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IN EASTERN BRAZIL.

21

two miles inland. Our force in defence might consist of about ninety Christians. Besides these, were thirty Moors and Brazilian slaves, who belonged to the inhabitants. The savages^[1] who besieged us were estimated at eight thousand. We in our beleaguered state had only a palisade^[2] of rails around us.

CAPUT IV.

How their fortifications were constructed, and how they fought against us.

Round about the settlement in which we were beleaguered was a forest, wherein they had made two forts of thick trees, to which they retreated at night, and if we attacked them,

↑ These people were the Caetés (from caa, a bush and ete, good), also written Caytés, Calhetés, Cahetés, Cayetés, Caités, and in many other ways. Some derive from them Cattéte, a suburb of modern Rio de Janeiro, which, however, is properly Caitetú, a peccary. According to Gabriel Soares, they occupied the seaboard of Pernambuco, north of the Potyguaras, and they extended for a hundred miles of coast from northern Parahyba to the great Rio de S. Francisco. On the occasion mentioned in the text, they rose against the Tabayarás, who were allied with the Portuguese. P. Yves d'Evreux (pp. 802-804) speaks of their idols as rudimentary statues, possibly borrowed from the French, and to these sacrifices were offered. They were barbarians passing into the first stage of progress, agriculture, and the jangada or catamaran still used at Pernambuco is borrowed from them. Fond of music and the dance, they were as warlike as they were false, and their cannibalism was notorious. According to Vasconcellos (1, 32), on June 16, 1556, they killed and devoured that saintly prelate, D. Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, first bishop of Bahia; the procurator of the Royal Treasury at the same city; two canons of the see; two pregnant women, and over a hundred persons, men, women and children, who when returning to Portugal in a French brig were wrecked upon the shoals of the S. Francisco River. The crime was punished by the successors of Duarte Coelho, who, aided by the Tupinambás and the Potyguaras, nearly annihilated the Caetés.
↑ Varnhagen gives an illustration of these stockades (History, vol. 1, p. 116), probably borrowed from our author's descriptions scattered over the book. Southey (1, 55) makes the savages “pile up two rude

[1] These people were the Caetés (from caa, a bush and ete, good), also written Caytés, Calhetés, Cahetés, Cayetés, Caités, and in many other ways. Some derive from them Cattéte, a suburb of modern Rio de Janeiro, which, however, is properly Caitetú, a peccary. According to Gabriel Soares, they occupied the seaboard of Pernambuco, north of the Potyguaras, and they extended for a hundred miles of coast from northern Parahyba to the great Rio de S. Francisco. On the occasion mentioned in the text, they rose against the Tabayarás, who were allied with the Portuguese. P. Yves d'Evreux (pp. 802-804) speaks of their idols as rudimentary statues, possibly borrowed from the French, and to these sacrifices were offered. They were barbarians passing into the first stage of progress, agriculture, and the jangada or catamaran still used at Pernambuco is borrowed from them. Fond of music and the dance, they were as warlike as they were false, and their cannibalism was notorious. According to Vasconcellos (1, 32), on June 16, 1556, they killed and devoured that saintly prelate, D. Pedro Fernandes Sardinha, first bishop of Bahia; the procurator of the Royal Treasury at the same city; two canons of the see; two pregnant women, and over a hundred persons, men, women and children, who when returning to Portugal in a French brig were wrecked upon the shoals of the S. Francisco River. The crime was punished by the successors of Duarte Coelho, who, aided by the Tupinambás and the Potyguaras, nearly annihilated the Caetés.

[2] Varnhagen gives an illustration of these stockades (History, vol. 1, p. 116), probably borrowed from our author's descriptions scattered over the book. Southey (1, 55) makes the savages “pile up two rude

[1]

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