ts shores for the purposes of commerce. The colonization of Brazil was
prosecuted, however, by subjects of the Portuguese monarchy, who traded
thither chiefly for Brazil-wood. The government also sought to make
criminals of some use to the state, by placing them in a situation where
they could do little harm to society, and might help to uphold the
dominion of their nation.

First organization in Brazil.

The first attempt on the part of a Portuguese monarch to introduce an
organized government into his dominions was made by John III. He adopted
a plan which had been found to succeed well in Madeira and the
Azores,--dividing the country into hereditary captaincies, and granting
them to such persons as were willing to undertake their settlement, with
unlimited powers of jurisdiction, both civil and criminal. Each
captaincy extended along fifty leagues of coast. The boundaries in the
interior were undefined. The first settlement made under this new system
was that of Sao Vicente Piratininga, in the present province of Sao
Paulo. Martim Affonso de Sousa, having obtained a grant, fitted out a
considerable armament and proceeded to explore the country in person. He
began to survey the coast about Rio de Janeiro, to which he gave that
name, because he discovered it on the 1st of January 1531. He proceeded
south as far as La Plata, naming the places he surveyed on the way from
the days on which the respective discoveries were made. He fixed upon an
island in 24-1/2 deg. S. lat., called by the natives Guaibe, for his
settlement. The Goagnazes, or prevailing tribe of Indians in that
neighbourhood, as soon as they discovered the intentions of the
new-comers to fix themselves permanently there, collected for the
purpose of expelling them. Fortunately, however, a shipwrecked
Portuguese, who had lived many years under the protection of the
principal chief, was successful in concluding a treaty of perpetual
alliance between his countrymen and the natives. Finding the spot chosen
for the new town inconvenient, the colonists removed to the adjoining
island of Sao Vicente, from which the captaincy derived its name. Cattle
and the sugar-cane were at an early period introduced from Madeira, and
here the other captaincies supplied themselves with both.

Pero Lopes de Sousa received the grant of a captaincy, and set sail from
Portugal at the same time as his brother, the founder of Sao Vicente. He
chose to have his fifty leagues in tw