266 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



Recent Immigration. 



Since the middle of the nineteenth century European immigration has 

 acquired sufficient development to materially afîeot the general growth of the 

 population. In I'^Ol the number of arrivals perhaps equalled the natural increase 

 due to the excess of births over the mortality. Before the proclamation of inde- 

 pendence, the Portuguese alone had the privilege of settling in that part of the 

 New World which belonged to their Sovereign, and even for them the permi?sion 

 was restricted by all manner of official regulations. Strangers actually domiciled 

 in Brazil depended on chance or on special favour to be allowed to remain in the 

 country. They were mostly shipwrecked sailors or passengers, prisoners, and 

 especially mercenary soldiers, whom it would be difficult to restore to their homes, 

 and who generally received grants of land. Nevertheless, the Government also 

 directly introduced " Islanders,'' that is to say, natives of the Azores, when Portu- 

 guese settlers could not be procured to occupy districts possessing a certain stra- 

 tegic importance. 



But sj'stematic colonisation had already begun in 1820, when King 

 Joao Vt. settled some Catholic Swiss peasants in the Nova Friburgo district. 

 Four years later was founded the German colony of S. Leopoldo, which is still 

 the most important centre of foreign colonisation in Brazil. Private enterprise 

 supplemented the movement controlled by the State, and many large landowners, 

 anticipating the abolition of slavery, began to substitute free labour for the blacks 

 employed on their plantations. But too often they mei-ely replaced one kind of 

 servitude for another, and several of these so-called "free" colonies ended in 

 disaster. In general the essays at colonisation may be said to have succeeded in 

 exact proportion to the degree of freedom allowed to the settlers. The colonies 

 flourished when the strangers became freeholders ; they soon died out when these 

 remained hired labourers or " tenants at will." 



The natives of Portugal, who, till about the year 1870, constituted pretty well 

 two-thirds of all the arrivals, were absolutely free settlers, coming either singly or 

 in family groups. Having no objection to any kind of work, they sought employ- 

 ment wherever they could get it without applying to the Government, to the 

 great financial companies, or to an}^ of the sj'ndicates working the plantations. 

 Proportionately to their numbers they took a far more active part than any of the 

 other colonists in the commercial and industrial life of Brazil, as artisans, porters, 

 overseers of slaves, hucksters, wholesale dealers, and in many other capacities. 

 After a few years in the country, many amassed sufficient wealth to return to the 

 Terrinha, " Little Land," of their birth, where they built themselves stately man- 

 sions, often on the ver}^ site of the ancestral cabin. 



Notwithstanding their defective character, the official returns suffice to show 

 an extremely rapid increase of immigration, especially since the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. During the twenty years from 1850 to 1870 the annual 

 average ranged from 7,000 to lO,000. These figures were doubled in the next 

 decade, then quintupled, and increased tenfold during the last decade. In 1891 



