The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

EESOUECES OF BRAZIL—MINERALS. 27S
Even the sj-stem of parceria, leaseholds or joint tenure, is looked on
askance by the new generation of settlers from the Old World, who had crossed
the Atlantic in the hope of becoming independent freeholders. This is the
great question for the immediate future of Brazil. The cultivators claim the
land ; they even seize it in certain districts, and cultivate it for their own
benefit, while the title-holders seek to dispossess them. Desirous of continuing
under other forms the old system of bondage, they have induced the legislature
to vote the introduction of coolies on the plantations, under tlie usual conditions
of contract labour. But the '' Celestials " are still slow to arrive ; nor has the
Pekin Government shown itself ready to me.^t the views of the Brazilian planters.
The few Asiatics hitherto introduced will not suffice to avert tlie coming storm,
and the struggle between the great landowners and the lackland classes must
grow to a head.
Mining Industry.
Although agriculture now takes the first place in economic importance, in the
last century mining operations supplied by far the largest share of the foreign
exports. Compared with Mexico and Peru, lands of silver, Brazil was essentially
the land of gold. In the very first century of the occupation goldficlds had
been discovered, especially at Taubate, between Eio and S. Paulo, and the
Paulistas, in their onward movement to the north and west, soon came upon rios de
Oiiro, " gold rivers," in almost every part of the vast region comprised between
the Andes and the Bahia coastlands. Most of these deposits are now abandoned,
the mines owned by Portuguese adventurers in Peru being naturally the first to
be closed, owing to the penal measures taken b}' the Spanish viceroj's, jointly
with the inquisition, against these intruders, charged with preparing the conquest
of the land. Many of the Portuguese pioneers are said to have avoided the
dreaded tribunal of the inquisition by flight, after first throwing their treasures
into the lakes and rivers, and then blocking the galleries leading to the under-
ground works. Even the Goyaz mines, which, in the eighteenth century, yielded
larger quantities of the precious metal, are no longer worked, except by a few
searchers, by primitive processes.
Gold also occurs in Parana, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina, Maranhao
and Piauh}-, but is nowhere systematically mined. At present nearly all the
metal exported from Brazil comes from Minas Geraes, the mining State in a pre-
eminent sense. Towards the end of the seventeenth centurj* a beginning was
made with the washing of the sands and gravels (^cascci/hos) detached from the
auriferous reefs, and almost everj-where covered with a ferruginous conglomerate
(caiiga). In 1698 the Ouro Preto mountains were attacked, and now the natives
were compelled to work under the lash. Nearly the whole of the ground was
turned over for a distance of 280 miles, and a breadth of 140 miles on both sides
of the main range, and in the valleys draining to the Rio das Velhas. From
the route between Ouro Preto and Sahara is seen an open cutting carried to a
VOL. XIX. r