cipal Chamber, so that there are but few weeks in the year that the reader is not first greeted every morning, on taking up the great barn-door sheet, with a couple of broadsides, more or less, of speeches. An important source of income of the journal in question is the publication of anonymous communications on nearly any subject, public or personal, for pay. Anybody can bring his views before the public in this way, by paying for the publication of his article.

As a rule, all the newspapers publish novels as feuilletons at the bottom part by daily short chapters. The circulation appears to be, in a very great degree, through the newsboys. The Brazilian "Punch," or paper of humor, is an eight-paged illustrated periodical of quarto size, entitled "Revista Illustrada," published at Rio, and now in its ninth year of publication. Perhaps a good sample number would be that issued about the time of the crisis in the Dantas ministry, on account of the slavery question. On the first page is a striking illustration entitled "A Medical Conference." Brazil, personified as an Indian maiden, lies sick, bolstered up in bed, and covered with the bedclothes nearly to her bosom, which, like her arms, is bare. On one side, near the head of the couch, sits the Emperor in a deeply meditative mood, his legs crossed, and his chin resting in his left hand. On the opposite side of the couch is a group of Brazilian statesmen, readily distinguishable by their portraits, in the center of which is Senator Dantas, the prime minister, holding in his right hand a bottle of medicine labeled with his project of emancipation. On his right are represented Senators Affonso Celso and Christiano Ottoni, and on his left Senators Sinimbú, Martinho Campos, Cotigipe, Paulino, and João Alfredo. The chief medical

officer (Senator Dantas): "We all agree that the patient suffers from acute abolition. Well, I think that with this remedy of mine she will soon recover. If my colleagues of the Senate think otherwise, let them express their opinions, and we will discuss what are the best means of saving the country. If any one has a more effective remedy, let him present it." Affonso Celso (aside): "You will not catch us! That is our secret." Christiano Ottoni: "What they want is to take charge of the patient without responsibility. What fine doctors!" "And what will the nurse" (the Emperor) "of the patient say?

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Another illustration represents the figure of a female lying under a tree in the desert, with this text: "All who have seen the Africana' of Meyerbeer know how Selika died. Poor thing!"

This is followed by an illustration of an Indian female lying under a big tree; the carriage of a minister of state passing near; and below, this text: "Brazil, sleeping under the shade of the mortifera mancenilha, runs equally great risk. Numerous governments passed indifferent during long years."

The whole of the last page is devoted to the "Carriage of State conducted by the Conservatives." A figure representing the Emperor sits bareheaded on the back seat, reading a book; opposite, facing him, sits Brazil, still personified as an Indian maiden. On the top is a slave family. The driver's seat is occupied by the chief of the Conservative party, Baron Cotigipe, whose team is a big turtle and a crab; the reins which he holds are fastened to the turtle's mouth, and he is bending forward to apply the lash. A prominent Conservative senator is riding the crab, which is turning off at right angles from the turtle. Senator Teixeira is pushing at one of the

wheels. A yoke of oxen are hitched behind, with heads toward the carriage, to prevent it from going too fast; and, to retard the motion still more, Senator Junqueira is represented as pulling back on the hind wheel; while Senator Paulino, facing to the rear, appears to be holding back strongly by means of the oxen's tails, the ends of which he holds firmly over his shoulder. Senator Correia is standing up behind the carriage, making a speech.

CHAPTER XV.

AGRICULTURE AND STOCK-RAISING.

BRAZIL is pre-eminently an agricultural country, yet its agriculture differs from that of the United States and Europe as much in its methods as in its products. The surface of the land is so abruptly broken that it does not generally admit of the use of the plow and the more modern implements, and yet there are important areas where these implements could be used to advantage, and there is some increase in their introduction. As a rule, the hoe is the main implement for field-culture. As the soil in Brazil, especially in the coffee 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 often takes the place of a grubhoe. 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. The cheapest ones, say those of iron, and weighing two and a half pounds, range in price from three dollars and eighty-nine cents per dozen upward. They are imported in barrels of ten dozen in a barrel, principally from England, and six hundred thousand hoes are imported and disposed of at Rio annually. The upper half of the hoe

is generally painted in green or some other fancy color, and I have seen samples at coffee exhibitions that were even gilded. Another implement in considerable use is a sort of knife about as long and heavy as a cleaver, curved at the end, 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 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. Probably less than two thousand plows, and all imported, are sold at Rio in the course of a year. A good breaking-plow retails at from twenty to thirty dollars, and a common plow, such as would be used with one yoke of oxen, at ten to twelve dollars each. The latter sort of plow appears to have the preference, as one yoke of oxen is the most convenient team for its use. The Government discriminates in favor of agricultural implements, and the transportation of them on Government railroads is cheap.

Coffee is the leading crop, and, though grown principally in the three large provinces near Rio, is raised successfully in every province except perhaps the two most southerly ones. Its production is increasing very considerably, especially in the province of São Paulo, in the vicinity of new lines of railway and newly opened lines of river navigation. Take the whole country together, and the coffee-crop is destined to have a greatly increased