STATE OF EDUCATION, BRAZIL. 283 



communications with all the large seaports, such as Para, S. Luiz de Maranhào, 

 and Fortaleza, Recife (Pernambuco), Maceio, Babia, Victoria, Rio, Santos, Paranagua, 

 Desterro, and Rio Grande do Sul. As many as seventeen companies, nearly all 

 English, are engaged in this service, although in virtue of a recent Act, vessels 

 flying the national flag are alone authorised to engage in the coast traflic. The 

 majority of the crews are also required to be of Brazilian nationality, a condition 

 which could not be complied with but for the facilities aiïorded to foreign sailors 

 of becoming naturalised citizens. 



In ordinary times about ten Atlantic liners arrive every week in the Brazilian- 

 seaports. The voj^age from Lisbon to Pernambuco usually takes eleven days ; 

 but the Atlantic at its narrowest part, between the African and South American 

 continents, could be crossed in two days and a half by a fast sailer, such as those 

 engaged in the service between Liverpool and New York. Direct telegraphic 

 communication is maintained by submarine cables between Pernambuco, Europe, 

 and the United States. A line 3,720 miles long skirts the seaboard from the 

 Amazons to the Plate estuary. 



Education — Religion. 



Public instruction could scarcely make much progress in a country in which 

 the great majority of the labourers have, till recently, been slaA'es. Nevertheless 

 some schools and colleges had already been founded by the Jesuit missionaries 

 under the colonial administration, and during the second half of' the eighteenth 

 century the Marquis de Pombal had caused " ro^'al " educational establishments 

 to be opened. But the great mass of the people still remained unlettered. 



In 1834, seven years after the promulgation of the first law regarding public 

 instruction, in the whole province of Rio de Janeiro there were only 30 schools, 

 attended by 1,369 of both sexes. Since then a great improvement has taken 

 place, although recent statistics show that even in the most advanced provinces 

 a great part of the young are still receiving no instruction. In 1872 about 23 

 per cent, of the males and 13 of the females could at least read, while one negro 

 in 1,000 knew the alphabet. Twenty years later it was estimated that over 

 three-fourths of the whole population of both sexes, whites, blacks, and coloured, 

 were still ignorant of the rudiments of knowledge. Many of the rising genera- 

 tion, however, are self-taught. In the central States of Minas Geraes, Goyaz, and 

 Matto Grosso, most of the curandeiros (" healers," doctors) have qualified them- 

 selves by the study of medical works without any instruction, and these are 

 often remarkably successful in the treatment of their patients. The negroes, 

 who are stated to excel the whites in the musical faculty, have grouped themselves 

 in musical clubs, numbering many thousands. 



The high schools are supported by the State, always excepting various separate 

 establishments founded by the Jesuits at a distance from the large cities, such as 

 that of Itu in the State of S. Paulo, and the college of Caraça in Minas Geraes. 

 In Rio are centred most of the higher faculties — College of Physicians, School 



