GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF BRAZIL. 509 
is true that the same prize was also granted to Algeria 
and to Egypt. But the Brazilian planter had not, like the 
colonists of Africa, the stimulus of a large subsidy from 
government ; he could not, like the Viceroy of Egypt, seize 
80,000 men in a single district and transport them to his 
plantations ; neither did he, like the Egyptian fellah, aban- 
don all other branches of agriculture in order to devote 
himself exclusively to that of cotton. In fact, the general 
interests of agriculture prospered in Brazil, in the midst 
of this new enterprise. 
I have insisted on these facts, which I think are little 
known, because they seem to me to show a greater energy 
and vitality than is usually supposed to exist in the pro- 
ductive forces of Brazil. To stimulate this movement, 
the government has recently taken the initiatory steps in 
the organization of an Agricultural School in the vicinity 
of Bahia, in which all the modern improvements suggest- 
ed by the progress of science and invention, are to be 
tested in their application to the natural products of the 
tropics. 
The importance of the basin of the Amazons to Brazil, 
from an industrial point of view, can hardly be over- 
estimated. Its woods alone have an almost priceless value. 
Nowhere in the world is there finer timber, either for solid 
construction or for works of ornament ; and yet it is scarce- 
ly used even for the local buildings, and makes no part 
whatever of the exports. It is strange that the development 
of this branch of industry should not even have begun in 
Brazil, for the rivers which flow past these magnificent 
forests seem meant to serve, first as a water-power for 
the saw-milk which ought to be established along their 
borders, and then as a means of transportation for the 
