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In: Women's Travel Journals·Travel Writing·History - Other
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #21201.
The work is a first‑person travel journal by Lady Maria Callcott, written during her three‑year stay in Brazil from 1821 to 1823. It opens with a sweeping overview of South America’s political climate, contrasting Europe’s revolutionary wars with Brazil’s quiet transition from colony to sovereign empire after the Portuguese court fled to Rio. Callcott frames her observations as a record of “the whole truth” of Brazil’s emancipation, acknowledging gaps caused by ill health and limited resources. The introductory pages also list a series of illustrated plates, ranging from slave markets to natural wonders such as the Great Dragon Tree, suggesting a richly visual accompaniment to her narrative. The early sections blend historical sketching, drawn from sources like Southey, with the author’s own eyewitness accounts of the nation’s social strata, indigenous peoples, and the unfolding struggle for independence.
Lady Callcott’s voice is that of a genteel, early‑19th‑century British lady traveler, earnest and modest, whose prose combines detailed description with moral reflection. Her style is formal yet accessible, interspersed with occasional digressions into the wider Atlantic world. Readers interested in colonial history, early travel literature, or the cultural encounters of the post‑Napoleonic era will find her perspective rewarding, especially those who appreciate a blend of personal observation, historical context, and illustrative material.
The opening · free to read
Nothing can be more interesting than the actual situation of the whole of South America. While Europe was engaged in the great revolutionary war, that country was silently advancing towards the point at which longer subjection to a foreign dominion became impossible. Circumstances, not laws, had opened the ports of the South Atlantic and the Pacific. Individuals, not nations, had lent their aid to the patriots of the New World: and more warlike instruments and ammunition had gone silently from the warehouses of the merchant to arm the natives against their foreign tyrants, than had ever issued from the arsenals of the greatest nations. But, for a period, Brazil did not openly join in the struggle for independence. The Royal Family of Portugal took refuge there; and converted it, by that step, from a colony into the seat of government, from a state of slavery to one of sovereignty. Therefore, while the court continued to reside at Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilians had no inducement to break with the mother country. But it was very different when the King returned to Lisbon, and the Cortes, forgetting the change of men's minds produced by circumstances, endeavoured to force Brazil back to the abject state from which she had arisen. Then arose the struggle, some part of which it was the fortune of the writer to witness; and concerning which she was able to collect some facts which may serve as materials for future history. She trusts that if the whole truth is not to be found in her pages, that there will be nothing but the truth.
It is with no small anxiety that the Journal is sent into the world, in the hope that it may tend to excite interest for the country by making it better known. Perhaps the writer has over-rated her powers, in attempting to record the progress of so important an event as the emancipation of such an empire from the thraldrom of the mother country. The lighter part of her task, namely, the description of the country, its inhabitants, and the manners of the different classes, both of natives and foreigners, should have been fuller; but that want of health, and sometimes want of spirits, prevented her from making use of all the means that might have been within her reach of acquiring knowledge. She trusts, however, that there is no misrepresentation of importance; and that the Journal, the writing of which has to her beguiled many a lonely and many a sorrowful hour, will not give a moment's pain to any human creature.
PLATES.
PLATE I. Val Longo, or Slave Market at Rio to front the Title Page.
II. Represents the Great Dragon Tree of Oratava, of which Humboldt has given so interesting an account. He saw it in all its greatness; I drew it after it had lost half its top to face Page 85
III. View of Count Maurice's Gate at Pernambuco, with the Slave Market 107
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