Religion and Clergy.—Education.—Law, Medical, and Scientific Schools.—High and Common Schools.—Public Library and Museum in Rio de Janeiro.—Historical and Geographical Institute.—Social and Domestic Relations.—Public Functionaries.—Agriculture.—Zones of Vegetation.—Coffee.—Cotton.—Timber and other Products of the Amazons.—Cattle.—Territorial Subdivision of the Great Valley.—Emigration.—Foreigners.—Paraguayan War.

I cannot close this book, written for the most part by another hand, without a few words as to my general impressions of Brazil. No one will expect from me an essay on the social and political aspects of the whole country, even had I remained there long enough to acquire the right of judgment on these matters. I am so unaccustomed to dealing with them that my opinions would be entitled to little weight. There is, however, another point of view, more general, but perhaps more comprehensive also, from which every intelligent man may form an estimate of the character of a people which, if sincere, will be in the main sound and just, without including an intimate knowledge of their institutions, or the practical working of their laws. My scientific life has brought me into relations with a world wholly unknown to me before; under conditions more favorable than were possible for my predecessors in the same region, I have studied this tropical nature, so rich, so grandiose, so instructive; I have seen a great Empire founded in the midst of unlimited material resources, and advancing to higher civilization under the inspiration of a sovereign as enlightened as he is humane. I must have been blind to everything except my science, had I not a word to say of Brazil as a nation,—of her present condition and her future prospects.

There is much that is discouraging in the aspect of Brazil, even for those who hope and believe as I do, that she has before her an honorable and powerful career. There is much also that is very cheering, that leads me to believe that her life as a nation will not belie her great gifts as a country. Should her moral and intellectual endowments grow into harmony with her wonderful natural beauty and wealth, the world will not have seen a fairer land. At present there are several obstacles to this progress; obstacles which act like a moral disease upon the people. Slavery still exists among them. It is true that it is on the wane; true that it has received a mortal blow; but the natural death of slavery is a lingering illness, wasting and destroying the body it has attacked. Next to this I would name, among the influences unfavorable to progress, the character of the clergy. In saying this I disclaim any reference to the national religion. It is of the character of the clergy I speak, not of the church they represent. Whatever be the church organization in a country where instruction is still so intimately linked with a state religion as it is in Brazil, it is of infinite importance that the clergy themselves should not only be men of high moral character, but of studious, thoughtful lives. They are the teachers of the people, and as long as they believe that the mind can be fed with tawdry street processions, with lighted candles, and cheap bouquets; and as long as the people accept this kind of instruction, they will be debased and enfeebled by it. Shows of this kind are of almost daily occurrence in all the large cities of Brazil. They interfere with the ordinary occupations, and make working days the exception rather than the rule. It must be remembered that in Brazil there is no laborious, cultivated class of priests, such as have been an honor to ecclesiastical literature in the Old World; there are no fine institutions of learning connected with the Church. As a general thing, the ignorance of the clergy is universal, their immorality patent, their influence very extensive and deep-rooted. There are honorable exceptions, but they are not numerous enough to elevate the class to which they belong. But if their private life is open to blame, the Brazilian priests are distinguished for their patriotism. At all times they have occupied high public stations, serving in the Legislative Assembly, in the Senate, and even nearer to the throne; yet their power has never been exerted in favor of Ultramontane tendencies. Independent religious thought seems, however, rare in Brazil. There may perhaps be scepticism; but I think this is not likely to be extensively the case, for the Brazilians are instinctively a believing people, tending rather to superstition than to doubt. Oppression in matters of faith is contrary to the spirit of their institutions. Protestant clergymen are allowed to preach freely; but, as a general thing, Protestantism does not attract the Southern nations, and it may be doubted whether its advocates will have a very wide-spread success. However this may be, every friend to Brazil must wish to see its present priesthood replaced by a more vigorous, intelligent, and laborious clergy.

In order to form a just estimate of the present condition of education in Brazil, and its future prospects, we must not consider it altogether from our own stand-point. The truth is that all steady progress in Brazil dates from her declaration of independence, and that is a very recent fact in her history. Since she has passed from colonial to national life her relations with other countries have enlarged, antiquated prejudices have been effaced, and with a more intense individual existence she has assumed also a more cosmopolitan breadth of ideas. But a political revolution is more rapidly accomplished than the remoulding of the nation which is its result,—its consequence rather than its accompaniment. Even now, after half a century of independent existence, intellectual progress in Brazil is manifested rather as a tendency, a desire, so to speak, giving a progressive movement to society, than as a positive fact. The intellectual life of a nation when fully developed has its material existence in large and various institutions of learning, scattered throughout the country. Except in a very limited and local sense, this is not yet the case in Brazil.

I did not visit San Paolo, and I cannot therefore speak from personal observation of the Faculty which stands highest in general estimation; I can, however, testify to the sound learning and liberal culture of many of its graduates whom it has been my good fortune to know, and whose characters as gentlemen and as students bear testimony to the superior instruction they have received at the hands of their Alma Mater. I was told that the best schools, after those of San Paolo, were those of Bahia and Pernambuco. I did not visit them, as my time was too short; but I should think that the presence of the professional faculties established in both these cities would tend to raise the character of the lower grades of education. The regular faculties embrace only medical and legal studies. The instruction in both is thorough, though perhaps limited; at least I felt that, in the former, in which my own studies have prepared me to judge, those accessory branches which, after all, lie at the foundation of a superior medical education, are either wanting or are taught very imperfectly. Neither zoÖlogy, comparative anatomy, botany, physics, nor chemistry is allowed sufficient weight in the medical schools. The education is one rather of books than of facts. Indeed, as long as the prejudice against manual labor of all kinds exists in Brazil, practical instruction will be deficient; as long as students of nature think it unbecoming a gentleman to handle his own specimens, to carry his own geological hammer, to make his own scientific preparations, he will remain a mere dilettante in investigation. He may be very familiar with recorded facts, but he will make no original researches. On this account, and on account of their personal indolence, field studies are foreign to Brazilian habits. Surrounded as they are by a nature rich beyond comparison, their naturalists are theoretical rather than practical. They know more of the bibliography of foreign science than of the wonderful fauna and flora with which they are surrounded.

Of the schools and colleges in Rio de Janeiro I have more right to judge than of those above mentioned. Several of them are excellent. The Ecole Centrale deserves a special notice. It corresponds to what we call a scientific school, and nowhere in Brazil have I seen an educational institution where improved methods of teaching were so highly appreciated and so generally adopted. The courses of mathematics, chemistry, physics, and the natural sciences are comprehensive and thorough. And yet even in this institution I was struck with the scantiness of means for practical illustration and experiment; its professors do not yet seem to understand that it is impossible to teach any of the physical sciences wholly or mainly from text-books. The facilities granted to pupils in this school, and perhaps still more in the military school, are very great. The instruction is entirely gratuitous, and in the military school the students are not only fed and clothed, etc.; they are even paid for their attendance, being considered as belonging to the army from the time they enter the school.

The Dom Pedro Segundo College is the best school of that class I have seen in Brazil. It may be compared to our New England high schools, and fully deserves the reputation it enjoys.

Of the common schools I saw little. Of course, in a country where the population is sparsely scattered over very extensive districts, it must be difficult to gather the children in schools, outside of the large cities. Where such schools have been organized the instruction is gratuitous; but competent teachers are few, the education very limited, and the means of instruction scanty. Reading, writing, and ciphering, with the least possible smattering of geography, form the groundwork of all these schools. The teachers labor under great difficulties, because they have not the strong support of the community. There is little general appreciation of the importance of education as the basis without which all higher civilization is impossible. I have, however, noticed throughout Brazil a disposition to give a practical education, a training in some trade, to the poor children. Establishments of this kind exist in almost all the larger cities. This is a good sign; it shows that they attach a proper value to labor, at least for the lower classes, and aim at raising a working population. In these schools blacks and whites are, so to speak, industrially united. Indeed, there is no antipathy of race to be overcome in Brazil, either among the laboring people or in the higher walks of life. I was pleased to see pupils, without distinction of race or color, mingling in the exercises.

It is surprising that, in a country so rich in mineral wealth, there should exist no special Mining School, and that everything connected with the working of the mines should be under the immediate supervision of the Minister of Public Works, without the assistance of a special office for the superintendence of mining operations. Nothing would more speedily increase the value of the mineral lands of the whole country than a regular geological survey, which has not yet been begun.^[107]

The Imperial Library at Rio de Janeiro should not be omitted from an enumeration of its educational establishments. It is very fairly supplied with books in all departments of learning, and is conducted in a very liberal spirit, suffering no limitation from religious or political prejudice. In fact, tolerance and benevolence are common characteristics of the institutions of learning in Brazil. The Imperial Museum of Natural History in the Capital is antiquated; to any one acquainted with Museums which are living and progressive, it is evident that the collections it contains have been allowed to remain for years in their present condition, without additions or improvements. The mounted animals, mammalia and birds, are faded; and the fishes, with the exception of a few beautifully stuffed specimens from the Amazons, give no idea of the variety to be found in the Brazilian waters. A better collection might be made any morning in the fish-market. The Museum contains some very fine fossil remains from the valley of the San Francisco and from CearÁ, but no attempt has as yet been made to arrange them.

The only learned society deserving a special mention is the Historical and Geographical Institute. Its Transactions are regularly published, and form already a series of many volumes, full of valuable documents, chiefly relative to the history of South America. The meetings are held in the Imperial Palace of Rio, and are habitually presided over by his Majesty the Emperor.

I cannot close what I have to say of instruction in Brazil without adding that, in a country where only half the nation is educated, there can be no complete intellectual progress. Where the difference of education makes an intelligent sympathy between men and women almost impossible, so that their relation is necessarily limited to that of the domestic affections, never raised except in some very exceptional cases to that of cultivated companionship, the development of the people as a whole must remain imperfect and partial. I believe, however, that, especially in this direction, a rapid reform may be expected. I have heard so many intelligent Brazilians lament the want of suitable instruction for women in their schools, that I think the standard of education for girls will steadily be raised. Remembering the antecedents of the Brazilians, their inherited notions as to what is becoming in the privacy and restraint of a woman’s life, we are not justified, however false these ideas may seem to us, in considering the present generation as responsible for them; they are also too deeply rooted to be changed in a day.

On several occasions I have alluded in terms of praise to the working of the institutions of Brazil. Nothing can be more liberal than the Constitution of the land; every guaranty is therein secured to the freest assertion of all the natural rights of man. And yet there are some features in the habits of the people, probably the results of an antiquated social condition, which impede the progress of the nation. It should not be forgotten that the white population of Brazil is chiefly descended from the Portuguese, and that of all Europe Portugal is the country which at the time of the discovery and settlement of Brazil, had least been affected by the growth of our modern civilization. Indeed, the great migrations which convulsed Europe in the Middle Ages, and the Reformation, upon which the new social order chiefly rests, have scarcely affected Portugal; so that Roman ways, Roman architecture, and a degenerate Latin were still flourishing when her Transatlantic colonies were founded; and, as in all colonies, the conditions of the mother country were but slowly modified. No wonder, therefore, that the older structures of Rio de Janeiro should recall, in the most surprising manner, the architecture of ancient Rome, as disclosed by the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and that the social condition of Brazil should remind us of the habits of a people among whom women played so subordinate a part. It seems to me that even now the administration of the provinces, as in the Roman civilization, is calculated to enforce the law, rather than to develop the material resources of the country. I have been surprised to find young lawyers almost invariably at the head of the administration of the provinces, where practical men, conversant with the interests of agriculture, commerce, and the mechanical arts, would, in my opinion, have been better adapted to the pressing duty of stimulating all pursuits connected with the active life of a young and aspiring nation.

The exaggerated appreciation of political employment prevailing everywhere is a misfortune. It throws into the shade all other occupations, and loads the government with a crowd of paid officials who uselessly encumber the public service and are a drain upon the public funds. Every man who has received an education seeks a political career, as at once the most aristocratic and the easiest way of gaining a livelihood. It is but recently that gentlemen have begun to engage in mercantile pursuits.

It seems to me, that, though the character and habits of the Brazilians are not those of an agricultural people, Brazil is an essentially agricultural country, and some occurrences in her recent history confirm this view. Brazil had formerly a great variety of agricultural products, but now the number of plants under culture is rather limited. Agricultural operations are at present centred upon coffee, cotton, sugar, tobacco, mandioca, some cereals, beans, and cocoa. Owing to her climate and her geographical position, the vegetable zones of Brazil are not so marked as those of other countries. It would not be difficult to divide the whole Empire, with reference to its productions, into three great regions. The first of these, stretching from the borders of Guiana to Bahia, along the great rivers, is more especially characterized by the wild products of the forest: Indian-rubber, cocoa, vanilla, sarsaparilla, and an infinite variety of gums, resins, barks, and textile fibres still unknown to commerce in Europe and the United States. To these Brazil might add spices, the monopoly of which belongs now to the Sunda Islands. The second region, extending from Bahia to Santa Catarina, is that of coffee. The third, from Santa Catarina to Rio Grande, and in the interior of the high plateaux, is that of the grains; and, in connection with their culture, the raising of cattle. Rice, which is easily grown throughout Brazil, and cotton, which yields magnificent crops in all the provinces, bind together these three zones, sugar and tobacco following in their train. An important step with reference to agriculture, which has scarcely been thought of as yet, is the cultivation of the heights of the Organ Mountains, as well as those of the Serra do Mar and the Serra do Mantiqueira. On these high lands might be raised all the products characteristic of the warmer portions of the temperate zones, and Rio de Janeiro would receive daily from the mountains in her immediate neighborhood all those vegetables and garden fruits which she now procures in small quantities and at high prices from the provinces bordering on the La Plata. The slopes of these Serras might also be covered with plantations of cascarilla, and, as the production of quinine must sooner or later be greatly diminished by the devastation of the Cinchora-trees on the upper Amazonian tributaries, it is the more important that their culture should be introduced upon the largest scale on the heights above Rio. The attempts of Mr. Glaziou in that direction deserve every encouragement.

The sugar-cane has long been the chief object of cultivation in Brazil, and the production of sugar is still considerable; but within several years the planting of sugar-cane has given way in many districts to that of coffee. I have taken pains to ascertain the facts respecting the culture of coffee during the last fifty years; the immense development of this branch of industry and the rapidity of the movement, especially in a country where labor is so scarce, is among the most striking economical phenomena of our century. Thanks to their perseverance and to the favorable conditions presented by the constitution of their soil, the Brazilians have obtained a sort of monopoly of coffee. More than half the coffee consumed in the world is of Brazilian growth. And yet the coffee of Brazil has little reputation, and is even greatly underrated. Why is this? Simply because a great deal of the best produce of Brazilian plantations is sold under the name of Java or Mocha, or as the coffee of Martinique or Bourbon. Martinique produces only six hundred sacks of coffee annually; Guadaloupe, whose coffee is sold under the name of the neighboring island, yields six thousand sacks, not enough to provide the market of Rio de Janeiro for twenty-four hours, and the island of Bourbon hardly more. A great part of the coffee which is bought under these names, or under that of Java coffee, is Brazilian, while the so-called Mocha coffee is often nothing but the small round beans of the Brazilian plant found at the summits of the branches and very carefully selected. If the fazendeiros, like the Java planters, sold their crops under a special mark, the great purchasers would learn with what merchandise they have to deal, and the agriculture of Brazil would be greatly benefited. But there intervenes between the fazendeiro and the exporter a class of merchants—half bankers, half brokers—known as commissarios, who, by mixing different harvests, lower the standard of the crop, thus relieving the producer of all responsibility and depriving the product of its true characteristics.

If the provinces adjacent to Rio de Janeiro offer naturally the most favorable soil for the culture of coffee, it must not be forgotten that coffee is planted with advantage in the shade of the Amazonian forest, and even yields two annual crops wherever pains are taken to plant it. In the province of CearÁ, where the coffee is of a superior quality, it is not planted on the plains, or in the low grounds, or in the shadow of the forest, as in the valley of the Amazons, but on the slopes of the hills and on the mountain heights, to an elevation of from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet and more above the level of the sea, in the Serras of Aratanha and BaturitÉ and in the Serra Grande. The channels opened to these products should augment their importance, and should give rise to numerous establishments in the valley of the Amazons.

The increased exportation of cotton from Brazil during the last few years is a still more marked feature in its industrial history than the large coffee crops. When, towards the close of the last century, cotton began to assume in England an importance which has ever since been increasing, Brazil naturally became one of the great providers of the English market. But it soon lost this advantage, because our Southern States acquired, with an extraordinary rapidity, an almost complete monopoly of this product. Favored by exceptional circumstances, North America succeeded, about the year 1846, in furnishing cotton at such low rates that all competition became impossible, and the culture of cotton was almost abandoned in other countries. Brazil, however, persisted. Her annual production showed a slow but steady progress; even the cessation of the slave-trade did not interrupt this advance. Indeed, it is a striking fact, which may well be mentioned in this connection, that the statistics of Brazilian agriculture have been steadily rising ever since the abolition of the slave-trade. When the Rebellion broke out in our Southern States, Brazil thus found herself prepared to give a considerable impulse to the cultivation of a product as much sought for as bread in time of famine. Spite of the want of population, which is an obstacle to all industrial enterprises in Brazil, she found labor, and, what was still more important, free labor, for this object. It seemed as if it were a point of national honor to show what could be done. Provinces like San Paolo, where a foot of ground had never before been planted with cotton; others, as for instance Alagoas, Parahyba do Norte, CearÁ, where the cultivation of cotton had been abandoned, produced extraordinary quantities,—so large, indeed, that two lines of steamers were established, and have prospered, between Liverpool and the above-mentioned ports, chiefly for the transport of this crop. It will be remembered that during the whole of this time Brazil was in want of laborers, that she received no foreign capital for this undertaking, that she imported neither Coolies nor Chinese, that almost immediately after the movement began her war with Paraguay broke out, and yet her production of cotton has quadrupled and quintupled. This fact assumed such importance in the estimate of industrial interests at the late Paris Exposition, that an exceptional prize was awarded to Brazil, on the ground that, in supplying the European market so largely with this indispensable staple, she had rendered it independent of the former monopoly of the United States. It is true that the same prize was also granted to Algeria and to Egypt. But the Brazilian planter had not, like the colonists of Africa, the stimulus of a large subsidy from government; he could not, like the Viceroy of Egypt, seize 80,000 men in a single district and transport them to his plantations; neither did he, like the Egyptian fellah, abandon all other branches of agriculture in order to devote himself exclusively to that of cotton. In fact, the general interests of agriculture prospered in Brazil, in the midst of this new enterprise.

I have insisted on these facts, which I think are little known, because they seem to me to show a greater energy and vitality than is usually supposed to exist in the productive forces of Brazil. To stimulate this movement, the government has recently taken the initiatory steps in the organization of an Agricultural School in the vicinity of Bahia, in which all the modern improvements suggested by the progress of science and invention, are to be tested in their application to the natural products of the tropics.

The importance of the basin of the Amazons to Brazil, from an industrial point of view, can hardly be overestimated. Its woods alone have an almost priceless value. Nowhere in the world is there finer timber, either for solid construction or for works of ornament; and yet it is scarcely used even for the local buildings, and makes no part whatever of the exports. It is strange that the development of this branch of industry should not even have begun in Brazil, for the rivers which flow past these magnificent forests seem meant to serve, first as a water-power for the saw-mills which ought to be established along their borders, and then as a means of transportation for the material so provided. Setting aside the woods as timber, what shall I say of the mass of fruits, resins, oils, coloring matters, textile fibres, which they yield? When I stopped at ParÁ, on my way home to the United States, an exhibition of Amazonian products, brought together in preparation for the World’s Fair at Paris, was still open. Much as I had admired, during my journey, the richness and variety of the materials native to the soil, I was amazed when I saw them thus side by side. There I noticed, among others, a collection of no less than one hundred and seventeen different kinds of highly valuable woods, cut from a piece of land less than half a mile square. Of these many were dark-colored, veined woods susceptible of a high polish,—as beautiful as rosewood or ebony. There was a great variety of vegetable oils, all remarkable for their clearness and purity. There were a number of fabrics made from the fibres of the palm, and an endless variety of fruits. An empire might esteem itself rich in any one of the sources of industry which abound in this valley, and yet the greater part of its vast growth rots on the ground, and goes to form a little more river-mud or to stain the waters on the shores of which its manifold products die and decompose. But what surprised me most was to find that a great part of this region was favorable to the raising of cattle. Fine sheep are fed on the grassy plains and on the hills which stretch between Obydos and Almeyrim, and I have rarely eaten better mutton than at ErerÉ, in the midst of these serras. And yet the inhabitants of this fertile region suffer from hunger. The insufficiency of food is evident; but it arises solely from the inability of the people to avail themselves of the natural productions of the soil. As an instance of this, I may mention that, though living on the banks of rivers which abound in delicious fish, they make large use of salt cod, imported from other countries!

While travelling upon the Amazons, I have often asked myself what would be the best plan for developing the natural resources of that incomparable region. No doubt the opening of the great river to the commerce of all nations was a first step in the right direction; and this measure in itself shows what extraordinary progress Brazil is making, for it is hardly more than half a century, since, owing to the narrow policy and jealous disposition of the Portuguese government, the greatest traveller of modern times was forbidden to enter the valley of the Amazons; while to-day a scientific errand of a similar character is welcomed and fostered in every possible way by the government of a nation now independent of Europe. But a free competition is a necessary complement to the freedom already granted, and competition is scarcely possible where monopolies are kept up. I hold, therefore, that all the exceptional facilities granted by the Brazilian government to private companies are detrimental to its best interests. There is, however, another direct obstacle to progress which ought at once to be removed, since the change could in no way injure the general welfare. The present limitation of the provinces of ParÁ and of the Amazons is entirely unnatural. The whole valley is cut in two transversely, so that its lower half is of necessity a bar to the independent growth of the upper half. ParÁ, being made the centre of everything, drains the whole country without vitalizing the interior. The great river which should be an international highway has become an inland stream. But suppose for a moment that the Amazons, like our Mississippi, were made the boundary between a succession of independent provinces on either side of it; suppose that on the southern banks of the Amazons the province of TeffÉ should extend from the borders of Peru to the banks of the Madeira, the province of Santarem from the Madeira to the Xingu, and that of ParÁ be reduced to the country east of the Xingu, including the Island of Marajo; each of these separate provinces would then be at once bounded and traversed by great streams, securing the double activity of competition and the stimulus of internal conveniences. In like manner should the lands on the northern banks of the Amazons form several independent provinces; that of Monte AlÉgre, for instance, extending from the Rio Trombetas to the sea; that of Manaos, from the Rio Trombetas to the Rio Negro; and perhaps that of the Hyapura, enclosing the present wilderness between the Rio Negro and the Solimoens. It will, no doubt, be objected that such a change would involve an administrative staff quite disproportionate to the present population; but the government of such provinces, even with the few inhabitants they might number, if organized upon the plan of the territorial governments of our infant States, would only stimulate local energies, and develop local resources, without interfering in the least with the central government. Moreover, any one familiar with the working of the present system in the valley of the Amazons must be aware that all the cities started during the past century along the great river and its tributaries, far from progressing, are going to ruin and decay; and this is unquestionably owing to the centralization at ParÁ of all the real activity of the whole country.

Without a much denser population, the best efforts of Brazil to increase its prosperity must be slow and ineffective. No wonder, then, that, immediately after the declaration of independence, Dom Pedro I. attempted to attract German emigrants to his new empire. From that period dates the Colony of San Leopoldo, near Porto AlÉgre, on the Rio Grande do Sul. It was not, however, till the year 1850, when the slave-trade was actually abolished, and it was no longer possible to import labor from Africa, that these colonization schemes assumed a more definite and settled character. In this attempt the planters and the government were agreed, but with a different object. The plan of the government, undertaken in perfect good faith, was to create a laboring population, and a class of small landed proprietors. The planters, on the contrary, accustomed to compulsory labor, thought only of recruiting their slave ranks by substituting Europeans for Africans. This led to terrible abuses; under pretence of advancing their passage-money, poor emigrants, and especially the ignorant Portuguese from the Azores, were virtually sold under a contract which they subsequently found it very difficult to break. These abuses have thrown discredit upon the attempts of the Brazilian government to colonize the interior, but the iniquities practised under the name of emigration are now corrected. In fact, the colonies established directly by the government, on public lands, have never suffered wrong; on the contrary, the German settlements in Sta Catherina, on the Rio Grande do Sul and on the San Francisco do Sul are very prosperous. The best evidence of the improvement in the condition of the colonists, and of the more liberal spirit of the nation towards them, is the spontaneous formation in Rio de Janeiro of an international society of emigration independent of all government influence, consisting of Brazilians, Portuguese, Germans, Swiss, Americans, French, &c. The objects of this society, of which Mr. Tavares Bastos is one of the most influential members, are, first, to reform the constitution in all which may place the foreigner at a disadvantage; second, to redress the wrongs of the emigrants; third, to provide them with such assistance and information as they may need on arriving. This society has been in existence only two years, but has already rendered valuable services. It is to be hoped that the government will persevere in the liberal course it has entered upon, and, above all, put an end to the unnecessary legal formalities by which the emigrant is prevented from taking immediate possession of his new home. This is especially important in the region of the Amazons, where the new-comer finds none of those facilities which welcome the emigrant in the United States. I cannot too often repeat, also, that all monopoly of transport in the Amazons should speedily be abolished. As soon as the wild products of its shores are subjected to a regular culture, even of a very imperfect kind, and are no longer gathered at random,—as soon as organized labor, directed by an intelligent activity, takes the place of the thoughtless and uncertain efforts of the Indians, the variety and excellence of its staples will be increased beyond all expectation. As it is, a little foresight would prevent an immense deal of suffering in this fertile region, where food abounds and people die of hunger. Accustomed to live upon fish, the natives make little use either of milk or meat, and the fine pasturage which might maintain herds of cattle is allowed to run to waste. Careless of the inclemency of the weather when gathering the harvest of the forest, they scarcely build a shelter against the heavy rains, allow their wet clothes to dry upon their skin, and expose themselves to constant alternations of heat and cold. Add to this, that they do not hesitate to drink stagnant water, if it be nearer at hand than spring water, and we have causes enough for the prevalence of intermittent fever and malarious diseases, without attributing them to a climate which is in the main salubrious, and far more moderate in temperature than is generally supposed. The false notions generally current, even in Brazil, in regard to the climate of the Amazons might have been removed long ago, were the public officers of the northern provinces of the Empire not interested in keeping up the delusion. The Amazonian provinces are made stepping-stones to higher employments. The young candidates who accept these posts claim a reward for the disinterestedness they have shown in exposing themselves to disease, and make the reputed fatality of the climate an excuse for leaving these remote stations after a few months’ sojourn. The northern provinces of Brazil need an administration less liable to change, and based upon patient study of their local interests, and a faithful adherence to them. It is impossible that the president who comes for six months, and is daily longing for his return to the society and amusements of the larger cities, should even initiate, far less complete, any systematic improvements. Like every country struggling for recognition among the self-reliant nations of the world, Brazil has to contend with the prejudiced reports of a floating foreign population, indifferent to the welfare of the land they temporarily inhabit, and whose appreciations are mainly influenced by private interest. It is much to be regretted that the government has not thought it worth while to take decided measures to correct the erroneous impressions current abroad concerning its administration, and that its diplomatic agents do so little to circulate truthful and authoritative statements of their domestic concerns. As far as I know, the recent World’s Fair at Paris was the first occasion when an attempt was made to present a comprehensive report of the resources of the Empire, and the prizes awarded to the Brazilians testify to their success.

Imperfect as is this sketch, I trust I have been able to show, what I deeply feel, that there are elements of a high progress in Brazil, that it has institutions which are shaping the country to worthy ends, that it has a nationality already active, showing its power at the present moment in carrying on one of the most important wars ever undertaken in South America. Neither is this struggle maintained by Brazil for selfish ends; in her conflict with Paraguay she may truly be counted among the standard-bearers of civilization. The facts which have come to my knowledge respecting this war have convinced me that it originated in honorable purposes, and, setting aside the selfish intrigues of individuals, inevitably connected with such movements, is carried on with disinterestedness. It deserves the sympathy of the civilized world, for it strikes at a tyrannical organization, half clerical, half military, which, calling itself a republic, disgraces the name it assumes.

Will my Brazilian friends who read this summary say that I have given but grudging praise to their public institutions, accompanied by an unkind criticism of their social condition? I hope not. I should do myself great wrong did I give the impression that I part from Brazil with any feeling but that of warm sympathy, a deep-rooted belief in her future progress and prosperity, and sincere personal gratitude toward her. I recognize in the Brazilians as a nation their susceptibility to lofty impulses and emotions, their love of theoretical liberty, their natural generosity, their aptness to learn, their ready eloquence; if also I miss among them something of the stronger and more persistent qualities of the Northern races, I do but recall a distinction which is as ancient as the tropical and temperate zones themselves.