506 A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 
considerable ; but within several years the planting of 
sugar-cane has given way in many districts to that of coffee. 
I have taken pains to ascertain the facts respecting the cnl 
ture of coffee during the last fifty years ; the immense 
development of this branch of industry and the rapidity 
of the movement, especially in a country where labor 
is so scarce, is among the most striking economical phe- 
nomena of our century. Thanks to their perseverance 
and to the favorable conditions presented by the constitu- 
tion of their soil, the Brazilians have obtained a sort of 
monopoly of coffee. More than half the coffee consumed 
in the world is of Brazilian growth. And yet the coffee of 
Brazil has little reputation, and is even greatly underrated. 
Why is this ? Simply because a great deal of the best pro- 
duce of Brazilian plantations is sold under the name of Java 
or Mocha, or as the coffee of Martinique or Bourbon. Mar- 
tinique produces only six hundred sacks of coffee annually ; 
Guadaloupe, whose coffee is sold under the name of the 
neighboring island, yields six thousand sacks, not enough to 
provide the market of Rio de Janeiro for twenty-four hours, 
and the island of Bourbon hardly more. A great part of 
the coffee which is bought under these names, or under that 
of Java coffee, is Brazilian, while the so-called Mocha coffee 
is often nothing but the small round beans of the Brazilian 
plant found at the summits of the branches and very care- 
fully selected. If the fazendeiros, like the Java planters, 
sold their crops under a special mark, the great purchasers 
would learn with what merchandise they have to deal, and 
the agriculture of Brazil would be greatly benefited. But 
there intervenes between the fazendeiro and the exporter a 
class of merchants half bankers, half brokers known as 
commissarios, who, by mixing different harvests, lower the 
