TBE COTTON INDUSTRY IN BRAZIL. 667 



eighteentli century. The earliest record of its exportation is given 

 incidentally in the story of the shipwreck of Jorge de Albuquer- 

 que Coelho, who sailed from Pernambuco in May, 1565. The 

 passage was a stormy one, and the sea became so rough at one 

 time that they were obliged to throw part of their cargo over- 

 board. " And seeing that all this was of no avail, and that the 

 waves grew the higher, as if they wished to overwhelm us, we 

 threw overboard the artillery and many boxes of sugar, and many 

 bales of cotton." 



Early Uses. — In early times — indeed, as late as 1747 — cotton 

 thread and cotton cloth were used throughout Brazil in lieu of 

 money. In 1670 it was complained that, unless the exportation of 

 cotton cloth was prohibited, " not a yard of cloth, or rather no 

 money, would be found in Maranhao." Balls of cotton thread 

 were used as small change, and circulated as such in all the shops 

 and in all kinds of financial transactions. The manufacturers of 

 these balls do not appear to have been always scrupulously honest, 

 for the Legislature was finally obliged to take action to prevent 

 the fraud of putting pieces of cloth, rags, and other such things 

 in them. The trade in cotton between the neighboring captain- 

 cies became so large that the authorities of Maranhao, in order to 

 keep all the money at home, prohibited the exportation of cotton 

 from that place, and it was not until fifty years later (1756) that 

 this law was repealed. 



The manufacture of cotton cloth was carried on to such an ex- 

 tent (" the people generally, even the senators, were accustomed 

 to dress in clothing made of cotton ") that complaint was made to 

 the King of Portugal by the Portuguese merchants that it was 

 interfering with their export trade with the colony and with the 

 receipts of the royal treasury. Instructions were, therefore, given 

 (January 5, 1785) to the agents of the crown in Rio de Janeiro to 

 prohibit all spinning-factories, and, if necessary, to confiscate the 

 looms. This prohibition, however, did not extend to the factories 

 and looms for making coarse cotton cloth, such as was used for 

 clothing slaves and for like purposes. 



Yet in the face of these obstacles cotton culture in Brazil 

 rapidly increased. The only statistics to be obtained of the expor- 

 tation of cotton up to the end of the eighteenth century are those 

 of the captaincy or province of Maranhao. In 1760 Maranhao 

 exported 24,960 pounds of cotton ; and in 1800, 5,529,408 pounds. 

 That captaincy, however, stood only second among those export- 

 ing cotton ; Pernambuco exported more than twice as much as 

 Maranhao, while Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Pard, together ex- 

 ported about as much as Maranhao. Cotton was also one of the 

 principal products of Rio Negro, Piauhy, Rio Grande do Norte, 

 Parahyba, Alagoas, and Sergipe. These facts give us an idea of 



