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tar of the negro, the Indian, and many whites. This cachaça, after remaining several months in casks made of certain kinds of wood, loses its wild, taste and becomes a liquor which experts place in the same rank with the famous Jamaica rum.

The sugar-culture requires more hands and more labor than that of coffee; but it is more productive, since spirituous liquors have attained such high prices, It has nevertheless its inconveniences. When the season is too rainy, the sap, supercharged with water, is not readily concentrated, and requires very long boiling. In dry years the cane yields but little—nevertheless, always yields a product, even in the most unfavorable seasons, while coffee may entirely fail. Notwithstanding this great risk, small proprietors cultivate coffee in preference. The harvest presents no difficulty. If they have no machine for shelling it, they take it to their neighbor. The establishment and maintenance of a sugar-plantation, on the contrary, requires heavy advances, which only the wealthy planters are able to make.

The cotton-culture in Brazil does not date far back, and except in some localities is not much practised. Perhaps the civil war which afflicts the United States (1863) will give it a decided impulsion. This culture, which is as simple as that of coffee, requires less care. Nothing is more picturesque than a field of cotton-plants in flower. The plant is not in general very tall, the branches of some species, indeed, trailing upon the ground. But when the bud opens to the warm breath of spring, the fields are spangled with great yellow petals that resemble so many butterflies feeding on the honey of the calices. At the end of a few weeks these flowers close, while others are developed. The product ripens in the sun's rays and the precious fleece is formed. The calyx soon opens a second time, displaying those silky bolls that are the admiration of the stranger and the joy of the plantation. At nightfall, when after a soorching day the wide-open husk lets its white tufts fall in long clusters, and the sea-breezes agitate the foliage of the plant, the spectacle is indescribable. At the sight of these gay clusters of fleece, fluttering with the least breath of air, now half concealing themselves and now proudly displaying their incomparable whiteness, one would imagine an immense bouquet agitated by invisible hands.

Brazilian agriculture may be summed up in three terms—sugar, coffee, cotton. Grain never appears in the the form of bread except upon the tables of the rich and of Europeans. The poorer classes and the inhabitants of the interior know it only by name. Its place is supplied by manioc, rice, maize, and feijão, (haricots.) As for the other products of the tropics, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, cocoa, caoutchoue, sarsaparilla, etc., they are collected by Indians in the forests where nature happens to yield them, and by them are brought to Portuguese stations, at certain periods, and exchanged for garments, arms, or cachaça.