Goiás

“ Goa is the name of this Portuguese colony, which embraces an area of 1,500 square miles, and has been ruled by Portugal since the fifteenth century. Half a million Portuguese subjects live in Goa, and from that place comes the Goanese. They consider themselves Europeans, dress like Europeans, but are as black as an Indian. Stewards on passenger steamships in the East are generally Goanese, as they make better servants than Indians. The passengers were returning from Africa, where they had earned from $20 to $30 a month, very good wages for them. ”

“ Goyaz, the fourth State in size, following Pará, has Maranhão on the north, Maranhão, Bahia, and Minas Geraes are on the east, Minas and Matto Grosso are south, and Matto Grosso and Pará west. Three hundred thousand is the estimated population with a guess at the number of Indians of many tribes. The principal industry is stock raising and many cattle are exported to neighboring States. The forests have the maniçoba and the mangabeira rubber, also a vegetable silk, paina. There are great mineral riches, placer gold in many streams, and veins in the hills ”

“ Gradually, and probably owing to local application at Goa, where the natives seem to have been from the first known to the Portuguese as Canarijs, a term which in the old Portuguese works means the Konkani people and language of Goa, the name became appropriated to the low country on the coast between Goa and Malabar, which was subject to the kingdom in question, much in the same way that the name Carnatic came at a later date to be misapplied on the other side of the Peninsula. ”

“ Never was there a city so unlike a city, or even the remains of one, as Old Goa, unless it were Palmyra. Goa is now, in fact, only a forest of palm-trees with patches of jungle here and there, made gay by tropical flowers, such as the scarlet coral-tree, the pimelia with its bright golden convolvulus-like flowers, and scarlet and apricot-yellow euphorbias. From this mass of vegetation the spire of a church rises or the tower of some ancient building occasionally peeps forth. ”

“ Among its public buildings is a handsome parish church and a national normal school. The productions of the neighbourhood are chiefly pastoral, and its exports include cattle, hides, wool and oranges. Goya had an export of crudely-made cheese long before the modern cheese factories of the Argentine Republic came into existence. The place dates from 1807, and had its origin, it is said, in the trade established there by a ship captain and his wife Gregoria or Goya, who supplied passing vessels with beef. ”

“ The mines of Goyaz soon rivalled those of Cuyabá, and had the advantage of a shorter and safer communication with the older settlements. Provisions came regularly from S. Paulo, but not in sufficient quantities to keep pace with the increasing population. The demand for food induced a portion of the community to devote themselves to rearing cattle and cultivating the ground, occupations which were soon found to be even more profitable than mining. In ten years the colony, requiring a separate jurisdiction, was made a province of S. Paulo; twelve years later it was declared a captaincy. ”

“ In 1510 Albuquerque seized Goa, primarily as a naval base, and in so doing recognized the fact that his country was committed to a policy of territorial aggrandisement. Other seaports and islands were conquered or colonized in rapid succession, and by 1540 Portugal had acquired a line of scattered maritime possessions extending along the coasts of Brazil, East and West Africa, Malabar, Ceylon, Persia, Indo-China and the Malay Archipelago. The most important settlements in the East were Goa, Malacca and Hormuz. ”

“ The Portuguese, from the necessity of the case, traded sword in hand; and their intercourse with the nations of [Pg 12] the East was much more marked by the insolence of conquest, than by the complaisance of traders. Goa, some three hundred miles to the north of Calicut, which fell into their power in 1510, became a splendid city, the vice-royal and archiepiscopal seat, whence were governed a multitude of widespread dependencies. ”

“ Men in whose veins the most aristocratic blood of Portugal ran gave to the local society a distinction uncommon in an Eastern settlement. On all hands were evidences of refinement and luxury, and of the splendours of a powerful seat of government. Even to-day, when Goa is little more than a heap of mouldering ruins, it is possible to realize in the survivals of the past something of the dignified life which was once lived in this the earliest scene of European colonization in India. ”

“ The ancient inhabitants of Guzarat are easily distinguished from the others by their colour, which is much more black, and by their being more stupid and barbarous.
Goa is the chief Portuguese settlement in the Indies, and though it may have lost much of its former splendor, it is still, however, a rich and a commercial city. Here, at one time, more slaves were sold than in any other part of the world; and where the most beautiful women and girls, from all parts of Asia, became the property of the highest bidder. ”

“ The conquest of Goa, both in its immediate and in its ultimate results, was one of the greatest achievements of Albuquerque's governorship. It gave the Portuguese a commercial and political capital; it showed the neighbouring rulers, both Hindu and Muhammadan, that the Portuguese intended to remain on the Malabar coast as a governing power, and not simply, like the Arab Moplas, as a commercial community; and the gallantry shown in the final assault, as well as during the sojourn of the fleet in the harbour of Goa, proved to the people of India that a new warrior race had come amongst them. ”

“ I have lived in sandy deserts, in primeval forests; I have suffered hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, privation, and danger, and thought it charming; but I hated the sort of life at Goa. It is dead, and there is nothing to reward one; only we were here for a purpose.
[Pg 106]
Life there.
There are three Goas, full of history and romance. There is the Inquisition to study, and there is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier.
No. 1 is the old Hindú Goa, now called San Lourenço, about six miles from Panjim (New Goa) , upon the winding river, and two miles to the southward of Old Goa, or Goa Velha. ”

“ People, industries, trade, commerce, everything was dead. Formerly, in the time of the Emperor and of that great patriot General Couto de Magalhães, Goyaz city could be reached—within a few kilometres—by steam on the beautiful river Araguaya, which formed the western boundary of the province, an ideal waterway navigable for 1,200 kil.—in Goyaz province alone. In the time of the Emperor, when Brazil was a wild country, steam navigation [110] actually existed up the Araguaya River from Conceição as far as Leopoldina (the port for Goyaz city) . ”

“ At last my master came to Goa, where of course he became so pious a Christian that he kept a priest in the house—to perfect him in Portuguese—and attended mass once a day. And when we went to see the old city, such were the fervency of his lamentations over the ruins of the Inquisition, and the frequency of his dinners to the Padre of Saint Francis, that the simple old gentleman half canonized him in his heart. But I guessed that some trick was at hand, when a pattimar, hired for a month, came and lay off the wharf stairs, close to where the Sahib is now sitting ”

“ The advent of Goya in the middle of the eighteenth century marks a sort of providential date in the art of the peninsula. The Spanish school had fallen into profound decadence. Of the great traditions of Velazquez, Ribera, Zurbaran, and El Greco, nothing survived save the regret of knowing that they were forever lost. All the prodigious strength and powerful realism of that glorious period had become degenerate, enfeebled, anaemic to the point of utter decrepitude. In the horde of artists of that time, not a single hand was capable of taking up the brush let fall by the great predecessors. ”

“ The goiaba is to be found in all situations in Pernambuco; there is scarcely a cercado (field) of any sugar plantation which has not several of these trees scattered about upon it. The goiaba is never cut down, for the people are fond of it, and the cattle likewise feed upon it. The araça is another species of the same plant; the shrub and the fruit of this are smaller than the goiaba, and the inside of the fruit is of a pale yellow colour, instead of a deep red.—Transl. ”

“ It used to be bad at Goa, but this seems worse; the saints help us. How are we to get away from this terrible place, where the rocks seem ready to fall on us and crush us, and the fort looks like a gloomy prison? Yet thou hast a smiling face, Señora; dost thou not fear?"
"No," said Maria, "I dread nothing; and these new friends, whose guests we are, seem truly kind; why should we fear?" ”

“ Since his day matters have gone steadily from bad to worse, and the population, thinned by pestilence and emigration, is now scarcely that of a small village. Churches and public buildings alike have fallen into decay, and the ruins are fast being overspread by the growth of tropical vegetation. Panjim, the “New Goa” of to-day, is about three miles from the mouth of the river, and enjoys the small remains of the state and commerce which once made Goa the chief city of the Indies. ”

“ To-day, the adult males of Goa, such of them as have any enterprise, emigrate into less dull and dead regions of India, and are found everywhere as cooks, ship-stewards, messengers, and in similar menial capacities. They all call themselves Portuguese, and own high-sounding Portuguese surnames. Domingo de Gonsalvez de Soto will cook your curry, and Pedro de Guiterraz is content to act as dry nurse to your wife’s babies. The vice of those dusky noblemen is their addiction to drink. ”

“ His description, it will be seen, is that of a delta-island, and Goa is the only one partaking of that character upon the coast. He says it contained 36 villages; and Barros tells us that Goa Island was known to the natives as Tīsvāḍī, a name signifying "Thirty villages." (See SALSETTE.) Its vicinity to the island where Ibn Batuta proceeded to anchor, which we have shown to be Anchediva (q.v.) , is another proof. Turning to Rashīduddīn, the order in which he places Sindābūr, Faknūr (Baccanore) , Manjarūr (Mangalore) , Hīlī (Mt. D'Ely) , is perfectly correct, if for Sindābūr we substitute Goa. ”

“ The social life of Goa was brilliant, as befitted the headquarters of the viceregal court, the army and navy, and the church; but the luxury and ostentation of all classes had become a byword before the end of the 16th century. Almost all manual labour was done by slaves; common soldiers assumed high-sounding titles, and it was even customary for the poor noblemen who congregated together in boarding-houses to subscribe for a few silken cloaks, a silken umbrella and a common man-servant, so that each could take his turn to promenade the streets, fashionably attired and with a proper escort. ”

“ The small island of Ticuari, in which the city of Goa stands, is situated in lat. 15° 30' N. in a bay at the mouth of the river Gasim on the coast of Canara, being about three leagues long and one broad. It contains both hill and level ground, has good water, and is fertile, pleasant, and healthy. The city of Goa, now seated on the northern part of the island, was formerly in its southern part. The present city was built by a Moor named Malek Husseyn about 40 years before the arrival of the Portuguese in India. ”

“ He encouraged his men to marry native women, and to settle in Goa as farmers, retail traders or artisans. These married men soon became a privileged caste, and Goa acquired a large Eurasian population. Albuquerque and his successors left almost untouched the customs and constitutions of the 30 village communities on the island, only abolishing the rite of suttee. A register of these customs (Foral de usos e costumes) was published in 1526, and is an historical document of much value; an abstract of it is given in R. S. Whiteway’s Rise of the Portuguese Empire in India (London, 1898) . ”

“ In the sixteenth century, if fifty per cent. of the men returned from an Indian voyage, the trip was considered successful.
The next five years Jan Huygen spent in Goa with his ecclesiastical master. He was intrusted with a great deal of confidential work, and became thoroughly familiar with all the affairs of the colony. In Goa he heard wonderful tales about the great Chinese Empire, many weeks to the north. He began to collect maps for an expedition to that distant land, but lack of funds made him put it off, and he never went far beyond the confines of the small Portuguese settlement. ”

“ Not one of them had penetrated the Province at the time of my visit, although the work of preparing the road had just been begun on Goyaz territory, as we have seen, for a few kilometres north of the Paranahyba River, on the extension of the Mogyana line from São Paulo. A second railway line in course of construction was a branch of the Western Minas Railway; and there was a third up the Araguaya from Para. Those railways will certainly revolutionize the country. The inhabitants of Goyaz, ultra-conservative in their ideas, were not at all anxious to see a railway reach their capital. ”

“ The Gentoo will enter your room with his slippers on, sit down after shaking hands as if the action were a matter of course, chew his betel, and squirt the scarlet juice all over the floor, in a word, make himself as offensive as you can conceive. But at Goa all men are equal. ”