South America

by Charles Waterton

   - - nec herba, nec latens in asperis 
  Radix fefellit me locis.

In the month of April 1812 I left the town of Stabroek to travel through the wilds of Demerara and Essequibo, a part of ci-devant Dutch Guiana, in South America.

The chief objects in view were to collect a quantity of the strongest wourali poison and to reach the inland frontier-fort of Portuguese Guiana.

In the year 1816, two days before the vernal equinox, I sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, in the southern hemisphere, on the coast of Brazil. There is little at this time of the year, in the European part of the Atlantic, to engage the attention of the naturalist. As you go down the Channel you see a few divers and gannets. The middle-sized gulls, with a black spot at the end of the wings, attend you a little way into the Bay of Biscay. When it blows a hard gale of wind the stormy petrel makes its appearance.

  Desertosque videre locos, littusque relictum.

Gentle reader, after staying a few months in England, I strayed across the Alps and the Apennines, and returned home, but could not tarry. Guiana still whispered in my ear, and seemed to invite me once more to wander through her distant forests.

  Nunc huc, nunc illuc et utrinque sine ordine curro.

Were you to pay as much attention to birds as the sculptor does to the human frame, you would immediately see, on entering a museum, that the specimens are not well done.

Acaiari, the resinous gum of the hiawa-tree. 
Acouri, one of the agutis; a rodent about the size of a rabbit. 
Acuero, a species of palm. 

What brought about the readiness of this territory in the interior of the State of Bahia for the acceptance of the gospel? Perhaps the brand of burning which did more than any other to shed light through the entire section over which we passed, was the person of Captain Egydio Pereira de Almeida. He was one of several brothers of a good country family which owned large possessions in the interior 150 miles from the city of Bahia. He was an intense Catholic, but never a persecutor. At one time he was Captain in the National Guards.

One of the most fascinating phases of mission study is the tracing of the lines along which the gospel spreads. This is true because it brings us into touch with the native Christian who is one of the greatest agencies for the spread of the gospel. As it was in the first century, so it is now - "they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the gospel." The history of those Apostolic times repeats itself in every mission land.

Some of the severest persecutions the saints have ever endured in Pernambuco broke upon this new congregation in the Ilheitas district. The houses of the believers were broken into and everything destroyed, some of the buildings were burned. The believers asked for police protection, but the police sent to protect them being under the domination of the priest, who was the political boss of that district, persecuted the believers even more than their neighbors had done.