Introduction
Robert Walsh (Waterford, Ireland, 1772 - Finglas, Ireland, 1852) graduated B.A. in 1796 (his other degrees cannot be traced). He was ordained in 1802, and, after a short time as a curate in Dublin, was appointed in 1806 to the curacy of Finglas, co. Dublin. The tradition of the place was that during Cromwell’s victorious march through the country the alarmed inhabitants buried an old Celtic cross in a certain spot, indicated by some of the older people, who had heard it from their parents. On digging the cross was discovered in good preservation, and erected in the churchyard of Finglas. In 1820 Walsh went to Constantinople as chaplain to the British Embassy, remaining in that post for some years, during which he travelled through Turkey and Asia. Having obtained a medical degree, he practised as a physician on various occasions while in the more remote parts of that continent. From Constantinople he went to the embassy at St. Petersburg, to which he had been appointed chaplain, but only remained there a little while.
Robert Walsh was appointed chaplain to the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro in 1828. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro on October 16th, 1828, and left after 200 days on May 4th, 1829, having travelled in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state and Minas Gerais, along the same route as Rugendas with the Langsdorff expedition five years earlier. Walsh’s Notices of Brazil appeared soon after his return to England, certainly as a part of the British effort to end slave trade. Walsh, an experienced traveller at age 56, could compare the slavery regime of Turkey and Russia with the Negro slavery in Brazil, and he unambiguously concludes against the African enslavement in America. He sustains his conclusions with examples and statistics, and does not fall into the excess of denying the degraded state of the Negroes in Brazil, but ascribes it almost entirely to slavery.
[sources: Dictionnary of National Biography, Notices of Brazil]
The Author
Volume 1 treats matters in a systematic way, furnishing the reader with the information gathered in Rio about Brazil and its capital. The historical part ends with the result of Walsh’s inquiry into the uprising of German and Irish soldiers in Rio in June 1828, only a few months before he arrived. Walsh’s account certainly echoes the point of view of his Irish compatriots, but is more keen on explaining the event than on extolling moral judgements, though he blames the Brazilian government in the occurrence. Capoeira is not present in this account, neither is it in Debret’s Notices historiques, or in the French navy commander C.A. Le Marant’s report after his intervention, unless one decides that the term capoeira refers to the “miserable slaves of Rio”, in general, or the “urban rabble” otherwise termed “Moleques” in most of the text. The police registers of Rio de Janeiro mention “capoeira” and “jogar capoeira” as motives of arrest of Negroes at least from 1789; their carrying of weapons (knives, razors, broken bottles, sticks or clubs) not being considered a separate offense [1]. The use of the term capoeira as generic for unwanted, dangerous behaviour was commonplace in 1871, when Pereira da Silva wrote his Secondo periodo do reinado de Dom Pedro I no Brazil, narrativa historica, the first book in which capoeira is mixed into this incident. The event has later been used in the construction of capoeira as a symbol of Brazilian nationality (see Rego).
Volume 2 is organized as a diary of Walsh’s journey into the interior. It contains the description of a negro minstrel playing what is now known as the berimbau. At the end of this section, Walsh sums up, again in general terms, the conditions of white settlers and mostly slave Negroes as he saw them in his journey. This part contains a passage about music and dances certainly relevant to capoeira. The fact that the term does not appear is not significant, since Walsh uses no other vernacular terms.
Our transcription respects the spelling and the line breaks of the first edition, 1830.
Volume 1 — À propos de l’insurrection des troupes irlandaises et allemandes
Among the unfortunate events to which the war gave rise, was one which was attended with the most fearful and disastrous effects at the moment, and which, in its consequences, may be highly injurious to the best interests of the country. In order that as few persons as possible might be drawn from agriculture in the interior, and from the pursuits of commerce and manufactures in the maritime cities, to recruit the army on the frontiers, it was determined to engage a number of foreigners as soldiers; first to do duty as military, and then be located as agriculturists, after a certain term of service; and to that end Germans, who from the family connexion of the emperor, and Irish, who from the redundancy of population at home, might be easily procured, were invited to Brazil for the purpose.
This project was well conceived, and, had the inducements held out been fulfilled with punctuality and good faith, this influx of Europeans, introducing their modes of agriculture and the mechanic arts into a new country, would have been of vast advantage to the existing state of Brazil. But the moment the project was adopted by the government, it roused all the prejudices and suspicions of the people. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the greatest jealousy existed against every European; some imagined the present plan merely a scheme to introduce and create an army of foreign mercenaries, who, having no sympathy or bond of connexion with the people, would be the ready instruments of supporting a despotic government; and this, in fact, did enter into the contemplation of the emperor and his ministers, who supposed they would be an available check on the growing spirit of democracy. But even if this objection did not exist, the amalgamation of Brazilians with foreigners is still a difficult thing, and all classes had a strong repugnance to the introduction of any strangers but slaves from the coast of Africa. Every secret expedient, therefore, was resorted to, to render the plan abortive, and the event proved with what success.
In October, 1826, Colonel Cotter, an Irish officer in the imperial service, entered into an engagement with the Brazilian government to bring over a number of his countrymen. It does not appear what were the precise terms which he was authorized to offer to them; but, as far as I can collect from several I have conversed with, who remained behind in Brazil, and from other sources, they were as follow: Every man was to receive pay and allowances equal to one shilling per day, one pound of beef, and one pound of bread as rations, and were to be employed four hours each day in learning military exercises, to be ready to act as soldiers if called on, but not to be sent out of the province of Rio unless in time of war or invasion; and at the end of five years of such engagement, to be discharged from all military service, and located as farmers on land, each having fifty acres assigned him.
With these powers, Colonel Cotter proceeded to Cork, caused notices to be affixed to chapel doors, and instructed clergymen to give it out from the altars, in different parts of the south of Ireland. The notifications were received with great joy by the people: the exceeding distress of the poor peasantry of that part of Ireland, as well from exuberant population as want of employment, is notorious, and they were eager to avail themselves of the proposal. Land was the great object of their competition at home, and they who thought themselves fortunate in obtaining a few acres at an exorbitant rent in Ireland, were transported at the idea of receiving a grant of fifty acres, rent free, in Brazil. Many, therefore, as they told me, sold their farms at home, and laid out the small portion of money they could raise, in purchasing agricultural implements, conceiving that their military service was to be merely local, and would no more prevent their attending to their land, than if they were members of yeomanry corps in their own country. Among them were mechanics, who looked forward to exercise their calling to advantage in Rio, and had brought out the implements of their trade; and among them certainly were many, whose idle habits led them to prefer a military life and were ready to engage as soldiers, careless of the terms of their service. Of these descriptions, two thousand four hundred persons were collected, some of them, as was to be expected, of indifferent characters and dissolute manners; but the majority decent, respectable people, who brought out with them their wives and families, and who would be an acquisition to any country as settlers, but particularly to Brazil.
Everything was provided for their accommodation on leaving their own country; the ships were well found, stores and provisions of good quality were not wanting, and the people thought themselves highly fortunate in this mode of emigration. They had been long expected in Brazil, and it was natural to suppose that everything would have been ready for their reception; but their arrival was the signal for annoying them, and that system of petty persecution commenced which roused them into mutiny, and finally effected the purposes for which it was resorted to, by driving them from the country.
The minister of war was at that time S. Barbozo, and from his subsequent hostility to the foreigners, it is to be presumed he was the instrument of their first annoyances, which were in his department. When the transports arrived nothing was ready for the accommodation of the men. They were kept for three or four days on board, and when at length they were landed, they were thrust into dirty empty barracks, without the smallest preparation of any kind for their comforts or wants. They had no beds to sleep on, not even a mat to keep them from the bare ground, which is always provided for Brazilian soldiers. This comfortless state was still increased by want of provisions, for they were kept starving for two days without any distribution of rations, and when at length it was made, they were so bad in quality that the men could not eat them, but sold them for a trifle to the English to feed their horses; they were also deficient in quantity, and so irregularly given, that they were frequently afterwards forty-eight hours without receiving any issue. Many of them contracted fevers, and other sickness, from privation and anxiety, and in this state of debility were seen crawling about the streets of Rio. Application was made to the Brazilian government to provide them with medicines and necessaries, but no notice was taken; and they would have perished on the roads, where they were sometimes obliged to lie down, but for the humanity of Doctors Coates and Dixon, who supplied them with medicine from their own pockets. For some time they received no pay at all, and when at length it was ordered, it was much less than they were promised.
In this state of disappointment and growing discontent, there was not the smallest pains taken to give them any habit of order or regularity. They remained in their quarters, idle and unemployed, dirty and neglected, and in the same clothes in which they had arrived, ragged and squalid, without the habits or appearance of common decency. Sometimes they were permitted to leave their barracks when and how they pleased, and to remain as long as suited their humour in the vendas, or public-houses. Here a cheap and ruinous kind of rum is sold, called caxas, and in this they were permitted, if not encouraged, to indulge freely. Thus situated, and highly susceptible of excitement, an engine of irritation was applied to them, of an annoyance so intolerable, that no person, under any circumstance, could bear it patiently.
The miserable slaves of Rio, employed only as beasts of burden in the streets, are, of all classes of the human race, by far the most abandoned and degraded. Used merely as inferior animals, without the smallest reference to their being endowed with the faculty of reason, they are driven all day, and turned loose in the evening; and by a strange inconsistency, allowed the most licencious and unrestrained habits. They go along in the streets frequently drunk, shouting, hallooing, and fighting; and when one considers that there are fifty or sixty thousand of this class, in a large and licencious city, and the great majority of its population, it is fearful to contemplate the consequences which may arise, some time or other, from their ferocious passions. Yet these were the instruments used to goad and irritate the strangers. They first insulted them whenever they met them, by calling them white slaves, “escravos brancos,” and they pointed to their rags and dirt, as a proof of their being not so good, or so well treated, as themselves. Whenever they appeared outside their barracks, they were attacked in this way, and constant skirmishes and riots occurred between individuals and parties on both sides. In these encounters, if the Irish officers interfered, and seized any slaves, who they knew were the aggressors and commenced the disturbance, to deliver them to the police, they were detained merely a few hours, and then liberated to repeat the offence; if, on the contrary, any of the strangers were complained of, they were committed to the dungeons of the fortresses, and if not closely confined, were dragged out only to be worked as galley slaves; and in this way, respectable people have told me, they often saw them fettered in the same chain with black slave-felons, as if it was the system to degrade them to that rank, and not suffer them to be held in higher consideration.
In this state of things, a body of the Irish, quartered in the barracks of Praya Vermelha, were marched to the Campo d’Acclamação, and in their way it was necessary to pass the Carioca, a fountain where a large collection of blacks continually attend to draw water. The moment they appeared, an immediate insurrection of the blacks took place, and an attack was made on these unarmed men, quietly passing through the streets; they repelled it with sticks and fists, and the blacks fled: but from that time no recruit could appear in any part of the town, without being assaulted. Even the officers failed to preserve that respect for their rank, which would be secured to any others; they were the indiscriminate object of attack by any slaves they met, as if the general system was to degrade and exasperate the whole corps without distinction. In the Rua dos Barbonios is a barrack, near a fountain attended by blacks, and here the parties came into constant collision. The blacks, who seemed, as it were, trained to insult the Irish, constantly attacked the sentries, and even climbed up the windows, and assaulted, with stones and other missiles, those who were inside quietly sleeping in their quarters. The consequence was a very serious riot, which lasted two days, and the loss of some lives. In these conflicts, the people of the town looked on with satisfaction, and were frequently seen setting on the negroes, as I have seen Turks hallooing their swarms of dogs at christian passengers.
The time had now arrived when a fearful retaliation seemed at hand, and threatened the whole town with destruction. The Irish had been about half a year in the country, and they still remained in the same state of neglect, contempt, and insubordination. A few, indeed, who had entered as grenadiers, had received clothes, and some partial improvement had been attempted in the rations; but the great body remained the same, the causes of discontent every day increasing. The state of the German troops was little better. They complained that the promises made to them were not fulfilled, that their pay was embezzled; and the whole only wanted some spark to set the inflammable materials in a blaze. They were distributed in three large barracks in different parts of the town: the Germans, in the Praya Vermelha, near the mouth of the harbour, at one extremity of the city, and at the barrack of S. Christovão, at the other; and the Irish, nearly midway between both, at the Campo d’Acclamação, towards the centre of the town.
On the 9th of June, 1828, as an alfares, or ensign, was returning from his rounds, after the ave-maria, or sun-set, he was met by a German soldier, who refused to take off his bonnet as he passed. The alferes ordered him into confinement, and he was sentenced to receive fifty lashes for insubordination. A representation was made that he had been a well-conducted man, since the formation of the corps; but this did not avail, and he was led out to undergo his sentence in the square of the barrack of S. Christovão. He demanded to be tried by a court-martial, and refused to take off his jacket; but he was ordered to be seized and bound, and the jacket cut from his back; his sentence was quintupled, and two hundred and fifty were ordered instead of fifty. He received two hundred and ten of his punishment, but the soldiers now became impatient, and, actuated by one spirit, began to stamp with their feet, calling out not to kill the man; and as the officer still persisted to inflict the full punishment, the whole corps burst into a spontaneous mutiny, released the prisoner, proceeded with shouts and menaces to the palace in their neighbourhood, and demanded to see the emperor. He refused to present himself; but gave them to understand if they had any complaint to make, they should send a deputation of two or three and he would listen to them, and they returned to their barracks. Meantime the Irish, at the Campo d’Acclamacão, hearing what had happened, proceeded to S. Christovão, some by land and some in boats, to the amount of fifty or sixty; and, resolving now to make a common cause with the Germans, encouraged them by shouts and acclamations to persevere. The mutiny now assumed a most alarming aspect: the magazine of ammunition was forced open, the quarters of the officers were attacked, the houses of the major and quarter-master were plundered, and several officers were pursued and just escaped with their lives.
On the next day, the news of the mutiny at S. Christovão was received at the Praya Vermelha. The Germans quartered here had just returned from Pernambuco, and were in a state of irritation little less violent than their comrades. It had been the custom to stop the pay of the soldiers, as in the French army in the time of Napoleon, as a punishment for offences, and in this way, under various pretexts, the officers pocketed the greater part of it. The major, whose name was Teola, was a man of low extraction and bad character, and was greatly detested by the men. He was an Italian, and had been waiter at the Hotel du Nord, in the Rue Direita. It is said that his wife, who was a comely person, had attracted notice, and he was immediately raised from his humble station to the commission which he held in the German regiment. He had been long accused of embezzling their pay, and frequent complaints were made; but his influence in high quarters had hitherto baffled all applications, and the soldiers were now determined to take into their own hands that redress, which they could not obtain. As the prejudice against him was known to be very strong, he was advised not to appear on parade this day, where some violence was likely to break out. He, however, disregarded the caution, and his appearance was the signal for a general mutiny. He was attacked by the soldiers, and fled for refuge to Colonel Macgregor, who would not, it is said, but who probably could not, protect him. He then ran to make his escape over the walls of the barracks, but he was overtaken and dragged down; and while lying on the ground, he was stabbed by the bayonets of the sentinels, and crushed to death with heaps of large stones cast on him by the exasperated soldiers. Two other officers, who attempted to interfere for him, were severely wounded. It does not appear that the Irish here took any part in the assassination.
The body of the major was brought to be buried in the cemetery, and the two wounded officers to be received into the hospital of the Misericordia, and a rumour was now industriously circulated through Rio, that the German regiments were marching in from both extremities of the city, to join the Irish at the Campo d’Acclamação, and then proceed to burn and plunder the town. It was now that the sanguinary policy of those who were hostile to the Europeans, began to display itself. The Brazilian troops were immediately ordered under arms, and the minister of war sent directions to the commandant, the Conde de Rio Pardo, “to destroy every man, to give no quarter, but to exterminate the whole of the strangers;” and lest the brave and humane commandant should not execute these orders, an expedient was resorted to, as terrible to others as it was dangerous to themselves – that was, a license to the Moleques, or blacks, and the rest of the rabble, to take up arms. I had seen the frightful effects of this among the Turks; but the idea of fifty or sixty thousand black slaves, and such slaves in a state of high excitement, armed with knives and daggers, let loose on a city, was an experiment at which humanity shudders.
A large crowd of them was soon collected in the Campo d’Acclamação, and a tumult immediately commenced with the Irish. These latter had now become infuriate like the Germans – had attacked the police barracks in the neighbourhood, and having seized the arms, began to fire in all directions. They then broke open the vendas, and many of them having drank caxas to excess, burst into private houses and committed great excesses. A regular warfare soon ensued between them and the armed Moleques, joined by a number of Brazilians of the lowest description, and the Campo and the streets adjoining were filled with dead and wounded bodies.
The Brazilian government now applied to the French and English ministers for a force of marines, from the ships of war of their respective nations lying in the harbour, which was readily granted. The French were immediately landed at the trem, and the English at the arsenal, and were prepared to protect the city if any attempt should be made against it. In the mean time, a battalion of the regiment of militia of the Minas Geraes, some cavalry, and a field-piece, proceeded to the Campo to restore order. They did not act with the furious inhumanity recommended by the minister of war. They first argued with the insurgents, then fired blank cartridges, and at length had recourse to ball as the last expedient. The insurgents had no arms of their own, and used only those they had wrested from the police, amounting to fifty or sixty muskets. Their ammunition was exhausted, and those whom insult and intoxication had driven to madness, had returned to their senses, and retired to their barracks. The Germans quietly submitted, and on the evening of the 12th of June, everything was tranquil, after three days of intense anxiety.
While the conduct of the military was humane and praiseworthy, that of the armed rabble was marked by the most atrocious ferocity. The Moleques rushed on every foreigner they met in the neighbourhood, with their knives, and butchered them with the most savage mutilation; and some, I am told, were hunted down, and then torn limb from limb, by the bloodhounds that pursued them. Several of the Irish, who were artisans, industriously exercised their trades, and were doing well at Rio. One of them, a tailor, was returning to his barracks, with a bundle of clothes under his arm, entirely ignorant of the insurrection that had taken place. He was met by two Moleques in a street leading to the Campo, who rushed at him with their facas, and having stabbed him in several places, ripped up his belly, and left him, with his bowels hanging out, weltering on the pavement. One fellow, a corpulent mulatto, of a very ferocious aspect, was pointed out to me afterwards at the butchery of S. Luzie, where he has now some appropriate employment. He was seen, after tranquillity was restored, brandishing a bloody sabre over his head, and boasting it was stained with the blood of five foreigners, whom he had killed.
The number of persons who lost their lives is variously stated at from sixty to a hundred; and about twice that number wounded. Many respectable Brazilians, in the vicinity of the Campo d’Acclamação, were killed, in defending their houses and properties, when the insurgents burst them open. Many of the insurgents lay down in the streets and fell asleep, overcome by fatigue and intoxication; and in that state of insensibility were stabbed by the Moleques. As this disposition for blood continued after the cause was past, and the excitement over, it was found necessary to issue, on the 13th of June, a second edital, prohibiting any person from carrying arms, but especially slaves, after the edital was posted, under severe punishment. They had been most imprudently called on to take them up para salvar a patria, and it was found imperatively necessary to compel them to lay them down, for the same reason.
Of 2,400 Irish who had been invited, and arrived in Brazil, not more than 200 were concerned in the insurrection; and these were generally young men, totally neglected, and left to themselves, to follow the impulse of any passion excited in them. They were without officers or arms, yet they caused much terror and anxiety, in a large and populous city, for three days. It was determined, therefore, to send them all back to their own country; and the object of those who laboured to bring that end about, was completely answered. They were immediately embarked, and placed on board the ships of war in the harbour, till transports could be provided for them. The emperor himself seemed very well disposed towards them; and I am told by those who witnessed the fact, that he shed tears of anxiety and vexation, when he heard the state into which they were degraded. It had been his custom frequently to attend divine service, when it was performed for the Irish at the Praya Vermelha, where he freely knelt down amongst them. His condescension, however, was suspected. An absurd rumour had been circulated, that if this ceremony was performed three times, they were bound to him, as soldiers, for unlimited service. On the third Sunday none but the officers attended – the men all disappeared – a strong proof of their repugnance to such an engagement, and their determination to resist it. He now gave every direction for their ample accommodation, on their return home; and Mr. Gordon, the British minister, and the English admiral, had power in his name to supply them with every necessary.
On this occasion it was expedient to collect them all, and it was discovered that many of them had been arrested and confined in various prisons. Mr. Aston, the Secretary of Legation to the British Mission, with that promptness and humanity which every one who knows him will give him credit for, immediately applied to the proper authorities to have them found out; but so little interest did they take in the life or liberty of those foreigners, that they could give no information about them. At length he found thirty of them confined in the dungeon of the fortress of Villegagnon. On one occasion the whole of the officers had been arrested, and shut up in the cells of the prisons in the different islands. After eighteen or twenty days’ incarceration, however, they were liberated, and never could learn why they had been confined; but numbers of inferior rank remained behind, till they were altogether forgotten. Such was the case of these poor men. When they emerged from these catacombs, they were in the most miserable state of destitution and disease, their bodies ulcerated with sores and covered with vermin, and their skins so raw and tender from putrescency and mortification, that when it was necessary to clothe them for the sake of decency, to enable them again to appear, they could not bear the painful touch of any covering.
They were a fine body of young men, and of good character. They had been called on to take the military oath, but they refused. They affirmed they had come out as settlers; if they were located as such, they had no objection to be enrolled as militia, learn military duty, and be ready to turn out to defend their own or any other part of the country invaded: but they persisted in refusing to take the oath tendered to them as mere soldiers, for unlimited service. For this offence they were represented as mutineers, and thrown at once into these dismal dungeons, where they had remained totally neglected, and must in a short time have perished in a state of putridity, had they not been relieved by the humane and timely interference of Mr. Aston. Two hundred and fifty were embarked in the Moro Castle, on the 3d July, 1828, and sailed for Ireland. The Phoebe followed with 150 more, with the Highlander, and a Swedish ship, carrying in all 1400 persons back to their native land. It was industriously given out, that many of these persons had carried plate and other valuables from the houses they had plundered, and a search was made among their boxes and trunks. Nothing was found to justify the suspicion, and then it was said, that to avoid detection they had cast all these valuables into the sea.
About 400 were left behind, engaged in different employments. A body of them, to the amount of 220 persons, forming 101 families, were conveyed to Bahia, and located at Taporoa, in the comarca of Ilheos, where they formed a colony, directed by a commissioner appointed to regulate their affairs. It was the only portion of the emigrants with whom good faith was observed; and it appears, from the report of the Viscount Camamu, president of the assembly of the province, that they were deserving of every care and attention. Several who remained at Rio I afterwards met and conversed with. They were doing well; and the whole, had they been properly encouraged, would have done the same. Some men from Waterford and Lismore were engaged in a quarry in the rear of our residence, preparing blocks of granite for building, and by their industry and good conduct were earning five patacs (about seven shillings) a day, and making a comfortable independence. Another family, of the name of Cook, from the county of Tipperary, had been recommended to Messrs. Marsh and Watson, who located them on a farm in the Organ Mountains, where I visited them with Mr. Watson. The farm was in the depth of a forest, fourteen or fifteen miles within the recesses of the mountain.
The way led through the wildest scenery; and on the bank of a river, in the centre of a forest, we found these colonists. They had built a large and comfortable house with a rustic portico, and thatched it very neatly with palm branches, whose regular fronds formed a tasty roof, the stems and pinnate leaves of which were very elegantly disposed in the thatch. On the other side of the river, which we crossed by two trees forming a rustic bridge, was a large shed for cattle, and other conveniences; and rising up the hill was an extensive plantation of coffee, behind which, descending into a glen, was a rich field of Indian corn in high health, with gourds, mandioca, and a variety of other products of Brazilian agriculture. On our return the good woman had prepared for us a plentiful dish of bacon and eggs, with fried cakes of maize; and our entertainment concluded with whisky, which our host had contrived to distil from his coffee plantation. When I contemplated this comfortable house and abundant farm, rescued from the heart of a Brazilian forest, cultivated by persons who in their own country could not make out a scanty livelihood in a miserable hovel, I could not help feeling the deepest regret, that 2400 who had left their homes were not, as they might have been, so located. It would have abstracted so many individuals from an overflowing people perishing from want, and added a valuable population to a country, where millions of fertile acres are lying waste for lack of hands to cultivate them.
The greater part of the Irish who returned home, were in a disabled state. Hardship, wounds, privation, and sickness had affected them more or less; but the ailment under which they principally laboured was lameness. Not furnished with shoes, nor able to provide them, their feet were attacked with the bichu, or insect of the country, which burrowed in myriads in their naked feet, and caused the most frightful ulcerations. Many of the men, therefore, are lame beggars about the streets, or incurables in the hospitals of Cork. Many who had left comfortable farms, are reduced to common labourers; and of all who returned home, there is not one, perhaps, who is not now enduring want and misery.
The Germans, as they were regularly enrolled, were subject to martial law as mutineers; and the ringleaders in the riot were tried, and some convicted. One of them was shortly after executed. On the formation of the German corps, as they were generally Lutherans, the Rev. Mr. Crane, British Chaplain at Rio, officiated for them; and when this man was ordered for execution, he was attended, by order of the emperor, by the chaplain, to prepare him for death. Mr. Crane, from whom I derived some of the foregoing statements, informed me he was a tall vigorous young man, six feet high, of singularly determined character. He told him he had neglected his early religious impressions, but did not then wish to recall them; and begged him not to press him on the subject, as his only wish was to die like a soldier, and such considerations as he proposed, would only disturb him. A Catholic clergyman was sent to him with no better success. He dismissed him at once, telling him to go and reform his master, who more wanted it. He walked to the Campo d’Acclamação, where he was executed, with a pipe in his mouth, frequently turning round and conversing with the greatest indifference with his comrades, who were to shoot him, and who followed immediately behind him. The only mark of interest or concern he evinced on any subject, was with respect to the place of his burial. He asked where he was to be laid, and he was answered, in the Misericordia. As this is the cemetery attached to the hospital, and the great receptacle for negroes, he expressed a strong repugnance to be buried among them, and confounded with the slaves who had behaved in such a manner to his comrades. He therefore earnestly requested permission to be buried in the English burying-ground, which Mr. Crane promised, and he then died with the most perfect unconcern. His regiment was sent off to the south.
Thus ended a project for the gradual introduction of Europeans into Brazil, from which much good was reasonably expected. To form a counterpoise to the fearful superiority of the slave population, and increase as much as possible the number of white inhabitants; to colonize the immense tracts of fertile land now lying waste, and cultivate the soil with the vigorous arms of freemen, bringing with them the lights and improvements of Europe, instead of the enormous importations annually of blacks from Africa, was certainly the object of an enlightened policy. But the vigilant suspicion of the people, ever on the watch to guard against any supposed instruments of despotism, and the universal and inveterate prejudices still existing against strangers, rendered the measure highly unpopular in Brazil. It was supposed that the difference of the religion of the Germans had some influence in increasing this prejudice, but the similarity of that of the Irish did not procure them more favour. The Aurora, the Astraea, and other genuine national papers, teemed with equal invectives against both, talked boastfully of “delivering themselves from the German and Irish invasion,” and studiously avoided all notice of the French and English marines who landed to assist them.
Volume 2 — Un ménestrel noir dans Minas Gerais
After mid-day we arrived at the venda of Chepado do Mato[2], kept by an exceedingly rude and forward old lady; she had coarse sharp features, large ear-rings, and her grey hair, artificially curled, surrounded her sallow face as if in a storm. She set her hands a-kimbo, described the excellence of her wine with great volubility, and was quite displeased because we would not drink it for our breakfast, but preferred coffee, which she would hardly condescend to make for us. As a contrast to her, there stood in the hall a poor black minstrel boy, who played a very simple instrument. It consisted of a single string stretched on a bamboo, bent into an arc, or bow. Half a cocoa nut, with a loop at its apex, was laid on his breast on the concave side; the bow was thrust into this loop, while the minstrel struck it with a switch, moving his fingers up and down the wire at the same time. This produced three or four sweet notes, and was an accompaniment either to dancing or singing. He stood in the porch, and entertained us like a Welsh harper, while we were at breakfast, and he was so modest that when we praised his music, he actually blushed through his dusky cheeks. It was the first time that a branco, or white, had ever paid him such a compliment.
Volume 2 — bilan des impressions du voyage : musique et danses
… Among the objects which excited my particular attention in the interior, was the state of slavery in which the greater part of the population remain; and as it is a subject likely to be one of considerable interest in a few months, when the total abolition of the slave trade is to take place in Brazil, I shall add a few observations, which I have gleaned here, to the mass of information you are already in possession of.
…
The number of blacks, and mulatto offspring of blacks, is now estimated at 2,500,000, while the whites are but 850,000; so that the former exceed the latter in the proportion of three to one. From this great superiority, serious apprehensions have long been entertained, that some time or other, in the present diffusion of revolutionary doctrines on this continent, they will discover their own strength, assert independence for themselves, and Brazil become a second St. Domingo. This is particularly the case at Bahia and Pernambuco, where almost all the negroes are brought from the same part of the coast of Africa; and there is a general union and understanding among them, as speaking the same language, and feeling an identity of interests; and here several conspiracies have been formed, and risings attempted. But at Rio the case is different. The negro population consists of eight or nine different castes, having no common language, and actuated by no sympathetic tie; insomuch so, that they frequently engage in feuds and combats, where one, or even two hundreds of a nation on each side are engaged. This animosity the white cherish, and endeavour to keep alive, as intimately connected with their own safety.
The difference of caste is very strongly marked in the colour of their skin, and still more in the expression of their countenance, to a degree of which I had no conception. Before I went to Brazil, I could no more distinguish one black from another, than I could sheep in a flock; but in this country, it struck me that the variety of the human face was still more strongly marked in the black than in the white colour: the gradation of the latter was only from handsome to ugly, but of the former, from handsome to hideous; and I think I have met among these dark visages, some of the most engaging, and some of the most revolting aspects in nature. This diversity is attended with disunion and separation, on which the Brazilians lay great stress.
The superiority of the coloured population is not greater in number than it is in physical powers. Some of the blacks and mulattos are the most vigorous and athletic looking persons that it is possible to contemplate, and who would be models for a Farnesian Hercules. Their natural muscular frame is hardened and improved by exercise; and when the fibres are swelled out in any laborious action, they exhibit a magnificent picture of strength and activity. Their faca, or long knife, they use with tremendous effect. They sometimes hurl it, as an Indian does his tomahawk, with irresistible force, and drive the blade, at a considerable distance, through a thick deal board. In this respect, they are strongly contrasted with the flabby Brazilians of Portuguese descent, who look the very personification of indolence and inactivity; and should they ever unhappily come into contact with their vigorous opponents in the field, it would seem as if they would be crushed at once, under the mere physical weight of their antagonists.
This muscular strength, however, is not universal, but only displayed by the natives of particular districts in Africa. The principal marts from whence they are brought, are Angola, Congo, Angico, Gaboon, and Mosambique. Those of Angola are the most highly esteemed, and are in every respect the most tractable, and next to them the natives of Congo. The Angicos are tall and robust, and their skins jetty black and shining. They are generally distinguished by their singular mode of tattooing, which consists of three gashes made in each cheek, and extending, in a circular form, from the ear to the angle of the mouth. The Gaboons are also tall and comely, with great muscular strength; they are, however, less esteemed, from their exceeding impatience of the state of slavery to which they are reduced. They are greatly addicted to suicide, and take the first opportunity of destroying themselves. Instances have occurred, where a lot of eighteen or twenty, purchased together, have made a determination not to live; and in a short time they all stabbed themselves, or sunk rapidly under an insupportable feeling of despondency.
The people of Mosambique include generally all those of Southern Africa. They are distinguished by their diminutive stature and feeble limbs, but still more by their colour, inclining to brown, and some even as light as mulattos. It is remarkable that vigour and muscularity in a negro seem intimately connected with his hue; the distinctive characteristic of the race is a black skin, and the more dark the exterior the more perfect seems the person; and as it recedes from its own and approaches to our colour, it is proportionately imperfect.
From the operation of the abolition laws, and the activity of our cruisers to the north of the line in enforcing them, the trade for slaves, in the last ten years, has been directed to the coast of Africa on both sides of the Cape of Good Hope, and the negro race in Brazil has sensibly deteriorated; they seem to approach the character of Cafres or Hottentots; and I have more than once seen among them persons distinguished by the peculiarity that marked the Venus from that country, exhibited in England some years ago. One was a girl of fourteen, of most extraordinary proportions. This race is particularly noted for a propensity to eat lime and earth; whether it be from a determination not to live, or from a morbid and irrepressible appetite for such things, like some diseased children, they persist in it with the most obstinate perseverance, notwithstanding they are severely flogged, till they at length sink under it. They are distinguished also by their extraordinary mode of tattooing; the flesh is raised into protuberances, so as to form a succession of knobs, like a string of beads, from their forehead to the tip of their nose, and very frequently the upper lip is perforated by a hole, through which the teeth are seen.
Notwithstanding the antipathies which the different tribes bring with them from their own country, and the petty feuds they excite in Brazil, cherished and promoted by the whites, there is often a bond which connects them as firmly as if they had belonged all to the same race, and that is a community of misery in the ships in which they are brought over. The people so united by this temporary association, are called Malungos; they continue attached to each other ever after, and when separated, are quite rejoiced if they meet again.
Musique et instruments
The negroes bring with them their language and usages, which are found in Brazil as recent and original as on the coast of Africa, from whence they only just arrive. The language is so diversified by dialects, that different tribes do not understand each other. When those of the same caste work together, they move to the sound of certain words, sung in a kind of melancholy cadence, commenced in a tenor tone by one part, and concluded in a base by the other. A long line of negroes, with burdens on their heads, sing it as they go along, and it is heard every day, and in almost every street in Rio. This, which seems a regular national song, I was particularly curious to know the import of, but no one could interpret the words for me, and the negroes, when asked, either did not, or pretended not to know, as if it was something occult, which they made a mystery of.
Their music consists of several different instruments; the first is a rude guitar, composed of a calabash, fasted to a bar of wood, which forms a neck to the shell; over this is stretched a single string of gut, which is played on by a rude bow of horse-hair; and by moving the finger up and down along the gut, three or four notes are elicited, of a very plaintive sound. The minstrel is generally surrounded by a group sitting in a circle, who all unite their voices as accompaniments to the music. The next is half a calabash, containing within it a number of small bars of iron parallel to each other, with one extremity flat, presenting a surface like the keys of a harpsichord: this he holds in both hands, and presses with his thumbs, in succession, the flat bars, which emit a tinkling sound like a spinet. This instrument is very universal. Every poor fellow who can, procures one of those; and as he goes along under his burden, continues to elicit from it simple tones, which seem to lighten his load, as if it was his grata testudo, laborum dulce lenimen. A third is a single string stretched on a bamboo, such as I have described to you before at Chapado do Mato, in the Minas Geraes.
These instruments are used by themselves or accompanied by the voice; and, I think, are called by the general name of merimba, though the word is more particularly applied to the bars of iron. There are others used as accompaniments to dancing, of which the negroes are passionately fond. One is a hollow trunk of a tree, covered at one end with a piece of tense leather; on this the performer gets astride, and strikes it with the palms of his hands, eliciting a very loud sound, which is heard to a considerable distance. This “spirit-stirring drum” has a powerful effect on all the negroes within the extent of its sound.
Danses et comportements rituels
There is a small green at S. José near the Chafariz, where the negroes assemble every Sunday evening to dance. Here the performer bestrides his drum, and assembles the dancers by the sound. The first strokes, which are heard all around, produce an electric effect; they rush to the spot from all quarters, and in a little time they are worked up to a degree of hilarity little short of frenzy. They dance, sing, shout, and scream till the whole neighbourhood echoes with their noise.
As a substitute for this drum, they sometimes use bones, which the dancers strike together. These are accompanied by an instrument the size of a pepper-box, having some rattling substance inside. This is attached to a handle, which one holds over the heads of the rest; and while they strike the bones he rattles the box, and so the time is regulated. This mode of directing the dance, I have seen at the Matanza.
The dances begin with a slow movement of two persons, who approach each other with a shy and diffident air, and then recede bashful and embarrassed; by degrees, the time of the music increases, the diffidence wears off, and the dance concludes with indecencies not fit to be seen or described.
Sometimes it is of a different character, attended with jumping, shouting, and throwing their arms over each other’s heads, and assuming the most fierce and stern aspects. The first is a dance of love, and the latter of war. Dancing seems the great passion of the negro, and the great consolation which makes his slavery tolerable. Whenever I have seen a group of them meeting in the street or the road, or at the door of a venda, they always got up a dance; and if there was no instrument in company, which rarely happened, they supplied its place with their voice. At all the fazendas, where there is a number together, Saturday night is usually devoted to a ball, after the labours of the week. A fire of wood or the heads of milho is lighted up in a hut, where they assemble, and they continue dancing till light in the morning.
The obeah man in Brazil is called Mandingueiros, because he comes from the Mandingos, near Senegal. He is not at all so formidable a person, nor does he exercise such powerful fascinations as elsewhere, probably because the country from which he came has been for some time interdicted, and the practice is not kept up in other tribes, and so is fallen into disuse.
The patriarchal feeling, however, that considers a tribe as a family, the members as brothers, and the prince as the father, still strongly subsists. They believe that the tie of allegiance to the prince never ceases under any change of circumstances, no more than the obligation due from a son to a father. These princes, therefore, are frequently seen sitting on a stone in the street, surrounded by a crowd who come to them for judgment. At the corner of the Travessa de S. Antonio, where it opens into the Rua do Cane, is a curb stone or post, which was pointed out to me, as being for many years the throne of an African prince from Angola. Every evening after the labours of the day, and on Sundays and holidays at any hour, he was found on the spot, holding his court and a number of blacks around him, appealing to and submitting to his decrees. He was a strong athletic young man, of general good conduct, and comported himself with spirit and dignity in his regal situation. If a black, for any offence committed against his brother, deserved punishment, it was inflicted with a stick by an officer in attendance. He of course took cognizance of matters only occurring between themselves, and his jurisdiction was not objected to by the police, because it tended to good manners. He had, a short time before my arrival, abdicated his stone, and I could not learn where he had gone, but his throne remained vacant till his return. You have heard the notion of African princes among an importation of slaves, laughed at as an absurd fiction. This I know to be a fact, from the unquestionable authority of a frequent eye witness, and also that it is a common occurrence. The natives of Congo elect a king among themselves, to whose decrees they submit in a similar manner.
Notes
[1] The entries in the police registers (Códice 403, vol.II, Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro) were published by Paulo Coelho de Araújo in his Abordagens sócio-antropológicas da luta/jogo da capoeira, Maia, 1997. Thomas H. Holloway published entries from 1836, studying police action in Rio in Policing Rio de Janeiro - Repression and resistance in a 19th century city, Stanford University Press, 1993 and “A Healthy Terror - Police Repression of Capoeiras in Nineteenth Century Rio de Janeiro” The Hispanic American Historical Review n69:4, Durham:Duke University Press, 1989. (back)
[2] Obviously Chapada do Mato. The map has Chapado do Mato. (back)