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the natural characteristic of the Indo-Latin races, still they cannot escape the slow but inevitable action of moral transformation. The spirit that for the last three centuries has swept over Europe, and which steam and wind daily convey to the Atlantic coast, will soon reach the virgin forests, and in good time fecundate the land which the Portuguese axe has thrown open. The plantation, as it exists at the present day, based upon slavery, is slowly becoming extinct, Since the slave-trade was strictly interdicted, and the squadrons of France and England [and the United States] guard the coast of Africa, the price of slaves exceeds the means of most of the colonists. On the other hand, the plantation negro, upon whom falls all laborious service, is rapidly disappearing. Though prolific by nature, like all the strong races, excessive toil wears him out before his time, and arrests or restrains reproduction. Those fazendas that twenty years ago possessed a thousand slaves, now possess only a few hundred. In years of abundance, the planters often see a portion of their coffee rot in the field, for want of a sufficient number of hands to gather it. Besides, the small proprietors, who find it more profitable to let out their slaves in the populous and commercial towns, desert their estates and bring their human herd to the city. This emigration, which depopulates the farms, is offset by another current, in the opposite direction, of European colonists going into the interior, As in the time of Jornandes, vast and sombre Germania is the grand laboratory of nations—magna officina gentium. The overflow which formerly spread into Gaul, Greece, and Italy, now takes its way across the Atlantic, and finds a place upon the two continents of the West. Up to a recent period the immense stream flowed to New-York, and from there pushed on to the prairies of the far West. Now a portion of the German emigrants prefer to go to the southern tropics. Unfortunately, great obstacles are encountered from the outset. The want of roads, a lack of capital, the severity of the climate, and the uncertain adventure of every new colony, have cheeked many impulses and cooled many burning ambitions. But the foundations are laid, and the result is inevitable, and can only be a question of time. The fazenda is destined to disappear, or at least to assume another character.

What, then, is to take its place? No one can yet say with certainty; but if the past and future are considered through the aid of an attentive study of the various European colonies for the last three centuries, two solutions may be given: either through a change of personality, by substituting the coolie for the negro, the plantation will preserve its old traditions; or, abandoning the plantations to the colonist in consideration of an annual equivalent, the fazendeiro will give up his vast domains, and all those immense estates will be parcelled out. I think that both Brazilians and foreigners would gain by the change. Air and light would penetrate into the hut of the laborer; the railroad would cause the picadas of the forest to be forgotten, and the venda and rancho of the tropics would disappear before the comfort of European hotels. Nobody in Brazil is doubtful of this more or less distant future. The great proprietors, too, understand the epoch in which they live, and are seeking to ascertain the true direction of the current that bears us on; and many of them are even now at work, not wishing to be surprised by a day of unforeseen reckoning.