GENERAL IMPRESSIONS OF BRAZIL. 509 



7 



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-mills which ought to be established along their 

 borders, and then as a means of transportation for the 



