The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

266 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA.
Efxent Immigration.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century European immigration has
acquired sufficient development to materially affect the general growth of the
population. In 1891 the number of arrivals perhaps equalled the natural increase
due to the excess of births over the mortality. Before the proclamation of inde-
pendence, the Portuguese alone had the privilege of settling in that part of the
New World which belonged to their Sovereign, and even for them the jiermission
was restricted by all manner of official regulations. Strangers actuall}' domiciled
in Brazil depended on chance or on special favour to be allowed to remain in the
country. They were mostly shipwrecked sailors or passengers, prisoners, and
especially mercenarj^ soldiers, whom it would be difficult to restore to their homes,
and who generally received grants of land. Nevertheless, the Government also
directly introduced " Islanders," that is to say, natives of the Azores, when Portu-
guese settlers could not be procured to occupy districts possessing a certain stra-
tegic importance.
But systematic colonisation had already begun in 1820, when King
Joao VI. settled some Catholic Swiss peasants in the Nova Friburgo district.
Four years later was founded the German colony of S. Leopoldo, which is still
the most important centre of foreign colonisation in Brazil. Private enterprise
supplemented the movement controlled by the State, and many large landowners,
anticipating the abolition of slavery, began to substitute free labour for the blacks
employed on their plantations. But too often they merely replaced one kind of
servitude for another, and several of these so-called "free" colonies ended in
disaster. In general the essays at colonisation may be said to have succeeded in
exact proportion to the degree of freedom allowed to the settlers. The colonies
flourished when the strangers became freeholders ;
remained hired labourers or " tenants at will."
they soon died out when these
The natives of Portugal, who, till about the j'ear 1870, constituted pretty well
two-thirds of all the arrivals, were absolutely free settlers, coming either singly or
in family groups. Having no objection to any kind of work, they sought employ-
ment wherever they could get it without applying to the Government, to the
great financial companies, or to any of the syndicates working the plantations.
Proportionately to their numbers they took a far more active part than any of the
other colonists in the commercial and industrial life of Brazil, as artisans, porters,
overseers of slaves, hucksters, wholesale dealers, and in many other capacities.
After a few years in the country, many amassed sufficient wealth to return to the
Terrinha, "Little Land," of their birth, where they built themselves stately man-
sions, often on the very site of the ancestral cabin.
Notwithstanding their defective character, the official returns suffice to show
an extremely rapid increase of immigration, especially since the middle of the
nineteenth century. During the twenty years from 1850 to 1870 the annual
average ranged from 7,000 to 10,000. These figures were doubled in the next
decade, then quintupled, and increased tenfold during the last decade. In 1891