BRAZCL— GENEEAL SURVEY. 85 



to upset the balance of power in the Plate regions. The five years' war 

 (1865—70), in which Argentina and Uruguay sided with Brazil, was one of the 

 most sanguinary ever waged. Paraguay was transformed to a citadel surrounded 

 by a circle of fire and sword, which was gradually narrowed, till the whole nation 

 had well-nigh perished. 



Foreign wars were accompanied or followed by intestine strife, the province 

 of Rio Grande do Sul often rising in revolt, and even constituting itself an 

 independent republic which held its ground from 1835 to 1840. Here the 

 peoples of Spanish descent are more numerous than elsewhere in Brazil, while 

 their usages and commercial relations attract them to the centres of tr^ide in the 

 Plate regions. 



Still more serious internal convulsions have recently broken cut, and a civil 

 war, which was fortunately brought to a sudden close in the spring of 1894, 

 seemed for a moment to threaten the very stability of the State, if not the over- 

 throw of republican institutions and the restoration of the Monarchy. In the 

 autumn of 1893 the insurgents, having secured the adhesion of the uaxy, found 

 themselves strong enough to occupy several strategical points in the Bay of Rio 

 de Janeiro, and even repeatedly to bombard the capital itself. 



Ethnical Elements. 



Till recent times Portugal had maintained a certain ascendency in its former 

 colony, if not by its trade and industries, at all events through the immigration 

 of the labouring classes. Every year a few thousands in the prime 'of life came 

 from the banks of the Douro and Minho, or from Madeira and the Azores, to 

 strengthen the Lusitanian element in the Brazilian towns and rural districts. 

 The islanders are generally known by the name of Angicos, from Angra, former 

 capital of the Azores, and from them are also perhaps named numerous places in 

 Brazil, such as Angical and Arraial dos Angicos. Thanks to their common speech 

 and usages, these Portuguese immigrants readily adapted themselves to the new 

 environment, and rapidly merged in the surrounding populations. 



Next to the Portuguese the Germans were the most numerous settlers, intro- 

 duced at first as hired labourers, and afterwards as free immigrants. Those 

 engaged by speculators for the plantations of Amazonia and of the Mucury basin 

 perished wholesale of famine and hardships of all kinds. But the settlers in the 

 temperate regions of Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul thrived so well 

 that their patriotic fellow-countrymen began to believe in the birth of a " New 

 Germany " between the Uruguay and Brazil. 



But although many grew wealthy, and for a time almost maintained a State 

 within a State, their national cohesion has already been broken by the stream of 

 Italian immigration, which has begun to overflow into every part of Brazil, and 

 especially into the southern provinces. The influence of other white peoples — 

 French, English, and North Americans — is felt not by their numbers, but by 

 their enterprising spirit displayed in every branch of trade and industry. 



Under the Dutch rule the Jews became powerful in Pernambuco, and although 

 40 



