GAMA, aniii,• Antonio Leon de, a Mexi can scientist: b. City of Mexico, 1735; d. 12 Sept. 1802. He was secretary to the Supreme Court for a number of years, and subsequently was a professor at the School of Mines. He is best known for his study of the celebrated Aztec calendar stone which was discovered in his time. He was one of the first students of the remains of the past civilizations of America to place the development of archaeology upon a scientific basis. For this reason his name stands high in Latin-American scientific circles.
GAMA,Jose Baal da, Brazilian poet: b. Sao Tose (Minas Geraes) 1740; d. Lisbon, 31 July 1795. He was educated by the Jesuits and joined the company; but on the expulsion of the order in 1795 he left Rio de Janeiro where he had been in a monastery and returned to the seminary of Sao Jose. Later on he went to Portugal; and from there he paid a visit to Rome, where he seems to have become closely identified with the prominent representatives of the Catholic faith. On his return to Rio de
Janeiro, he was seized as a Jesuit and sent back to Lisbon. There he saved himself by re nouncing the Jesuit order and allied himself to the strongly royalist interests. This, backed up by the powerful influence of statesmen, among them Pombal, and his poetical flatteries ad dressed to the royal family, secured for him an important position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Returning to Rio de Janeiro in 1777 he founded the Arcadia Ultramarina on the lines of that of Rome, and became himself a promi nent literary figure in the life of the colony. Suspected of plotting treason, by the viceroy, Count Rasende, Gama returned to Lisbon where he spent the rest of his life. His epic poem, '0 which accused the Jesuits of at tempting to form an independent papal nation of the Indians of Uruguay, attracted to Gama considerable notoriety. He was a fairly good poet and has left numerous lesser poems of con siderable merit.