at Recife, but
were dislodged by the Portuguese of Olinda.

[Note 13: Mr. Southey says this spot is called Villa Velha. But
there is no place existing in the neighbourhood of that name, nor could
I find any person at Rio de Janeiro who remembered such a place. It was,
however, most probably on the site of the present St. Juan, or of the
fort of Praya Vermelha, which answers exactly to the description.]

Mem de Sa now founded the city of St. Sebastian, more commonly called
the city of Rio; and for its security the Jesuits, with their Indians,
fortified both sides of the entrance to the harbour, which is about four
miles distant from the city across the bay. Before these works, however,
or the walls of the town were completed, the French made a vigorous
effort to disturb the rising colony; but it ended in their defeat, and
their guns were made use of to fortify the mouth of the harbour.

Driven from Rio, the French attempted to form a settlement at Paraiba
the next year; but the Indians, with the Jesuits at their head, and a
very few troops, under the commander Martim Leytam, expelled them.

Under Mem de Sa the state had been so prosperous, that though he had
been Captain-general far beyond the term of his original appointment,
Don Sebastian, on assuming the crown, continued him in office for two
years longer, and then named Luiz de Vasconcellos to succeed him. That
nobleman never reached Brazil. With him sailed a fleet of seven ships,
bearing, besides the governor, sixty-nine Jesuit missionaries, and a
number of orphan girls, whose parents had died of the plague, and whom
the government was sending out to settle in Brazil. The fleet, in
different divisions, fell in with French and English ships, and the
Jesuits, save one, to use their own expression, received the crown of
martyrdom, and the new governor was killed in action off Tercera. As
soon as his death was known at Lisbon, Luiz de Brito de Almeida was
appointed to his vacant office; and Mem de Sa just lived long enough to
witness the arrival of his successor. Nobrega, who had begun that
system, on which the singular government of the Jesuits in Paraguay was
conducted, had died a few months before, so that Brazil was deprived
nearly at once of the two ablest men that had yet been concerned in its
government.

But Luiz de Brito did not succeed to the government of all Brazil. It
was judged proper to divide the colony into two captaincies, Rio de
Janeiro being th