5 68 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [February i, 1888. 
30 days or according to the number of days worked same 
as your coolies, but there is no law to protect the 
employer. The labourer can leave when he likes, and can 
demand his wages up to the time he has worked. 
The wages run from 30s to 40s per month and food 
for the former and 40s to 50s for the latter ; 20s 
to 25s more will be given to those who buy their 
own food, An able-bodied negro will do as much as 
two of these. 
We may calculate that the wages of a labourer will 
not be less after slave emancipation than it is at 
present — that will be equal to from £2 10s to £3 10s 
per month for men — at present free women do not 
work, and I do not expect they will be trained to 
do so in the future. 
It is from subjects like these and from the freed 
negro that the much talked of " transformatjao de 
trabalho" transformation of labour, is to be effe ted — 
a task which agriculture on a large scale — voura 
grande — will find very difficult indeed. 
The newspapers are filled with schemes for calling 
native labour to work. There is no doubt a large 
element of free native labourers spread all over the 
country, and could wise legislation induce it 
to leave its patch of corn, beans, mandioca, and 
pumpkin with a bamboo and grass covered hut in the 
middle of it, the agriculture of the country oould 
be saved. It is not, however, to these two classes, 
the freed slave and the Portuguese — Indian desendant — 
that the advanced intellect of the country is for the 
most part directed, but to the European colonist. In 
the Province of Sao Paulo for the last few years 
considerable sums have been spent by private 
individuals in introducing families from various 
countries of Europe and setting them on large 
coffee plantations. The pioneers in the schemes 
lost money owing to the inferior class of people 
whom the emigrant agents sent out. Many 
fazendoiros persevered, however, and got a better 
and more orderly set of people, and every encourage- 
ment was given to families already settled to bring 
out their relations. A great many of these have 
come from Portugal, Italy, the Azores, Madeiras, and 
Cape de Verde islands. There procured from districts 
where agricultural labour is poorly paid, many of 
them are simple in their habits and in time they 
settle down contentedly to work. Those who have 
been settled on the large plantations have had their 
passage money advanced to them, and a house to 
live in on their arrival. They do not work as day 
labourers, but have so many thousand coffee trees 
allowed to them to give so many, generally five, weed- 
ings a year and to pick the crop. They are paid for 
this by the thousand trees if the coffee is not giving 
a regular crop, and by the bushel of cherry coffee 
picked, if in good bearing coffee. Some planters give 
them half the coffee from the trees which they treat, 
that is to say half the value of it, the planter taking 
the other half. In addition to this the colonist re- 
ceives a piece of laud in which he can grow what- 
ever he likes, which are generally corn, beans, rice, 
mandioca, potatoes of various kinds, cabbages and 
all sorts of kitchen garden produce. These he sells 
after supplynig his house and domestic animals with 
food. 
It is a trying time to the colonist for the first six 
mouths until he can have a crop from his own small 
farm. We has to receive advances from the planter, 
and the latter is unwilling to give much owing to 
maDy going away leaving debts unpaid. To the 
steady-going family, advances may be given to buy 
a cow, the climate being mild, the stock of clothes he 
brings from Europe serve for some time. His difficulties 
may be said to appear after the first year, by degrees he 
repays all his advances, and then lives a comfortable life. 
That these colonists do better here than they would 
have done in the country they camo from does not 
admit of doubt. That coffee planting will pay at the 
rates paid, or proportion of produce allowed, to the 
colonist at the prices the boan has been selling it 
during the last few years, there can be no question, 
for this system of improving the labour market has 
been adopted not only by private planters but by 
Associations. The Provincial Governments are now 
assisting by giving bonuses to planters for introducing 
them. 
The new slave law, as I have mentioned above, takes 
the system into consideration by allowing a third of the 
extra 5 per cent on all taxes to be given towards it. 
The Government have not as yet paid any money on 
colonization account from this fund, but regulation* 
are issued for realizing the payment, and copies of these 
have been sent to consuls and representatives of Brazil 
abroad, and full publicity have been given to them here. 
These include the payment of passage of the immi- 
grant from his home to the estate where he intends to 
work, but the payment only to be made after the 
family is settled down to work on some estate or in- 
dustrial establishment. The subject of European 
Colonization for Brazil, I must leave to a future 
letter. 
At present I mention these particulars as showing on 
what agriculture in the hands of large farmers may have 
to contend with in the near future, and as bearing on 
the subject of ■ coffee, with which I commenced this 
epistle. 
Your interests are now so much bound up in tea 
my remarks on the labour question here as affecting 
the coffee market will not be so interesting to you as 
formerly. A. SOOTT-BLACKLAW. 
»ilf lo e.kxn to H' 7>; >I jii; in virtlii /tMumn In wm'w 
4 
Cinchona Bark in Ceylon.— If all proprietor 5 
or managers of estates gave us such specific in* 
formation as a leading Dimbula resident proprietor 
in sending his Directory returns, we should very 
quickly be able to say how Ceylon stands in res- 
pect of total supply of cinchona bark:—" Total bark 
that will be sent from this estate when all growing 
is harvested say between now and Jan. 1890, 200,000 
lb. of average 3 per cent bark." 
Paddy Cultivati on in Ceylon : Analyses 
op Soils. — We draw attention to the valuable 
letter on this subject given on page 569, and 
hope Mr. Cochran will be able to supplement 
this interesting information with a compara- 
tive analysis of fertile paddy soil. The barren- 
ness of large portions of our patana soils has been, 
and we suppose correctly, attributed to an excess 
of protoxide of iron, and there can be little doubt 
that a good deal of such soil could be rendered 
fertile by being turned up and exposed to the air, 
some lime being also applied. 
Indian Tobacco at Home. — Indian cigars and 
tobacco were brought prominently under the atten- 
tion of visitors to the Colonial and Indian Exhi- 
bition, and of the former some 366,000 were disposed 
of by sale. " This considerable sale," write the 
official agents, " served to introduce Indian cigars to 
numbers of people who had never before tried them, 
and we have reason to believe that, as a result, 
tobacconists throughout the country are dealing 
much more largely in Indian cigars". — Pioneer. 
Mb. James Gibson of Yatiyantota writes to us 
from Goruckpore, N. W. P., India, a private letter 
from which we extract the following : — 
" I feel strong and well already away north here, 
where it is jolly cold and fine and fresh. For miles 
and miles all over I see nothing but wheat, peas, and 
flax growing ; the crops, I am told are bad, and this 
has been a season of drought, and certainly the whole 
plains seem awfully dry. The Himalaya mountains 
stand out close in the north all clad in white, and look 
very beautiful, but in fact the whole country does 
so ; wherever I drive, it is through loDg avenues of 
sissoo, aud blue gums, not short avenues but ssrae of 
them four orfive miles long. Does your mouth not water 
at apples, pears, walnuts, grapes, for fruit ; large groves 
here and there, of big mangoes ; and cauliflower, peas, 
turnips, leeks, and onions, kail, &c, &c, for vegetables ; 
and acres of roses, carnations, wall-flowers and all old 
home sorts for flowers ?" 
