114 



A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. 



vated at the expense of taste and beauty, but to remind 

 his country people also, that, extensive as are the forests, 

 they will not last forever, and that it will be necessary 

 to emigrate before long to find new coffee grounds, if 

 the old ones are to be considered worthless. Another 

 of his reforms is that of the roads, already alluded to. 

 The ordinary roads in the coffee plantations, like the mule- 

 tracks all over the country, are carried straight up the 

 sides of the hills between the lines of shrubs, gullied by 

 every rain, and offering, besides, so steep an ascent that 

 even with eight or ten oxen it is often impossible to drive 

 the clumsy, old-fashioned carts up the slope, and the negroes 

 are obliged to bring a great part of the harvest down on 

 their heads. An American, who has been a great deal on 

 the coffee fazendas in this region, told me that he had seen 

 negroes bringing enormous burdens of this kind on their 

 heads down almost vertical slopes. On Senhor Lage's 

 estate all these old roads are abandoned, except where 

 they are planted here and there with alleys of orange- 

 trees for the use of the negroes, and he has substituted 

 for them winding roads in the side of the hill with a 

 very gradual ascent, so that light carts dragged by a 

 single mule can transport all the harvest from the sum- 

 mit of the plantation to the drying-ground. It was the 

 harvesting season, and the spectacle was a pretty one. 

 The negroes, men and women, were scattered about the 

 plantations with broad, shallow trays, made of plaited grass 

 or bamboo, strapped over their shoulders and supported at 

 their waists ; into these they were gathering the coffee, 

 some of the berries being brilliantly red, some already 

 beginning to dry and turn brown, while here and there 

 was a green one not yet quite ripe, but soon to ripen in the 



