March r, 1882.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
767 
BRAZIL : ITS CONDITION AND PROSPECTS : 
No. 2. 
Dollar, 29th December 1881. 
Dkar Sir, — A second gr>-at cause of tlie extension 
of coffee cultivation was the high price of coffee. 
Simultaneously with the rapid extension of the rail- 
way syste in Brazil came a rise in the price of 
coffee. From 1868 to 1878, and notably in the years 
1873 74-7;"> and '7(5 the price of the article was such 
as left large profits to the Brazilian coffee planter. 
During these years, fortunes were made as quickly 
from coffee-growing as they had been made from 
cotton a few years previously. Those who had coffee 
estates extended them. Those who had made a little 
money at other occupations rushed into coffee land. 
If enquiry were made as to the antecedents of many 
of the most prosperous coffee planters in the Province 
of Sao Paulo, you would find this one hail begun life 
as a cart driver. From driver, ho gradually became 
owner of bullocks and carts. That one was a muleteer 
who gradually got a pack of mules of his own ; worked 
amongst them, himself and his children, aided, per- 
haps, by some of the half Indian poor labourers. The 
railway constructors bought up his mules at 
three times tho original price of them. Let me here 
remark that all removal of earth from railway cut- 
tings and the forming of embankments are done by 
small mule carts. A third was what you would call a 
jungle felling-contractor, who worked along with his 
own free labourers, half Indian like himself. With the 
rush into coffco land, tho price for felling juggle rose. 
A fourth was a sawyer and contractor for squaring 
timber for building purposes, whose knowledge of the 
timber trade he turned to good account by supply- 
ing railway sleepers at so much a thousand. All these 
and others who had made a little money noticed the 
way in which poop, families were made rich from 
the profits arising from the high price of coffee, and. 
being accustomed to have charge of labourers and 
work amongst them, made successful cultivators of 
coffee on tho Brazilian system (of only lotting the 
trees grow): and these were the best men fur work- 
ing the free camaradu, with whioh he made his start, 
and continued until he was rich enough to buy slaves. 
I These gradually became the large Fazendeiro we now 
j see them. Reports of success, as they always arc, 
I were much exaggenved ; so much so that a great 
many people who knew little of agriculture or ' f the 
manageniei t of either free or slave labourers got 
affected with the coffee craze ; bought land; and planted 
it with coffee. 
We have noticed that tho sugar and cotton planters 
of the South, who could not prosper in face of low 
prices and heavy export duties, turned their attention 
to coffee. In the Provinces north of Rio dc Janeiro, 
however, the land was not suitable, nor was the cli- 
mnto fitted for the growth of coffee as a commer- 
cial pn suit. Th s brought about the third great cause 
of coffee extension in Brazil. 
The Eiodu* of Slam froth North to South.— The 
sugar planter in the North reasoned thus:— "Why 
should 1 continue in a branch oi agriculture Mint 
gives nie uo profit? I hive still u huge cipit.il Ivm; 
On mv hlavev, and, owing to tho large profits nude 
on coffee. growing in the South, my slaves will fetoh 
dnuhl" the value I am aeeu-tnmcd to put on them 
if sold there. I am not to leave my old homo. I 
don't know anything of coflN planting. Betides tho 
in bitntaoo of ilv ry is tottering i it cannot, in vie* 
of the working oi the law oi September 1871, Ufet 
long. I'll realize while the price of live property is 
high, and invest the proceeds in Government bonds, 
and with the six per cent they give me I'll live 
quie'ly." We must be just, however. There are a great 
many good, able, and well intentioncd men amongst 
them; and the planters in ' he north do not all do 
this. Many of them do consider the misery that such 
a course subjects the poor slave to. They know the 
slave has a particular liking for tho country and 
district where he has been born and grown up, that, 
in spite of the captivity in which he is held, the ties 
of affection bind him to the old plantation, and so 
f ist that even freedom can scarcely separate him 
from so many old people ho is accustomed to call 
grandpapa and grandmamma ; from the large number of 
uncles and aunts and the dozens of cousins with 
whom, when they were children, before being turned 
on to the field-gang, he used to sport and play ; to 
puddle in the stream in the dry season and roll in 
the mud together in the wet ; to hide from the old 
cook in the orange grove at meal times, or even to 
stand a pommelling together from the same aged 
individual (whom he loved none -the less afterwards 
for it) for denying any knowledge of their only gar- 
ment, while they know some parts were left on the 
guava trees, and others on the garden fence. They 
know the habits of the negro well, and that, were the old 
African, who but ten or fifteen years before had been 
torn from his kindred in his own lan , but had now, 
through the softening influences of time, almost for- 
gotten the lights, the village burnings the slave 
hunts, and long marches which he had experience 
of in the "Great Dark Continent," could not without 
a pang be separated from the friends he had made 
in later years. All honour to those, who, out of 
commiseration for the slave, held to his plantation 
and tried to improve his position by adopting a bet- 
ter mode of cultivation by means of the plough, 
and by th» erection of improved machinery, extract- 
ing a larger percentage of juice from the cane. A 
large proportion of the planters in the North, how- 
The Portuguese slave-dealer, who had a few years 
before been driven into forced retirement, saw his 
occupation revived, and under much better conditions. 
The slave trade was renewed with vigour. There were 
no British cruisers that his ship had to evade in 
leaving port ; no risk to run of his cargo being dam- 
aged in ill- ventilated ships, while crossing a wide ocean; 
and no chance of being chased and of the cargo being 
ttirowu overboard to prevent his ship being taken 
as a prize. The buying was now done openly and 
quietly. The transport by sea was in clean, airy, 
and swift steamers, flying the tings and under the 
proti ction of the various civilized nations of Europe. 
The landing was not effected in a rock-hidden bay — 
of which there are numbers between Bio de Janeiro and 
S ntos— but in the open harbours of Rio de Janeiro and 
Sautos, and along with Europcau merchants aud their 
families and pleasure-seekers from all parts of the world. 
Railways carried tho slave gangs at once away fiom 
the feverish sea-coast to the interior, where they were 
soon dispos' il of for large prices to tager coffee planter*. 
I did not intend entering into th- sentimental part 
of the subject, but 1 cannot help looking hack with 
horror at the rcmombrauce of the large gangs of 
slaves I hive seen at the railway stations in tho in- 
terior of Sao I'aulo. I noticod that gangs of boy* 
from 10 to 15 years were readily bought up There 
wore often drove* of women with and without children, 
Iu many cas> s, a sale was effected before they loft 
the railway station, if a medical man were procur- 
able. Many of this profession are specialists at 
examination of "niggers." The for for medical ex- 
amination is high as tho value at stake is cnutider- 
ajl v. Outside of the mcdieaJ profession, exports are 
