Page:Knickerbocker 1864-07 64 1.pdf/22

The caboclos, the third group of the people of color, are not numerous in the towns on the coast. They are the issue of the two vanquished and proscribed races, the negro and the Indian. They are chiefly met with in the interior, on the limits of the forests, which serve them at the same time as a refuge from their persecutors and a shelter for their idleness. The African element is generally represented by the father. The Indian is too proud of his red-skin superiority to approach a negress; but, on the other hand, the Indian women voluntarily leave their copper-colored husbands to go with negroes. The occupations of the caboclos are almost the same as those of the half-civilised Indians, with whom they are mingled. They gather sarsaparilla, caoutchouc, and vanilla, and manufacture pottery which is not destitute of elegance, though rather too suggestive of the primitive races. The caboclos of Para have even attained some renown in this species of industry. They some times produce effects of inimitable grotesqueness with their black clay intersected with red bandlets. I noticed that these mestizo artists had a preference for reproducing the form of the alligator, which is the animal most feared in the country.

The caboclos who live in the towns, or in the neighborhood of the plantations, become laborers or domestics; but these lazzaroni of the New World will work only under the sting of hunger. This, unfortunately, is a reproach applicable to all people of color, and who ever leaves a rancho, after seeing the mulatto by the side of the negro and the Indian, never inquires but with sadness which of these three types can most profitably assist in working the virgin soil of Brazil.

Our answer to this question may have been easily surmised. The Indian, as has been seen, plunges further and further into his ancestral forest, in his dislike for civilization, which has only brought him evil. The black submits with difficulty, his existence crushed beneath the wheels of that relentless machine called production. The caboclo, the hybrid issue of wild tribes, inherits only their indolence and their inaptitude for active and profitable labor. There remain, then, the mameluco and the mulatto, who have drawn from Portuguese blood some germs of that feverish activity which made their forefathers so celebrated in the annals of navigation. Unfortunately, they are far from being, by themselves, adequate to the task. The maxim of dolce far niente, imported by their fathers, is too much of in accord with the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil, and suits their indolent and sensual nature too well for them not to make it their unique law. Besides, of what advantage is industry to them without an outlet, without roads, without employments? The most enterprising of them, or those who live in the vicinity of the Rio de la Plata, are only acquainted with horses and cattle. A rancho and a certain amount of pasturage suffices for them. Their brethren of Para, enervated by the warm atmosphere that envelopes them, are not very distinguishable from the Indian. They pass their time in sleeping or bathing. It is only by a constant infusion of European blood, by impressing industry upon their minds and habits, and finally by the vivifying effect which the railroad produces everywhere on its advent, that civilization will pursue its conquests and take possession of those immense areas as yet subject only to the powers of nature. Under these latter conditions only can the man of color play a useful part, and assist in the progress of colonization.

To pass from the rancho to the fazenda is to enter into full creole life, after witnessing the wretchedness of savage existence. The traveller who would