TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 26l 



dually diminish. When the inhabitants have cut 

 down the woods, drained marshes, made roads, 

 everywhere founded villages and towns, and thus 

 by degrees triumphed over the rank vegetation and 

 the noxious animals, all the elements will willingly 

 second, and amply recompense the activity of man. 

 But before Brazil shall have attained this period of 

 civilisation, the uncultivated land may yet prove 

 a grave to thousands of adventurers. Attracted 

 by the constant beauty of the climate, the richness 

 and the fertility of the soil, many leave their native 

 land, to seek another home in a foreign hemisphere, 

 and in a quite different climate. However true 

 the suppositions are on which they found the ex- 

 pectations of a happy result of their enthusiastic 

 enterprise, it is far from realising the hopes of the 

 emigrants, especially those from the north of 

 Europe ; and how shall the inhabitant of the tem- 

 perate zone, suddenly removed as a cultivator of 

 the soil to Rio de Janeiro, or perhaps even to the 

 shores of the Amazons, to a foreign climate, a 

 foreign soil, a new mode of life and subsistence, 

 surrounded by Portuguese, whose language he nei- 

 ther understands, nor easily learns, how shall he be 

 happy and maintain himself in this country? And 

 what in particular must people of the lower classes 

 feel, without general education and aptitude for a 

 new language, mode of life, and climate, when even 

 strangers of superior condition, provided with every 

 means of guarding against inconvenience, alarmed 



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