The life and circumstances of the immigrants or "colonists," as they are termed, in these coffee-growing districts of Brazil is one of peculiar interest for the student of race matters and human geography, of great value in the science of colonization. Here is an account by a careful observer:

"Each fazenda constitutes a little isolated world, which is all but self-sufficient, and from which the colonists rarely issue; the life is laborious. The coffee is planted in long regular lines in the red soil, abundantly watered by the rains, on which a constant struggle must be maintained against the invasion of the noxious weeds. The weeding of the plantation is really the chief labour of the colonist. It is repeated six times a year. Directly after the harvest, if you ride on horseback along the lines of shrubs, which begin, as early as September, to show signs of their brilliant flowering season, you will find the colonists, men and women, leaning on their hoes, while the sun, already hot, is drying behind them the heaps of weeds they have uprooted.

"Each family is given as many trees as it can look after; the number varies with the size of the family. Large families will tend as many as eight or ten thousand trees; while a single worker cannot manage much more than two thousand.

"Like the vine, coffee requires a large number of labourers in proportion to the area under cultivation; it supports a relatively dense population. The two thousand trees which one colonist will receive will not cover, as a matter of fact, more than five to seven acres; yet the coffee supports other labourers who work on the fazenda, in addition to the labourers proper, or colonists. Pruning, for instance, which so far is not universally practised, is never done by the colonists, but by gangs of practised workmen, who travel about the State and hire themselves for the task. The colonist is only a labourer; if he were allowed to prune the shrubs he would kill them. Heaven knows, the pruners to whom the task is confided ill-treat the trees sufficiently already! They use pruning-hook and axe with a brutality that makes one shudder.

"When the coffee ripens, towards the end of June, the picking of the crop commences. Sometimes, in a good year, the crop is not all picked until November. The great advantage enjoyed by San Paolo, to which it owes its rank as a coffee-producing country, is that the whole crop arrives at maturity almost at the same moment. The crop may thus be harvested in its entirety at one picking; the harvester may pick all the berries upon each tree at once, instead of selecting the ripe berries, and making two or three harvests, as is necessary in Costa Rica or Guatemala. This entails a great reduction in the cost of production and of labour. San Paolo owes this advantage to the climate, which is not quite tropical, and to the sequence of well-defined seasons and their effect upon the vegetation.

"At the time of picking the colonists are gathered into gangs. They confine themselves to loading the berries on carts, which other labourers drive to the fazenda; there the coffee is soaked, husked, dried and selected, and then dispatched to Santos, the great export market. All these operations the colonists perform under the supervision of the manager of the fazenda. A bell announces the hour for going to work; another the hour of rest; another the end of the day; the labourers have no illusions of independence. In the morning the gangs scatter through the plantation; in the evening they gradually collect on the paths of the fazenda, and go home in family groups, tired after the day's work, saving of words, saluting one another by gestures. On Sunday work is interrupted; games are arranged; parties are made up to play mora, or Italian card games, with denari and bastoni. Women hold interminable palavers. Sometimes, on an indifferent nag, borrowed at second or third hand from a neighbour, the colonist will ride as far as the nearest town, to see his relations, exercise his tongue, and pit himself against such hazards of fortune as the world outside the fazenda may offer.

"What are the annual earnings of the agricultural worker? The conditions vary in different localities, but we may estimate that the colonist receives about 60 or 80 milreis—£4 to £5 7s. at the present rate of exchange—per 1,000 stems of coffee. This is a certain resource; a sort of fixed minimum wage. To this we must add the price of several days' labour at about 2 milreis, or 2s. 8d. A still more irregular element in the profits of a colonist's family is the amount it receives for the harvest. By consulting the books of several fazendas I was able to realize the extent of this irregularity. Sometimes the wage paid for the harvest is insignificant, while sometimes it is greater by itself than all the other sources of income put together. It is calculated at so much per measure of berries given in by the colonist. When the branches are heavily laden, not only is the total quantity greater, but the labour is performed more rapidly, and each day is more productive. Years of good harvest are for the colonist, as for the planter, years of plenty. With this important element essentially variable, how can we estimate the annual earnings of the colonist?

"His expenses, again, cannot be estimated with any exactitude. An economic family will reduce them to practically nothing, if it has the good fortune to escape all sickness, and so dispense with the doctor, the chemist and the priest.

"What really enables the colonists to make both ends meet is the crops they have the right to raise on their own account, sometimes on allotments reserved for the purpose set apart from the coffee, and sometimes between the rows of the coffee-trees. They often think more of the clauses in their contract which relate to these crops than to those which determine their wages in currency. A planter told me that he had learned that a party of colonists intended to leave him after the harvest. We met some of them on the road, and I questioned them. 'Is it true that you are engaged to work on Senhor B——'s fazenda for the coming year?'—'Yes.'—'What reason have you for changing your fazenda? Will you be better paid there? Don't you get over £6 a thousand trees here?'—'Yes.'—'How much do they offer you over there?'—'Only £4.'—'Then why do you go?'—'Because there we can plant our maize among the coffee.'

"The culture of coffee is thus combined with that of alimentary crops. Almost all the world over the important industrial crops have to make room in the neighbourhood for food crops. Every agricultural country is forced to produce, at any rate to some extent, its own food, and to live upon itself if it wishes to live at all. In Brazil the dispersion of food crops is extreme, on account of the difficulties of transport; it is hardly less in San Paolo, in spite of the development of the railway system. Each fazenda is a little food-producing centre, the chief crops being maize, manioc and black beans, of which the national dish, the feijoade, is made.

"It even happens at times that the colonists produce more maize than they consume. They can then sell a few sacks at the nearest market, and add the price to their other resources. In this way crops which are in theory destined solely for their nourishment take on a different aspect from their point of view, yielding them, a revenue which is not always to be despised.

"The colonists make their purchases in the nearest town, or, more often, if the fazenda is of any importance, there is a shop or store—what the Brazilians call a negocio—in the neighbourhood of the colonists' houses. Its inventory would defy enumeration; it sells at the same time cotton prints and cooking-salt, agricultural implements and petroleum. An examination of the stock will show one just what the little economic unit called a fazenda really is. Although the colonists are to-day almost always free to make their purchases where they please, the trade of shopkeeper on a fazenda is still extremely profitable. He enjoys a virtual monopoly; the fazendeiro sees that no competitor sets up shop in the neighbourhood. The shop is the planter's property; he lets it, and usually at a high rent, which represents not only the value of the premises, but also the commercial privilege which goes with it. It is a sort of indirect commercial tariff levied by the planter on the colonists; a sign of the ever so slightly feudal quality of the organization of property in San Paolo. The custom that used to obtain, of the planter himself keeping shop for the profit, or rather at the expense of his colonists, has generally disappeared.

"One of the most serious of the planter's anxieties is the maintenance of the internal discipline of the fazenda. This is a task demanding ability and energy. One must not be too ready to accuse the planters of governing as absolute sovereigns. I myself have never observed any abuse of power on their part, nor have I seen unjustifiable fines imposed. The fazendeiro has a double task to perform. He employs his authority not only to ensure regularity in the work accomplished, but also to maintain peace and order among the heterogeneous population over which he rules. He plays the part of a policeman. The public police service cannot ensure the respect of civil law, of the person or of property. How could the police intervene on the plantation, which is neither village nor commune, but a private estate? It falls to the planter to see that the rights of all are protected. Many colonists have a preference for plantations on which the discipline is severe; they are sure of finding justice then. The severity of the planter is not always to the detriment of the colonist.

"Individually the colonists are often turbulent and sometimes violent; collectively they have hitherto shown a remarkable docility. On some fazendas, however, there have been labour troubles, and actual strikes; but they have always been abortive. The strikes have not lasted, and have never spread. One of the means by which the planters maintain their authority and prevent the colonists from becoming conscious of their strength is the prohibition of all societies or associations. They have had little trouble in making this prohibition respected. Among an uneducated group of labourers, of various tongues and nationalities, the spirit of combination does not exist. We have seen the development of working-men's societies, of socialistic tendencies, in the cities of San Paolo, but nowhere in the country. An incoherent immigrant population, but lightly attached to the land, is not a favourable soil for the growth of a party with a socialistic platform. One must not look for agricultural trade unions in San Paolo. The contract between the planter and his labourers is never a collective but always an individual contract.

"Accounts are settled every two months. It often happens, even to-day, that the colonist is in the planter's debt. The planter has kept up the custom of making advances, and every family newly established in the country is, as a general rule, in debt. But the advances are always small, the colonist possessing so little in the way of securities; he has few animals and next to nothing in the way of furniture. His indebtedness towards the planter is not enough, as it used to be, to tie him down to the plantation; that many of them continue to leave by stealth is due to their desire to save their few personal possessions, which the planter might seize to cover his advances. At the last payment of the year all the colonists are free; their contract comes to an end after the harvest. Proletarians, whom nothing binds to the soil on which they have dwelt for a year, they do not resume their contracts if they have heard of more advantageous conditions elsewhere, or if their adventurous temperament urges them to try their luck farther on.

"The end of the harvest sees a general migration of the agricultural labourers. The colonists are true nomads. All the planters live in constant dread of seeing their hands leave them in September. Even the most generous fazendeiros experience the same difficulty. According to the Director of Colonization, 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the colonists leave their fazendas annually. It is difficult to confirm this statement; but at least it is no exaggeration to say that a third of the families employed on the plantations leave their places from year to year. Towards September one meets them on the roads, most often travelling afoot; the man carrying a few household goods and the woman a newly born child, like the city labourers at the end of the season. One can imagine what a serious annoyance this instability of labour must be to the coffee-planter. Long before the harvest the planter is planning to fill up the gaps that will appear in the colony directly after the harvest. He secretly sends out hired recruiting agents to the neighbouring fazendas or to the nearest town; he employs for this purpose some of the shrewder colonists, to whom he pays a commission for every family engaged. Finally, at the end of his resources, if he no longer has any hope of finding workmen in the neighbourhood who are experienced in plantation work, he decides to apply to the colonization agent in San Paolo, and resigns himself to the employment of an untrained staff, whom he will have to spend several months in training.

"The instability of agricultural labour is the most striking characteristic of rural life in the State of San Paolo. It is a result of the unusual and even artificial nature of the hasty development of coffee-planting."[29]

The colonists on the coffee-plantations are, in the main, Italians, of whom there may be perhaps three-quarters of a million in San Paolo.

The settlers or immigrants in Brazil, however, are not all of the San Paolo type, and in other parts of the Republic the condition of their life differs altogether from those of the coffee-plantation labourers. In Paraná, Rio Grande and elsewhere, very diverse pictures of colonial life may be painted, more independent in their colours, with less of the "rural proletariat." There are rural democracies of small holders in some instances, and a wide variety of products are cultivated, or small industries pursued.

In Paraná, the famous and valuable maté is largely grown, and the leaf of this small shrub—not unlike the ilex, or evergreen oak, is exported far and wide to Argentina, and other lands of the Plate, and to Chile, across the Cordillera. For Paraná, the maté is what coffee is for San Paolo.

"Maté is not cultivated. It grows freely in the forest, and in the forest its leaves are harvested. As soon as plucked the leaves undergo a first preparation, which is designed principally to diminish their weight before transport, but also to prevent their fermenting or turning sour. They are dried at the fire, and are then packed in sacks which are sent to Curitiba, where improved mills reduce the leaves to powder, separate the various qualities, and deliver the product ready for consumption. Some colonists, more fortunate than others, found on their allotments large numbers of maté-trees; this meant for them a small fortune acquired without labour. The maté-leaf, or the leaf, as they call it in Paraná—a light but precious merchandise—bears the cost of transport more easily than maize; so that the owners of lots upon which maté is found are able to make a profit by the sale of their leaves. Such good fortune is unhappily rare.

"The great hervaïs, as they call the forest cantons where maté grows abundantly, are nearly all in the interior of the State; beyond the colonies, on that portion of the plateau which approaches the Paraná River; a country little known to geographers, but which, thanks to maté, is not lacking in importance nor economic vitality. At the season for plucking 'the leaf' it is intensely animated; a veritable army goes into camp, and all the forest paths are busy. From the eastern border the pack-mules carry their loads of leaves as far as the roads which lead to Curitiba, capital of the trade; and to the west the paths are no less busy. There are Paraguayans, coming to take part in the harvest, and Paraguayan smugglers, who seek to cross the river without being sighted by the Customs officials; for a large portion of the harvest is destined for the border regions of Paraguay and Misionès.

"In the hervaïs—whether public or private lands—the harvest is farmed out to contractors, who undertake to organize it. They employ a numerous staff. Each contractor constructs a hearth for drying the leaves, and this hearth becomes the centre of the little ephemeral world which lives for a few months in the heart of the forest, leading an isolated and laborious existence. Four or five tons of leaves are often prepared in a day. Some of the workers prune the trees; the others dry the leaves. The gangs are recruited from all over the State, and from the first day of harvest the Polish colonies furnish a good number of recruits. The men alone leave the colony, the women remaining to take care of the allotments. Some of the Poles are simple workmen, while those with more initiative are themselves contractors. All bring from the forests the money representing their wages or their profits, and on this money the colonies have managed to live."[30]

Here is a picture of the negroes on the sugar-producing lands and elsewhere.

"A small proportion of the land belongs to negroes. Small ownership among the negroes dates from before the abolition of slavery. The masters who freed slaves often gave them, with their liberty, a piece of land to ensure their subsistence. The negroes who have inherited these small holdings are to-day the best element of the black agricultural population. They form the majority of a class of peasant proprietors, tilling their land with their own hands, which also comprises mulattoes and even a few whites. This class is unfortunately too restricted.

"Taking them all in all, the negroes in the sugar-producing regions like Minas form a type of labourer of very indifferent economic value. The very sun assures them of many alimentary products, obtained without agricultural labour. Fish swarm in the marshes of the coast. A child will catch in one day enough to feed ten men. The fish, indeed, save the blacks from the obligation of regular labour. Although by no means the whole of the soil is under cultivation, certain sugar-producing districts are thus able to support a population of extraordinary density, swarming like ants in an ant-hill.

"In Bahia the sugar plantations have entirely disappeared. In Pernambuco the majority of the negroes live, as formerly, on the plantations. A large number, however, have crowded into the towns; for the negroes, who, in order to show their independence, have scattered far from the fazendas on which they used to live, none the less hate solitude, and are very eager for an urban life. In Pernambuco and Bahia the urban population is too large for the business capacity of the cities and the activity of the harbours. Around the cities properly so called stretch immense suburbs, vast villages where the negroes live, without very appreciable resources, among the mango and bread-fruit trees. It is amazing, on crossing a fazenda in Minas, or a Campos plantation, to see the number of negroes who can lodge and feed themselves on a minimum quantity of work. One feels the same astonishment in the large villages of the north. If you desire a boat, twenty boatmen dispute your custom. In Pernambuco market I remember having seen twenty merchants who had between them a stock of fruit which could have been carried in two baskets.

"To sum up: the moral and economic inferiority of the negro population of Brazil is incontestable. The puerility of the negroes is extreme. They have no foresight, and are innocent of any form of ambition, the sole motive-power of progress. They are modest in their desires and easily satisfied. Whoever has heard, in the streets of Bahia, the sincere, sonorous, joyful laughter of some negro woman cannot fail to have experienced the mixture of contempt, indulgence and envy with which this nation of children inspires the Caucasian. Their imagination is strong and nimble; their sentimental life active; intellectual life they have none. They are superstitious, and their devotion has supported and still supports the four hundred churches of Bahia.

"They amuse themselves with ardour. More than half their life is devoted to amusements and festivals. The circus is their favourite amusement. The wit of the clown keeps them happy for hours. Some of their festivals are connected with their agricultural labours. They were formerly celebrated on the fazenda by the slaves; they have survived slavery. In Minas the black workers still come, when the coffee harvest is over, bearing in their hands boughs of the coffee-tree, which they ornament with multi-coloured ribbons of paper, shouting for the master to give the signal for the rejoicings to commence."[31]

In Southern Brazil we may still see the picturesque figure in an old industry—the gaucho of the cattle-plains. The gaucho, or "cowboy," is a product of his calling, a creature of his kind. From childhood he has lived on horseback; has early learned all feats of wild horsemanship, including the throwing of the riata, or lasso, and the boliadeira, the latter a thong with a ball at each end which, dexterously thrown, winds around the legs of a fleeing animal and brings it to the ground. This form of lasso is peculiar to the South American gaucho, and is unknown to the vaquero of Mexico, whose marvellous exploits with the ordinary noosed lasso, or riata, we may have witnessed. Again, the gaucho will stem a charging bull by striking it across the muzzle with a short whip, and he seems quite fearless at the animal's onslaught upon him.

The life of this strange cattle-minder may be lived on the lonesome pampa for long periods. For his meat he may bring down a steer, cut off a portion of flesh with hide attached, and lay it in the embers of the camp fire, in rude cookery. He eats farinha with it, washed down with water, if his wine or aguardiente has given out, but follows it with the inevitable maté, the "Paraguayan tea." He will not live in the town, he is a creature of the plains. His wide-brimmed hat and silken or woollen poncho and huge coloured neck-handkerchief, raw hide boots, and enormous silver spurs, and other decorated trappings, are the habiliments he fancies best, and no ornate palace in Rio would tempt him to abandon his free and independent life.

Turning now to a different field; if the interests of the traveller in Brazil lie in the rich world of minerals, he will not find here so varied and historical a field as that we have traversed in the regions of the Cordillera. Yet Nature has not necessarily been niggardly even here. In centuries past much gold has been produced, in placer and other workings, and diamonds have been exported for nearly two centuries. One of the most famous gold mines of South America, indeed, the largest and most constant producer of any on this continent, is situated in the Republic, that of the St. John del Rey, whose workings are a matter of annual congratulation to its London shareholders, with its plentiful dividends, distributed with almost monotonous regularity to an amount approaching at times to half a million sterling per annum. The mine is of enormous depth.

Baser metals have also their possibilities here. Brazil has been endowed by the geological operation of Nature with immense deposits of iron, such as we certainly do not encounter in any other part of Latin America, and these we may survey in the department of Minas Geraes. Very high-grade ores of iron exist here—thousands of millions of tons. Unfortunately the country has little coal for purposes of smelting the ore, and the iron industry may be largely confined to that of export of the raw mineral.

Along the sandy coasts of Brazil another mineral, found of recent years to be of value, has been disposed. This is the peculiar monazite. There are, in addition, many other metals and minerals of commerce in various parts of the country: also petroleum. Perhaps the mining laws of Brazil have not been so favourable to the foreigner as those of the Spanish American Republics.

The general economic policy of Brazil, one which with greater or less intensity seems to be set before the Government and the intelligent classes, is a scheme of self-supplying trade, commerce and production in general, to produce its own food supplies, to manufacture its own goods, to be less dependent in these matters on the outside world. The magnificent and varied resources of the country are such as, as far as material is concerned, would render this policy possible of fulfilment as time goes on. It has been said by some observers that the Brazilian hates trade. Be it as it may, the country is very highly protected in a fiscal sense. It is a wealthy land, and undoubtedly has before it a future of such life and importance as at present it is impossible to picture in detail, but which might well be one of prosperity.

In Brazil there are innumerable matters of great interest, whether in town or country, whether in "the desert or the sown," which we have not space here to consider; and the traveller and observer will find material of the most varied and surprising nature to absorb his energies, be they in what field they may.

To the south, Brazil merges into those distinctive regions of the great plains and rivers of the Plate, which we now enter.