The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

STATE OF EDUCATION, BRAZIL. 283
communications with all the larg« seaports, such as Para, S. Luiz de Maranhao,
and Fortaleza, Recife (Pernambuco) , Maceio, Bahia, Tictoria, Rio, Santos, Paranagua,
Desterro, and Rio Grande do Sul. As many as seventeen companies, nearly all
English, are engaged in this service, although in virtue of a recent Act, vessels
flying the national flag are alone authorised to engage in the coast traffic. The
majority of the crews are also requii-ed to be of Brazilian nationality, a condition
which could not be complied with but for the facilities afforded to foreign sailors
of becoming naturalised citizens.
In ordinary times about ten Atlantic liners arrive every week in the Brazilian
seaports. The voyage from Lisbon to Pernambuco usually takes eleven days
but the Atlantic at its narrowest part, between the African and South American
continents, could be crossed in two days and a half by a fast sailer, such as those
engaged in the service between Liverpool and New York. Direct telegraphic
communication is maintained by submarine cables between Pernambuco, Europe,
and the United States. A Hue 3,7'20 miles long skirts the seaboard from the
Amazons to the Plate estuary.
Euuc.\Tiox
—
Religiox.
Public instruction could scarcely make much progress in a country in which
the great majority of the labourers have, till recently, been slaves. Nevertheless
some schools and colleges had already been founded bv the Jesuit missionaries
under the colonial administration, and during the second half of the eighteenth
century the ilarquis de Pombal had caused "royal" educational establishments
to be opened. But the great mass of the people still remained unlettered.
In 1834, seven years after the promulgation of the first law regarding public
instruction, in the whole province of Rio de Janeiro there were only 30 schools,
attended by 1,369 of both sexes. Since then a great improvement has taken
place, although recent statistics show that even in the most advanced provinces
a great part of the young are still receiving no instruction. In 1872 about 23
per cent, of the males and 13 of the females could at least read, while one negro
in 1,000 knew the alphabet. Twenty years later it was estimated that over
three-fourths of the whole population of both sexes, whites, blacks, and coloured,
were still ignorant of the rudiments of knowledge. Many of the rising genera-
tion, however, are self-taught. In the central States of Minas Geraes, Goyaz, and
Matto Grosso, most of the curandeiros (" healers," doctors) have qualified them-
selves by the study of medical works without any instruction, and these are
often remarkably successful in the treatment of their patients. The negroes,
who are stated to excel the whites in the musical faculty, have grouped themselves
in musical clubs, numbering many thousands.
The high schools are supported by the State, always excepting various separate
establishments founded by the Jesuits at a distance from the large cities, such as
that of Itu in the State of S. Paulo, and the college of Cara^a in Minas Geraes.
In Rio are centred most of the higher faculties—College of Phvsicians, School
;