272 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



Monarchical traditions have been perpetuated so far as regards the division 

 of the soil. The great captainries and crown fiefs are still retained under other 

 names, and the nation possesses very few small freeholds, while vast spaces are 

 owned by a small number of great lords, to whom the very limits of their 

 domains are unknown. Some of these domains, even in the more thickly peopled, 

 districts, are measured by the square league, and the owners, unable to find the 

 hands needed to work such immense territorial estates, still complain of the scarcity 

 of labour. 



Possibly the land would be better tilled were these fertile tracts distributed 

 amongst numerous small freeholders, instead of being held by a few great land- 

 lords. After the abolition of slavery, when the planters saw nearly all the blacks 

 abandoning the workshops and farmsteads, they brought against them the charge 

 of laziness. But these slaves of yesterday, tired of working for one taskmaster, 

 had merely withdrawn to the forest clearings, where they have settled with their 

 families and a few domestic animals, and where they cultivate their little banana, 

 bean, or manioc fields, without neglecting the flower garden. Nevertheless, a 

 number of the old slaves have since returned to the plantations to work as free 

 hands on the spot where they were born. 



Whatever be said to the contrary, it is these very blacks, descendants of the 

 old slaves, that supply the greatest part of the labour in these agricultural dis- 

 tricts, to which Italian, German, and other peasants have not yet penetrated. The 

 whites that have no share in the ownership of the soil, the " poor whites " as they 

 would be called ia some of the Southern States, the " petits blancs" of Louisiana 

 and the Antilles, preferred to live as agregados, that is, as parasites on the seigno- 

 rial domain ; some proprietors had hundreds of this class hanging about their 

 fazendas. Occasionally they might render some little service to their host ; if they 

 owned a few head of cattle, these were allowed to roam about with their master's 

 herds, and they freely helped themselves from the well-stocked granaries whenever 

 they fell short of the necessary supplies. The easy and kindly habits of the 

 population harmonised very well with this state of things, all the more so that the 

 agregados, by making the lord of the manor godfather to their children, thus be- 

 came his co-sponsors, a tie considered as almost sacred. 



But the relations between the large proprietors and the lackland classes have 

 been greatly modified by the political and social changes that have taken place in 

 recent times. Most of the ao^regados can now be ffot rid of bv orettino' them situa- 

 tions in the thousand bureaucratic offices of the State, the parish, or the munici- 

 pality. Nevertheless, the land problem remains practically untouched for all the 

 inhabitants of the rural districts, whether blacks, agregados, or foreign settlers. 

 Thanks to their frugal habits, the Africans have been able to rest satisfied with 

 their little patches of land obtained here and there on the borders of the great 

 domains, or m tracts belonging to the State. But the foreign peasantry are more 

 exacting, and only a small j)art of their demands has been met by the lots assigned, 

 to them, either on the national lands or in the distribution of the large private 

 estates. 



