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 cul 

 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 



