper-plates illustrating Hans Staden ibid.

[3] Nambikwara, Levi Strauss, Claude, Tristes tropiques.  Tr. by J. Russell.  New York: Atheneum, 1963.   [first published in 1955]

[4] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[5] Unesco

[6] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[7] Two jaguars, Wildlife Smuggling Rises in Brazil. November 2001 BBC

[8] Quipukamayuq: quipu y yupana, from Chronicle of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, c 1615, Commons Wikimedia

[9] quipu, Meyers Konversationlexikon, 4th Edition, 1888, Commons Wikimedia

[10] Sunrise over Machu Picchu, Peru, Allard Schmidt, Commons Wikimedia

[11] Woodcut from Hans Staden: True Story and Description of a Country of Wild, Naked, Grim, Man-eating People in the New World, America, 1557

[12,13] Bry, Theodor de. Collection des Grands and Petits Voyages.1592 London: Molins, Ltd., 1921, copper-plates illustrating Hans Staden ibid.

[14] Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848), Famille un Chef Camacan se preparant pour une Feste . Ca. 1820-1830. Aquarelle, 18,6 x 29,3cm Commons Wikimedia

[15, 16]  Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[17] Landing of Pedro Alvares Cabral, artist, Oscar Pereira da Silva,  Museu Paulista , São Paulo

The Portuguese

[1] Map, 1519 - Terra Brasilis, "Atlas Miller", Lopo Homem-Reinéis, Biblioteca Nacional de França , Paris.

[2] Caravel, from A Short Introduction to the Caravel, George R. Schwartz

[3] Portrait of Afonso de Albuquerque in Goa (India). Mixed technique on wood (182 x 108 cm). National Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon, Portugal.

[4] Ormus1572, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, tavola XXIX, di Braun e Hogemberg MAPPE DI CITTA

[5] Map of the City and Portuguese Port of Goa, India, Detail of Port and Merchant Shipping, 1595, artist, Johannes Baptista Van Doetechum the Younger, Bridgeman Art Library

[6] Boats in Goa, illustration from Jan Hughen Van Linschoten, artist, Johannes Baptista Van Doetechum the Younger , Bridgeman Art Library

[7] Jeronimos Monastery, Lisbon, image from Sacred Destinations

[8] Belem Tower, Lisbon, Wikimedia Commons

[9] Christopher Columbus, posthumous portrait by Florentine painter Rudolfo Ghirlandaio (1483-1561), Wikimedia Commons

[10] Vasco Da Gama, illustration for Os Lusiadas by Camoes, 1880 edition, Ernesto Casanova, (Library of Congress)

[11] Pedro Alvares Cabral, in Pedro José FIGUEIREDO, Retratos e elogios dos varões e donas que illustram a nação portugueza... Lisboa, Officina de Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, 1817 retrato. Wikimedia Commons

[12] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[13] Second Mass in Brazil, artist, Vitor Meireles, Museu Nacional de Belas-Artes, Rio de Janeiro

[14] Histoire des Voyages, Engraver, Pierre Duflos (1742-1816), New York Public Library digital gallery

[15] artist Thomas Astley, 1745, Wikimedia Commons

[16] artist unknown, Wikimedia Commons

[17] English edition of Theodor Johann de Bry, c. 1527-1598, and Johann Israel de Bry, second series, the Petits Voyages(Frankfurt, 1598-1613) From an undated print of an engraving by Basire from a picture by Olfert Dapper, 'Plate 192. No. 111. Vol. 2. p. 401'. Overall Size: 9.5" x 7" c 1740

[18] Samuel Daniell, 1805, A Hottentot, a Hottentot woman, a Kaffre, a Kaffre woman, de.wikipedia.org

[19]Heroes of the Dark Continent and How Stanley Found Emin Pasha , J.W. Buel. 1890, Historical Publishing Company, Philadelphia, PA, St. Louis, MO.

[20] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[21] Sintra Palace, Paco Real de Sintra

[22] Wikimedia Commons

[23] Alcides Fontes Freitas

[24] author unknown, vintage postcard

The Jesuit

[1]  Painting in the style of Jesuit brother and artist Andrea Pozzo, see "A saint and his image," Cristina Osswald

[2] Portrait by Antonis Mor of King João III (John III) of Portugal, ca. 1550, oil on canvas, 101 x 81 cm. Original in Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, Spain.

[3] photo, GoLisbon, the Complete Lisbon and Portugal Guide

[4,5 ] Willem Piso, Historia naturalis Brasiliae.. Leiden: Hackium; Amsterdam: Elzevirium, 1648

James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota

[6] J. Blaeu, Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et alibio nuper gestarum, Amsterdam, 1647 See

Maps on the African Slave Trade.

[7] Manoel Victor Filho. Grandes Personalidades da Nossa História, vol 1, Abril Cultural, 1969).

[8] Illustration from epic poem, Caramuru, Santa Rita Durão, artist anon. Literatura Colonial Brasil

[9] Source unknown, Wikimedia Commons

[10] Cândido Portinari, óleo sobre madeira, 0,56 x 0,46, acervo do Banco Itaú, acervo do Banco Itaú; Society of Jesus, Bahia Province

[11] Oscar Pereira da Silva, 1903,  Cores Primnarias; see also A História de São Paulo por suas Imagens, Revista Electronica de Ciencias

[12] Albert Eckhout, 1641/1644, "Tupi Woman and Child," Royal Art Museum of Copenhagen

[13] Ocupações Indígenas na Baía de Guanabara - Primeiros Ocupantes, Guilherme Peres, Pesquisador e membro do IPAHB

[14] Albert Eckhout, National Museum, Copenhagen

[15] Portrait of King Sebastião by Cristvão de Moraes, Wikimedia Commons

[16] Battle of Ksar el Kebir (1578); Museum of the Forte da Ponta da Bandeira, Lagos, Portugal , Wikimedia Commons

[17] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

The Bandeirantes

[1] Jean Baptiste Debret, Soldados Indios de Mogi-das-Cruzes. Bibloteca Virtual

[2] Antônio Raposa Tavares. Oil, Manuel Victor Filho. Museu Paulista/SP

[3] Bendito Calixto, João Ramalho shows Martim Afonso de Sousa the way to Piratininga, Gallery of Palacio de São Joaquim, Rio de Janeiro

[4] photo, Wikimedia Commons

[5] Copper engraving intitled "Die Inquisition in Portugall", by Jean David Zunner from the work "Description de L'Univers, Contenant les Differents Systemes de Monde, Les Cartes Generales & Particulieres de la Geographie Ancienne & Moderne" by Alain Manesson Mallet, Frankfurt, 1685, Wikimedia Commons

[6] Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599 - 1660), Philip IV, Ca. 1623 - 1624, Oil on canvas, 24 7/16" x 19 3/16", Meadow Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Algur H. Meadows Collection

[7] Indian slaves, artist, J. M. Rugendas. Centro Cultural. São Paulo

[8] Brasil Barroco

[9] photo, Unesco

[10] On the Trail of Jesuit Mission Art, Gavin Alexander Bailey

[11] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[12] John Ogilby's atlas, America: Being the Latest, and Most Accurate Description of the New World, London, 1671, Wikimedia Commons

[13] Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen, 1603-1679, oil-painting portrait in 1637 is preserved at Siegerlandmuseum of Siegen.

[14] Recife and Mauritsstad, Frans Post, from Dutch Portuguese Colonial History

[15] Engenho with Chapel, Frans Janszoon Post, 1667, Foundation Maria Luisa and Oscar Americano

[16] Henrique Dias, from Military Photos Net

[17] "Felipe Camarão", painted by Victor Meirelles de Lima (1832-1903)

[18, 19] Albert Eckhout, National Museum, Copenhagen

[20] This model is on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia

[21] photo, Fundação Nacional do Índio - FUNAI

[22] map, from Entradas e Bandeiras

[23] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[24] photo, David M. Jensen, Wikimedia Commons

[25] Wikimedia Commons

[26] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[27] Hilliard, Nicholas, 1547-1607, National Gallery, London

[28] Eurico Zimbres, Wikimedia Commons

[29] R. Wampers, Wikimedia Commons

[30] photo, Elza Fiuza, Agencia Brasil

[31] Quilombo Buraco do Tatu, EA, from A Quilombagem

[32] photo, Jan Derk, Wikimedia Commons

[33] Rugendas, J.M. Voyage pittoresque et historique dans le Br a sil. Paris: Engelmann et Cie, Paris, 1834 " Jogar Capüera ou Dance de la Guerre " (Playing Capoeira or War Dance.)

[34 from Sosigenes Bittencourt, Fragmentos

[35] archives of Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, Pernambuco, Casa Forte

[36] Batalha de Guararapes (1879), Victor Meirelles. Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Brasil

[37] Reenactor Dario de Oliveira e Silva, Associação do Movimento Tropeiro de Carambeí

[38] photo, Treasure News

[39] from  Entradas e Bandeiras

[40] illustration, SAGA - A Grande História do Brasil - Volume 2, São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1981

Republicans and Sinners

[1] Steel engraving. Institute in Hidlburghausen. ca 1850.

[2] Jean-Baptiste Debret, Wikimedia Commons. See also  The Atlantic Slave Trade and Life in the Americas James S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. (c) 2006 Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia

[3] Carlos Julião, Extraction of diamonds at Serra Frio, Bibloteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, see also

Rede da Memória Virtual Brasileira

[4] "Marquês de Pombal," artist, Louis-Michel van Loo (1707-1771), Museu da Cidade, Lisbon

[5] Arquivo Ultramarino de Lisboa, see Vidas Lusofonas

[6] Ribeira Palace and Square, Lisbon, Wikimedia Commons

[7] Miguel Vieira, Wikimedia Commons

[8] Museu da Cidade, Lisbon, see also The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

[9] Zimmermann, W.F.A. Der Erdball und sein Naturwunder ... Berlin: G.Hempel, 1881

[10] Museu da Cidade, Lisbon, see also The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

[11] J.P. Le Bas, Ruins of the Praca de Patriarchal (Patriachal Square) (after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755), 1757, from the Le Bas series, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, see also The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

[12] Gilberto Freyre, Case Grande e Senzala, courtesy Joaquim Nabuco Foundation

[13] Engenho in Pernambuco, Henry Koster, Travels in Brazil (London, 1816)

[14] Spix and Martin, Brasil Revisitado: palavras e imagens / Carlos Guilherme Mota, Adriana Lopez. - São Paulo: Editora Rios, 1989. see also Brasil Africana/Slavery

[15] photo, Turismo Sertanejo, Aboio, o canto do vaqueiro

[16] Jean-Baptiste Debret, from Bibloteca Virtual, Bibvert

[17] Jacques Arago, Souvenirs d'un aveugle. Voyage autour du monde par M. J. Arago . . . (Paris, 1839-40), see also The Atlantic Slave Trade and Life in the Americas James S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr. (c) 2006 Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia

[18] Jesuit Priest, 18th Century, Wikimedia Commons

[19] Jean-Baptiste Debret, from Biblteco Virtual, Bibvert

[20] photo. Chat-Verre Christophe, UNESCO Slave trade archives

[21] Rugendas, J.M. Voyage pittoresque et historique dans le Br asil. Paris: Engelmann et Cie, Paris, 1834.

[22] Errol Lincoln Uys, Brazil: The Making of a Novel

[23] "Partida da Monção", 1897, Almeida Junior, Museu do Ipiranga , São Paulo, Brasil

[24] Pierre Fauchard, Dental Instruments, Wikimedia Commons

[25] Tiradentes, from Unificado

[26] Sara and Iaian, Wikimedia Commons

[27] Maria Cosway, engraving. courtesy wiki.monticello.org

[28] Virtual museum, Ministry of Finance of Brazil

[29] Jean-Baptiste Debret, from Biblteco Virtual, Bibvert

[30] Reposto de Tiradentes, Leopoldina de Faria,  National Historical Museum of Brazil

[31] Tiradentes Esquartejado, Pedro Américo (1843-1905), Wikimedia Commons

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