"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.
If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru
attempted to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega.
But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping
of the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much
to the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better
method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of
the Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post.
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