Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/14

It was my fate during nearly three years, between November 10th, 1865, and July 28th, 1868, to endure exile as H.B.M.'s Consul for the port of Santos, in the province of São Paulo, the Brazil. There was little occupation on high days and holidays, except to visit the sea-board and "kitchen middens"; and, as there are no roads along the shore, many of my excursions were made in open boats—trips which gained dignity by the perpetual presence of danger. During these excursions, I passed again and again through the Rio Bertioga, a channel which separates the once populous and still luxuriant island of Santo Amaro from the mainland; and I landed, not unfrequently, at the ruin opposite the Forte da Bertioga. The stone-heap occupies the site where Hans Stade, the author of the following pages, served as gunner, and whence he was carried off captive by the cannibal savages, who, in those days lived alternately upon the sea-coast and the interior plateau. Of the wild tribes, not a living specimen remains; but, like the Guanches of Tenerife, they have left manifest traces of "red" blood in the veins of their modern