INTRODUCTION. 
5 
feel secure from this terrible Asiatic scourge, rarticularly the uegi'oe.s, 
Avlio do not easily fall victims to yellow fever, are cut off iu great 
numbers by cholera. 
It is a singular fact that measles and scailatina are almost always 
of fatal issue to Indians, and devastate whole populations, while they are 
not more dangerous to white people and negi'oes tlian they usually 
are iu Europe. Together with the small-pox, they form a hideous 
triumvirate, that Avill have not a little increased the awe and hatred 
felt by the poor red-skins for tlic white men who introduced these, 
dreadful visitors to them. 
Three so widely differing races as the white, the black, and the 
red are, cannot but form a very motley pfipulatiou. For these three 
centiu-ies, the white immigrants have driven the Indians— the first 
owners of the soil — farther aud fiu-ther back into the interior; and 
the last red man of uumixod blood will be cut off by civilisation and 
its gifts, contagious diseases and fu'e-watcr, before three ages more 
are gone. Every attempt, on a large scale, to use them as slaves 
ended in terrible slaughter, aud the destruction of whole tribes; aud 
so the humane device was hit on of fetching over the woolly-headed 
sou of Africa, whose neck bows more easily to the yoke, and who 
endm-es hard labour under the tropical sun so much better than cither 
whites or Indians. That it was not a successful hit, any reasonable 
llrazilian will own noM^, when the getting rid of the hateful institution 
costs them so much trouble. 
As a general census has never yet been effected (and, indeed, it wmdd 
not be an easy task iu the thinly populated provinces), it is very difficult 
to state, even approximatively, the number of souls. The official census 
of 1807 calculated it to be 11,000,000 (1,400,000 slaves and 500,000 
independent Indians included) ; * but this statement is evidently over- 
rated, as is clearly shown by the latest valuation, in August, 1872 ; by 
which the total number of the inhabitants of Brazil is set down as 
*■ Tlie above-mentioned number of free Indians, spread over an area of 1,700,850 
squai'e miles of virgin forest aud prairies, gives an average number of one Indian to 
34 square miles. In the se 2 iarato jn'ovincos, the virgin forest aud ^Jrairies, or camj)o.s 
with the Indian j)opulation on them, average as follows : — 
I’ara, Amazonas, aud Maranhao ..... 1,275,640 sq. milo.s. 
Mato Grosso, Goyaz, and Sao Paulo .... 207,650 ,, 
Parana, Santa (’atharina, and Rio Grande do Sid . . 106,300 ,, 
Piauhy, C'eaivi, Pernambuco, Minus Gcraes, aiidEspirito Santo 63,780 „ 
