rbed. The
approach of foreign traders was prohibited, while the regalities
reserved by the crown drained the country of a great proportion of its
wealth.

The important part which the inhabitants of Sao Paulo have played in the
history of Brazil has been already adverted to. The establishment of the
Jesuit college had attracted settlers to its neighbourhood, and frequent
marriages had taken place between the Indians of the district and the
colonists. A hardy and enterprising race of men had sprung from this
mixture, who, first searching whether their new country were rich in
metals, soon began adventurous raids into the interior, making
excursions also against the remote Indian tribes with a view to
obtaining slaves, and from the year 1629 onwards repeatedly attacked the
Indian reductions of the Jesuits in Paraguay, although both provinces
were then nominally subject to the crown of Spain. Other bands
penetrated into Minas and still farther north and westward, discovering
mines there and in Goyaz and Cuyaba. New colonies were thus formed round
those districts in which gold had been found, and in the beginning of
the 18th century five principal settlements in Minas Geraes had been
elevated by royal charter to the privileges of towns. In 1720 this
district was separated from Sao Paulo, to which it had previously been
dependent. As early as 1618 a code of laws for the regulation of the
mining industry had been drawn up by Philip III., the executive and
judicial functions in the mining districts being vested in a _provedor_,
and the fiscal in a treasurer, who received the royal fifths and
superintended the weighing of all the gold, rendering a yearly account
of all discoveries and produce. For many years, however, these laws were
little more than a dead letter. The same infatuated passion for mining
speculation which had characterized the Spanish settlers in South
America now began to actuate the Portuguese; labourers and capital were
drained off to the mining districts, and Brazil, which had hitherto in
great measure supplied Europe with sugar, sank before the competition of
the English and French. A new source of wealth was now opened up; some
adventurers from Villa do Principe in Minas, going north to the Seria
Frio, made the discovery of diamonds about the year 1710, but it was not
till 1730 that the discovery was for the first time announced to the
government, which immediately declared them _regalia_. While the
popul