172 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Sept. 2, 190L 
Will the wholesale adulteration of coffee still 
continue when Brazil has despatched her twelve 
niillions of sacks or fifteen millions of hundred- 
weiglit ? 
I remember a nice old German coffee-dealer in 
Canada who was one day very busy mixin? 
roasted barley with his coffee. The perfume was 
delicious, and he looked up with a grim smile 
and said, " lb is goot for dare stomacs. When 
I give dem pure coffee, day say it give deni de 
headache and now day say my coffee is de best 
day ever drink it." 
There will be plenty of Brazilian coffee with 
the addition of chicory, beans, and barley, con- 
vertedintofine"old Government Java and Mocha." 
It was thought that, when the slaves of Brazil 
were withdrawn from cotton and sugar culture 
and concentrated on coffee growing in Brazil, 
the coffee crops would reach their zenith and 
diminish with the dying out of the two-and-a-half 
million of slaves ; but this is not the case, for the 
Brazilian Government imported European labour- 
, ers from Germany, Austria, Spain, and Italy ; 
hence the large area planted by the poor slaves, 
who have disappeared from the face of the earth, 
is now harvested at great expense by Italians and 
Spaniards. * 
I have no sympathy with the latter race who 
rose to grandeur by slavery in South and Central 
America and now substitute themselves in the 
place of the dead and departed slave in Brazil. 
Before the railways were made many colonists 
made a footing in the country by the carrying of 
coffee, on mules and by bullock-carts, to the ship- 
ping ports. 
The Germans are small farmers and form 
snug settlements Tioth inland and on the coast — 
some are engaged in cattle-farming at Rio Grande 
de Su) and many keep hotels. The making 
of the railways employed thousands, many 
of whom are now well-to-do coffee planters 
and storekeepers in the numerous Brazilian 
cities, such as Rio de Janeiro— Santos— San Paulo 
— Campinas — Rio Claro — San Carlos de Pinhal — 
Araraquara. — Jabatacabal— and many other thriv- 
ing townships scattered throughout the coffee dis- 
trict. It is true that, through the rise in the value 
of the milreis or paper money of Brazil, many colo- 
nists take advantage of the cheapness of gold to 
visit their homes in Europe and therefore labour 
is very scarce just at the moment when the big 
crop ib coming in with a rush. 
Food supplies are much dependent upon the 
weather ; the corn and bean crops are often failures 
through prolonged droughts in Brazil ; each es- 
tate or Fazenda grows corn and beans, manioc 
and tobacco, between the rows of coffee as well 
as separate fields ploughed and harrowed for 
reserve supplies of food. 
It is a melancholy fact that in Brazil one 
travels hundreds of miles through monotonous 
country without seeing villages or market gardens. 
Everybody must work for the coffee planter and 
nobody is allowed any ease or independence in 
that country where the slaves were locked up 
at night inside an enclosure by the planter's 
house and coffee stores . 
Out of the coffee region there are rubber col- 
lectors who recruit men and make them ad- 
vances of food and money. The export of 
rubber from Brazil is very considerable, but 
they have a wasteful way of harvesting by cut- 
ting down the rubber-bearing trees and leaving 
them to rot on the ground. 
Sugar is largely cultivated, chiefly for the 
making of a cheap rum called " Pinga," largely 
used by all sorts and conditions of men in 
Brazil; it is so cheap that everybody can drink 
it, sometimes only two millreis per gallon or about 
four pence per bottle on the estate. 
Cotton was once largely exported from Pernam- 
buco and other parts of Brazil and weaving 
establishments were making money from the 
ready sale of cloth. At Santa Barbara a num- 
ber of Americans grew cotton for a mill located 
in Santa Barbara, but they discontinued grow- 
ing cotton and cultivated melons. Near Santa 
Barbara in the Province of Sao Paulo; there is 
a German Settlement called Limea where a num- 
ber of pretty fruit gardens and orange and lemon 
groves may be seen by the traveller journeyinj? 
from the city of Sao Paulo to Rio Claro, many 
pretty flower gardens round their neat little 
cottages bordering the railway track. All the 
railway stations are crowded with a miscellane- 
ous crew of every nationality under the sun, but 
chiefly Italians with their wives and numeious 
families going and coming to and from Italy. 
The rise in exchange and the cheapness 
of gold in Brazil is the main cause of 
so many Italians returning to Italy where 
they buy a small farm and place sonse re- 
lation in charge of it, then returning to Brazil 
and taking more contracts to cultivate and harvest 
coffee on the Fazendas. 
The Italian seems to be the only colonist 
that thrives in Brazil ; he grows grapes and 
makes his own wine— keeps pigs and goats 
— grows his own Indian corn and beans — 
does a little trade in tobacco and rum (Hinga); 
he even receives his regular mail and is well up 
in the rise or fall of Exchange, discusses the War 
in South Africa and is a sea lawyer generally, 
beine quite a match for his master, the coflfee 
Planter or Fazendero. The stay-at-home store- 
keeper is a very different kind of animal ; he likes 
his pipe of strong tobacco, his pinga, and his dirty 
cards, does not bother about Exchange, the pur- 
chasing power of the milreis not affecting him ; 
his prices are always the same to his customers, 
and he laughs and grows fat. 
The prosperity of Brazil depends on the labour 
supply from Italy. HENRY COTTAM. 
NEW PRODUCTS IN THE WEST INDIES. 
In the course of a lecture before the Royal 
Colonial Institute on " Impressions of the British 
West Indies," Mr. Henry de R. Walker, a visitor 
from England to severe 1 of our Colonies (with 
a view to qualifying himself to speak on Co- 
lonial subjects when he goes into Parliament), 
made the following interesting references to 
products cultivated in Ceylon : — 
The most salient fea.ure (after sugar) is tb« 
enormous increase in the cultivation of cocoa * and 
bananas. Grenada has so largely replaced sugar by 
cocoa that it no longer giows enough of the former 
for its own requirements. Dominica, from its pbysio*! 
configuration, should never have placed its coi.lidence 
in sugar. It was not introduced until the b< ^jinning 
of la>t century, and has never thriven as mcU as the 
coffee for which it was substituted. At present cocoa, 
limes, and coffee are in the ascendant. Trinidad 
divides its allegiance between sugar and cocoa ; but, 
whereas the output of sugar products other than ram 
* More properly cacao ; but I have preferred the 
popular designation. 
