Within a few years the Jews at Recife numbered thousands, and one of them, Gaspar Diaz Ferreira, was considered one of the richest men in the country. Nieuhoff, the traveler, writing in 1640, says: "Among the free inhabitants of Brazil the Jews are most considerable in number; they have a vast traffic, beyond all the rest; they purchased sugar-mills and bought stately houses in the Receif." In 1642 several hundred Spanish and Portuguese Jews emigrated from Amsterdam to Brazil. Among these were two famous scholars, both of whom settled at Recife. One of them, Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, became the ḥakam of the congregation, and the other, Raphael de Aguilar, its reader. Among the prominent Jews born at Recife may be mentioned Elijah Machorro and Dr. Jacob de Andrade Velosino, who wrote against Spinoza.