THE city of Salvador, generally called Bahia because of its location on the Bahia de Todos os Santos (All Saints Bay), is the capital of the state of the same name, one of the great units in the United States of Brazil. It was founded in 1549 by Tomé de Souza. This Portuguese nobleman, the first governor general of Brazil, there set up the colonial seat of government, a distinction retained by the city for more than two centuries. It was not until 1763 that the capital was moved to Rio de Janeiro.

Soon after Bahia was founded, it became a center of commercial activity, in frequent communication with Portugal, Spain, Africa, the Indies, and all the Brazilian ports. It owed this growth to its magnificent harbor, large and easy of access, situated almost in the middle of the Brazilian coast; to the fertile land (known as O Recôncavo), which bordered the bay

and was particularly well adapted to sugar cane; to the nearby forests of woods suitable for cabinet-work, dyes, building, naval construction, and so on; and especially to its agreeable climate.

Early in the 18th century, the working of the productive gold mines in Minas. Gerais and also in Jacobina, in the Captaincy of Bahia, was reflected in the enrichment of the capital. By the middle of that century art combined with the soaring wealth of the city to make it one of the most important places in America.

The Christian religion, introduced by the discoverers and firmly established by the Jesuits, who with extraordinary self-denial spread faith and learning in all the small Brazilian settlements, flourished in Bahia. When economic conditions permitted, religious fervor was expressed in the building of majestic churches, displaying a lavishness of interior decoration perhaps unri

valed in America. The cathedral (the church of the ancient Jesuit College) and the churches dedicated to St. Francis, the Third Order of St. Francis, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Shore, Our Lady of the Pillar,' and many others, are monuments of art that thrill every one fortunate enough to see them. They reflect the taste, the artistic refinement, and the style prevailing in Portugal and Brazil in the first half of the 18th century. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Shore, entirely built of Lisbon stone, quarried and dressed

1 The Portuguese names of these churches are: A Catedral Basilica (Igreja do antigo Colégio dos Jesuitas), a Igreja de São Francisco, a Igreja da Ordem Terceira de São Francisco, a Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Carmo, a Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia, a Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Pilar.

in Portugal and taken to Bahia ready to set in place, is in the style of the Italian Renaissance. Except for this, the churches are King John V baroque, although the Church of the Third Order of St. Francis, the only one of its kind, is ultra-baroque in the profusion of sculpture that covers its façade with saints, coats-of-arms, volutes, foliage, and arabesques, likewise carved in Lisbon stone.

The simple and austere exterior of St. Francis' Church contrasts with the extraordinary profusion of ornament that completely covers the interior walls, without obscuring the architectural lines, however. Here the baroque style of the first period reached its height. Walls and altars are overlaid with richly gilded carved cedar, which hardly lets one see the surface of the