the Canary Islands. Their trips are extended to Santos, and frequently to Montevideo or Buenos Ayres, whither they carry many immigrants from the Canary Islands. Agents in this city, Messrs. H. Stoltz & Co. The line between Bordeaux and South America, Compagnie des Messageries, with central office at Paris, consists of six steamers of 2,400 to 2,500 tons, leaving Bordeaux the 5th and 20th of each month, and calling at Corunna, Lisbon, Dakar (Africa), Pernambuco, Bahia, and Rio; and from here proceeding to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. Time from Bordeaux to Rio, nineteen to twenty days. First-class fare $120 to $170. This line has been in operation twenty-five years, and enjoys a subsidy from the French Government. Agent at Rio, Mr. Thomas Ber. tolini.

The Chargeurs Réunis have six or more steamers, of about 2,500 tons each, leaving Havre the 2d and 17th of each month, and calling at Lisbon, Pernambuco, Bahia, Rio, and Santos; also stopping at the same places on the return voyage. First-class fare Havre to Rio, $110; thirdclass, $52. This line has been running twelve years, and is understood to have a subsidy from the French Government. Agents here, Messrs. A. Leuba & Co.

The General Maritime Steam Transportation Company, of Marseilles, has for twenty years maintained a regular line of steamers between that city and Rio. They now employ steamers of from 2,500 to 5,000 tons, and which leave Naples the 9th and 24th of each month, calling at Genoa, Marseilles, Cape Verde Islands, and Bahia. The time between Marseilles and Rio is twenty-one days. From here they continue to Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. The central office is at Marseilles. Agents here, Messrs. Karl Valais & Co.

The Lloyds Austrian Hungarian Steam Navigation Company have recently put on a line of monthly steamers of from 1,000 to 1,500 tons between Trieste and this port, the first having arrived in August last. They call at Pernambuco and Bahia, and from here they proceed to Santos. Returning from here, they call at St. Vincent, Lisbon, and Gibraltar. Their principal cargo from Trieste is flour, the cargo back being coffee. Agents at Rio, Messrs. John Bradshaw & Co.

From the foregoing it will be seen that there are eleven different lines of foreign steamships regularly visiting this port; that for this and other Brazilian ports there are three lines of weekly steamers regularly coming from Great Britain, two lines from Germany, three lines from France, and one from Trieste. Also that some of these lines have been in regular operation a quarter of a century, and that some of their vessels are among the largest and fastest oceau steamers. When, too, it is remembered that each of these European countries are represented in the ports of Brazil by twenty to fifty of their own citizens to one American, the odds that American export trade has to contend against must be quite apparent.

FOREIGN COMMERCE OF BRAZIL.

The returns of the foreign commerce of the whole empire are not published for a later period than the fiscal year ending June 30, 1882, being thus nearly two years behindhand.

From the last annual report of the minister of finance it appears that the foreign commerce of Brazil amounted in the year 1879-80 to $169,709,133; in 1880-'81 to $178,031,352; and in 1881-82 to $172,353,933, being an average of $173,000,000 a year. The imports amounted in 1879-80 to $74,279,749; in 1880-'81 to $77,597,241; in 1881-82 to $79,168,719; being an average of $77,000,000 a year; and

the exports in 1879-'80 to $95,429,384; in 1880-'81 to $100,434,111; in 1881-82 to $93,185,214; being an average of $96,000,000 a year.

The aggregate foreign commerce of all the other South American states per year is $275,000,000. That of the two neighboring River Plate countries, Argentine Republic and Uruguay, together amounted in 1880 to $138,000,000, or only $35,000,000 less than that of Brazil.

Statement No. 7 herewith shows the kinds, quantities, and values of domestic products of Brazil which were exported in the year ending June 30, 1882. A description of the imports into all ports for the same period is not attainable.

The following statement will show at a glance the value of the exports of seven leading products of Brazil during the three fiscal years 1882: up to June 30,

1880-'81.

1881-'82.

$2, 230, 281

$2, 199, 278

13, 473, 491

11, 152, 093

54, 291, 757
3,861, 357
3,294, 144

3,555, 885
3, 248, 048

54, 237, 620

$4, 154, 789 15, 671, 737 45,043, 661 3,394, 463 3, 402, 289

5, 264, 275

5, 097, 951

5, 162, 322

1,084, 417

1, 161, 903

1, 160, 054

83, 499, 722

AGRICULTURE OF BRAZIL.

Mode of cultivation.-The agriculture of Brazil differs from that of the United States and Europe as much in its methods as in its products. The surface of the country is so abruptly broken that it does not admit, or at least in respect to the area thus far cultivated has not admitted, of the use of the plow and the more modern implements to any considerable extent. The hoe is the universal implement for field-work, and this fact will help very much to give an idea of the situation which agriculture occupies. As the soil in Brazil, especially in the coffee-producing regions, is a firm, red clay, mixed with gravel, the hoe necessarily is about twice as heavy and large as the field-hoe in common use in the United States. It is often used in place of a grub-hoe. I have seen a platoon of hands in one rank moving over a field of low bushes, which they were leveling with the hoe, and apparently breaking the soil at the same time. Another implement in considerable use is a sort of knife about as long and heavy as a cleaver and curved at the end. It is fastened to a long wooden handle, and in planting is used both to open the soil and cover the seed.

A Portuguese who, at the latter part of the last century, wrote an able work on the agriculture of Brazil, represented that the Indians in planting corn used a stick, the end of which had been burned and sharp pointed, to open the ground for the seed and to cover it. He shows that the destruction of the timber in order to plant was the same then as now, that the system of the white people was scarcely better than that of the natives, and he eloquently laments such waste of timber, as well as the lack on the part of the settlers of the use of the plow.

Imported potatoes.-There seems to have been very little progress in the method of agriculture among the mass since then. It is important to remember that the common potato and the small grains, wheat, oats, barley, and rye, do not flourish in Brazil. Wheat has sometimes been raised in the more southerly provinces, but it does not appear to have 14708 C R, PT 2-19

been a success. The common potato used for the table at Rio de Janeiro is imported in light wooden boxes, containing less than a bushel each, from Portugal, France, and Germany. The sweet-potato and yam grow abundantly, but are scarce in the market, owing to the fact that transportation is everywhere dear, both on land and water. Tomatoes can be grown, but the large variety is seldom seen, and onions, except small green ones, are imported from Europe.

Mandioca.-An important substitute for the potato, especially among people of African descent, is the mandioca, a vegetable indigenous to the country, and found cultivated by the natives on the arrival of the first Europeans. Like the potato it grows beneath the soil, and is shaped somewhat like a long sweet-potato, though more on the root order, and has a skin darker and thicker. The stalk is a little taller and stiffer than that of the common potato, and a field of it has a bluish green color. Of the two sorts in use, one is cooked like the potato, but has a firmer and more nutty consistency and flavor. The other sort has a poisonous quality in its green state, but, after a peculiar process, is made into a coarse meal, which is eaten commonly by laborers in its raw state mixed with a fatty gravy, and by people in general after a brief cooking in butter. Some quantities of mandioca meal have also been exported to Europe for the production of tapioca. Seventeen million pounds of Brazilian mandioca meal were received at this port the past year. The export of it amounts in value to only about $300,000 a year. Rice.-Rice may be cultivated throughout the empire, but there is not enough produced for home consumption. The domestic production received at this port last year was 5,000,000 pounds.

Indian corn.-Maize, or Indian corn, is grown successfully in all parts of the country and forms one of the principal crops. None, however, appears to be exported. On the contrary, on account of the expense of bringing it from the interior, the principal seaports have been compelled to import some of their supply from abroad. In recent years the importation from the River Plate to this port has averaged about 115,000 sacks per year, at, say, $2 a sack, but owing to the steady increase of the home supply the importation in 1883 amounted to only 26,000 sacks, or 140,000 bushels, which was half as much as was received at this port of domestic growth.

The Brazilian maize is generally the yellow sort, of medium-sized kernel, and is produced the most extensively in the provinces of MinasGeraes, and San Paulo, both adjoining the province of Rio de Janeiro. It is planted by hand in the months of September and October, and is usually hoed twice. It is often grown on coffee plantations during the first five years after the coffee-plants have been started. A common way of doing on new lands is to first cut the underbrush, burn it, and thereby kill the timber, and afterwards plant the ground with corn, the yield being about 40 bushels to the acre. Another season a new piece of virgin timber may be treated in the same way. Naturally there is some outcry against such a devastating system, but it avails nothing. In a country pre-eminently adapted to corn-growing it may seem singular that the market in a city like this cannot furnish that delicious and nutritious article of fresh green corn. One sees, it is true, in a few vegetable-shops, or on the wooden trays of a few old colored female peddlers, some ears of wilted and yellowish-looking corn that has been gathered and kept fully a week, but the fresh, genuine article is never to be had in the city. In the country it is cooked with the husk on.

CONTINENT OF AMERICA: SOUTH AMERICA.

Beans.-Beans, and especially black beans, form a common article of subsistence, and though often grown as a separate crop are also commonly planted in the corn-hills at the last hoeing, and mature in three months. Twenty-five million pounds of beans of domestic growth were received at this port in the last year.

SUGAR.

The richest sugar-producing district of Brazil lies on the eastern border of the province of Pernambuco, where it has been under cultivation two hundred and fifty years. It is linked in history with hardfought wars between the Portuguese settlers-who were finally conquerors of the country-and the natives, the French, and the Dutch, and still shows some traces of a quarter of a century of Dutch gov. ernment, and especially of the administration of that able statesman, The most of the cane-growing land has an Prince Maurice, of Nassau. elevation of only about thirty feet above the sea, and was originally covered with forest. The soil is clay, deep, tenacious, and light colored. The plantations generally contain a large area in which there is considerable waste land, more or less hilly and thinly wooded. Many of the planters' residences are large and well furnished. A good deal of the work is done by small tenant farmers who get half the crop for their labor, and whose dwellings are scattered over the estate. The cane newly planted takes fifteen to eighteen months to ripen, and then yields annually for ten years and sometimes twenty years without replanting. It is hoed twice, and in exceptional cases three times during the season, but the plow and cultivator are scarcely used. The crop occupies about a year in maturing and is usually cut from October to January. That which grows on low ground develops the fastest, but contains less sugar The yield is from fifty to one hundred than what is grown on the hills. The product of white sugar averages at the tons of cane per acre. What are called the central modern mills 8 to 10 per cent. of the juice. mills have small iron railways extending five or six miles in different directions over the cane growing land, and they pay $2.50 to $3 per ton of cane delivered on the cars. The industry is remunerative, and there are yet considerable areas of undeveloped sugar-growing land in that and other provinces. In the vicinity of Campos, province of Rio de Janeiro, are likewise some splendid sugar estates. There are also rich sugar-producing lands in the vicinity of Piracicaba, Capivary, and other places in the province of San Paulo. Brazil's export of sugar averages about five hundred million pounds a year, of the value of $14,000,000.

COTTON.

Cotton is another leading crop of Brazil, and is raised extensively in Pernambuco and neighboring provinces on the more elevated lands and where the soil is lighter than that devoted to the cane. It is also largely grown in the province of San Paulo. It matures about the same time as the cane. Nearer the equator the plant lasts several years and becomes in fact a small tree; but in such cases the field is finally abandoned and new land planted. The best cotton, however, is that which is produced from annual planting. In the province of San Paulo, for example, the cotton crop is in blossom in January and picking begins in February. The cotton districts have fewer marks of wealth than are found in the sugar districts. During the three years ending June 30, 1882, the annual export of cotton from Brazil averaged 32,000,000 pounds, of the value of a little over two million dollars.

COFFEE AND COFFEE PLANTATIONS.

Coffee, the chief crop of the country, is principally grown on large plantations by slave labor, but has not contributed much to the promotion of agricultural science, though in each of the last two years very well arranged coffee expositions in this city, under the auspices of the Association of Agriculture and Commerce, indicate a disposition in that direction. By far the greater proportion of Brazilian coffee is raised in the country tributary to Rio de Janeiro and on mountainous and hilly land, naturally timber-producing. The soil exclusively used for growing coffee is a deep or purple red clay, known in Brazil as "terra roxa." In the province of Rio de Janeiro 1,000 trees yield per year 704 pounds, or 5 bags; in the province of Minas Geraes, 800 pounds, or six bags; in the province of San Paulo, 1,440 pounds, or eleven bags; and in the vicin ity of Campinas, 1,920 pounds, or 143 bags.

The coffee tree sometimes yields at the age of three years. It is very sensitive. The injuries which it is liable to are frost, hail, excessive sunshine, which shrivels the fruit when green and tender; depredations by a small butterfly, which deposits its eggs on the leaf, but most of all an ant which is half an inch in length, and which undermines the tree. Large plantations annually expend a thousand dollars and upwards for bisulphate of carbon to destroy them. Fifty per cent. of the coffee plantations, with the slaves thereon, are under mortgage, and of these 30 per cent. are beyond redemption.

On coffee plantations the slaves habitually rise at 4 o'clock in the morning, and at 5 o'clock start for their place of labor and commence work by 5.30 or 6 o'clock, and work from twelve to sixteen hours per day. On the larger plantations 70 per cent. of the slaves are employed in the field, and on smaller plantations a larger per cent. are so employed. The coffee is gathered by stripping it by hand from the branches with the leaves. This is very different from the system in Java, where the coffee berries are carefully picked one by one and deposited in a dish or basket. There, one family will cultivate 500 trees, while in Brazil a single hand in this province cultivates from 3,000 to 7,000 trees. As showing what may possibly be the falling off in production in this country after slavery ceases, the following example may be cited: On a well-known plantation the slaves were set free and then hired on these terms: They were allowed half the crop of coffee and all the maize, vegetables, and fruits for subsistence which they could raise on the pieces of ground severally assigned them. The result was that the latter crops increased very much while the coffee crop diminished from 320,000 pounds, which it had been with slave labor, to 88,000 pounds. Nothing was done meantime towards starting new trees. The machinery for cleaning coffee and putting it in the most attractive condition for the market is expensive, and on the large plantations, which occasionally are found equipped with enterprise, sometimes costs $15,000 to $20,000; and the machinery necessary for cleaning the crop of a small farm could hardly be procured for less than $3,000. Many immigrant coffee farmers are consequently obliged to send their coffee to market in a crude condition and to submit to a heaay deduction in price on that account.

The coffee crops of Brazil for each of the last two years have been unusually large, amounting to some 6,000,000 sacks of 132 pounds each, but as the price was uncommonly low the money return for the same was scarcely more than was received for the two and a half million sacks exported in 1879-'80, the proceeds of which amounted to $54,000,000.