CHAPTER XII.
THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL,—CONTINUED.
I regret that my limits will not permit me to follow further the labours and enterprises of Vieyra and his brethren in behalf of the Indians, whom they sought far and wide in that immense region, and brought in thousands upon thousands into settlements, only to arouse afresh the furious opposition, and bring down upon themselves the vengeance of the colonists. But the history of this great strife between Christianity and Injustice, in Brazil, fills three massy quarto volumes, and runs through three centuries. It is full of details of the deepest interest; but there is no chapter, either in that history or any other, more heart-rending, than that of the transfer of the seven Reductions of the Jesuits lying east of the Uruguay. These were ceded by Spain to Portugal in 1750, in a treaty of demarcation.
"They contained," to use the words of Mr. Southey, "thirty thousand Guaranies, not fresh from the woods or half reclaimed, and therefore willing to revert to a savage state, and capable of enduring its exposure, hardships, and privations; but born as their
