A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



State of Sao Paulo alone produces more than half the world's supply 

 of coffee. 



On board the Brazilian steamer which took me to Sao Paulo I 

 made the acquaintance of a large Sao Paulo landowner, and this 

 amiable gentleman invited me to visit his extensive plantations. In 

 December, after a long, tiring railway journey lasting from early in 

 the morning until late in the afternoon, I arrived in Jahu, a small 

 town in the interior of the State, and a centre of the coffee-growing 

 area, for the plantations have already withdrawn some distance from 

 the coast. Far and wide, until Jahii is reached, there is now nothing 

 but grassy plains ; the virgin forest has long ago disappeared ; all is 

 now waste land, except that here and there a wood of eucalyptus- 

 trees, planted in straight lines, adds a further note of discord to the 

 landscape. On the slope of a hill the train stopped between stations ; 

 here a spring gushed from the ground, and all the passengers rushed 

 out to refresh themselves ; the train waited until they had done so. 



At last we came to the clean little town of Jahii, with two churches, 

 one of them a stately Gothic building, its broad, straight streets, 

 and its pretty parks. The town runs downwards to a little river, on 

 the other side of which the ground rises again, and here all the hills 

 are covered with endless plantations of coffee. We drove by motor-car 

 to my host's fazenda, a distance of some twelve miles. Our shirts 

 and collars were reddened at once, for the soil consists of the famous 

 red earth, terra roxa, which covers all the hills like fine red dust. 

 When it rains the red soil turns violet. It is extremely fertile. 



As far as the eye could reach, up hill and down dale, and on the 

 furthest ranges, nothing but coffee was visible (Plate 25). The 

 coffee-trees, in shape like oval bushes, growing to a height of fifteen 

 or sixteen feet, with their fruit still green as yet, ran over the hills 

 in straight lines, furrowing the whole landscape (Plate 24). At a 

 later season the fruit become red "cherries," each containing two 

 beans. When I saw these endless plantations of one single crop, I 

 remarked to my companion that such a "monoculture" must be 

 risky, for if any noxious vermin or parasite should make its appear- 

 ance it would spread in all directions, finding no obstacles to its 

 progress, and might actually destroy all the coffee plantations of 

 Sao Paulo: as happened in Ceylon, in the eighties, when a fungus 

 which grew on the leaves of the coffee-tree destroyed all the coffee 

 plantations of the island, so that these were simply deserted by their 

 owners. The planter laughed, and replied that coffee did not suffer 

 from pests or parasites. I returned shortly afterwards to the north- 



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