Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne
page 127 of 400 (31%)
page 127 of 400 (31%)
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_"brazil"_ stuck to them, and it has become that of the country,
which seems like an immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the tropical sun. Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is to-day the largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent artist-king Dom Pedro. "What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian whom he met at Havre. "The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered the Indian. War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance. It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased from Portugal. It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter. |
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