To the inhabitants of the city I had been careful to accord complete
liberty, exacting, in return, perfect order, which was preserved, and
property of all kinds respected; the delight of the inhabitants being
unbounded at having been freed from a terrible system of exaction and
imprisonment, which, when I entered the river, was being carried on with
unrelenting rigour by the Portuguese authorities towards all suspected
of a leaning to the Imperial Government. Instead of retaliating--as
would have been gratifying to those so recently labouring under
oppression--I directed oaths to the Constitution to be administered, not
to Brazilians only, but also to all Portuguese who chose to remain and
conform to the new order of things; a privilege, of which many
influential persons of that nation availed themselves.

On the 1st of August the inhabitants of Alcantara made a declaration of
adherence to His Imperial Majesty, notwithstanding a report sedulously
circulated amongst them that the Portuguese troops at Maranham were
about to recover the city. An assurance from me, that the Portuguese
troops were embarked, and were under the guns of the flagship, as well
as the fire of their own gunboats, which could be turned against them,
and that the European militia was disarmed, speedily dispelled all
grounds for alarm.

The proceedings of the temporary Provisional Junta being unsatisfactory,
especially as regarded their desire for retaliation on the Portuguese, I
determined to embody a more popular Government, though, as yet the
election would, of necessity, be confined to the inhabitants of the
city only. Accordingly on the 8th of August, in less than a fortnight
after my first appearance off the port, a Provisional Government was
chosen by the population, and the city and province were incorporated