4 



1852.] PORTUGUESE TRADERS. 261 



every respect is this part of the Empire from the more southern 

 and better-known portion. There is, perhaps, no country in 

 the world so capable of yielding a large return for agricultural 

 labour, and yet so little cultivated ; none where the earth will 

 produce such a variety of valuable productions, and where they 

 are so totally neglected ; none where the facilities for internal 

 communication are so great, or where it is more difficult or 

 tedious to get from place to place ; none which so much 

 pQssesses all the natural requisites for an immense trade with 

 all the world, and where commerce is so limited and insignifi- 

 cant. 



This may well excite some wonder, when we remember that 

 the white inhabitants of this country are the Portuguese and 

 their descendants, — the nation which a few centuries ago took 

 the lead in all great discoveries and commercial enterprises, — 

 w^hich spread its colonies over the whole world, and exhibited 

 the most chivalric spirit of enterprise in overcoming the dangers 

 of navigation in unknown seas, and of opening a commercial 

 intercourse with barbarous or uncivilised nations. 



But yet, as far as I myself have been able to observe, their 

 national character has not changed. The Portuguese, and 

 their descendants, exhibit here the same perseverance, the 

 same endurance of every hardship, and the same wandering 

 spirit, which led and still leads them to penetrate into the most 

 desolate and uncivilised regions in pursuit of commerce and in 

 search of gold. But they exhibit also a distaste for agricultural 

 and mechanical labour, which appears to have been ever a part 

 of their national character, and which has caused them to sink 

 to their present low condition in the scale of nations, in what- 

 ever part of the world they may be found. When their colonies 

 were flourishing in every quarter of the globe, and their ships 

 brought luxuries for the supply of half the civilised world, a 

 great part of their population found occupation in trade, in the 

 distribution of that wealth which set in a constant stream from 

 America, Asia, and Africa, to their shores ; but now that this 

 stream has been diverted into other channels by the energy 

 of the Saxon races, the surplus population, averse from agricul- 

 ture, and unable to find a support in the diminished trade of 

 the country, swarm to Brazil, in the hope that wealth may be 

 found there, in a manner more congenial to their tastes. 



Thus we find the province of Para overrun with traders, the 



