GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF BRAZIL. 507 



standard of the crop, thus relieving the producer of all 

 responsibility and depriving the product of its true charac- 

 teristics. 



If the provinces adjacent to Rio de Janeiro offer natural- 

 ly the most favorable soil for the culture of coffee, it must 

 not be forgotten that coffee is planted with advantage in 

 the shade of the Amazonian forest, and even yields two 

 annual crops wherever pains are taken to plant it. In the 

 province of Ceara, where the coffee is of a superior quality, 

 it is not planted on the plains, or in the low grounds, or in 

 the shadow of the forest, as in the valley of the Amazons, 

 but on the slopes of the hills and on the mountain heights, 

 to an elevation of from fifteen hundred to two thousand 

 feet and more above the level of the sea, in the Serras of 

 Aratanha and Baturitd and in the Serra Grande. The 

 channels opened to these products should augment their 

 importance, and should give rise to numerous establish- 

 ments in the valley of the Amazons. 



The increased exportation of cotton from Brazil during 

 the last few years is a still more marked feature in its indus- 

 trial history than the large coffee crops. When, towards the 

 close of the last century, cotton began to assume in England 

 an importance which has ever since been increasing, Brazil 

 naturally became one of the great providers of the English 

 market. But it soon lost this advantage, because our 

 Southern States acquired, with an extraordinary rapidity, 

 an almost complete monopoly of this product. Favored by 

 exceptional circumstances, North America succeeded, about 

 the year 1846, in furnishing cotton at such low rates that 

 all competition became impossible, and the culture of cotton 

 was almost abandoned in other countries. Brazil, how- 

 ever, persisted. Iler annual production showed a slow but 



