Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/557

Rh and 62.7 in 1890. That of the negroes fell from 54 to 14.5 and then to 12.3 per cent, in spite of the excess of negro over white immigration, which continued until the suppression of the slave trade in 1854. Since that date European immigration has been great. However, the proportion of whites of foreign birth decreased from 34 per cent, in 1872 to 30 per cent, in 1890. Native whites numbered 34 per cent, in 1872 and 51.6 in 1890, while the blacks fell from 21.7 to 16.3.

The movement of population from Rio to and from the surrounding country undoubtedly affects the relative proportions of whites and blacks. This element of uncertainty does not exist when the population of the country as a whole is studied, and the successive general, censuses of Brazil afford a better basis for calculation.

Brazil was settled in the middle of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese—a people formed of the mixture of many nations, all of them, however, of pure Caucasian descent and the vast majority belonging to the Mediterranean race. The country was found inhabited by red Indians, who closely resembled the North American aborigines, and who readily submitted to white domination. The reports of the Jesuit missionaries and parish returns show that the process of incorporating them with the religious, political and industrial framework of the colony was begun immediately and continued for nearly a century and a half. About five thousand Indians were so civilized and incorporated.

Almost simultaneously with the original white settlement the importation of negro slaves from the near-by African continent began, and it was continued on a large and increasing scale for three centuries. By the end of the eighteenth century the arrivals had reached twenty thousand yearly. It is estimated that about two millions of negroes were imported into Brazil during the colonial period.

White immigration was surprisingly small. Portuguese policy did not aim at erecting a new Portugal across the sea, but at making a profit out of the region by the labor of Indian and negro slaves. No foreign whites were allowed to enter Brazil, and it was difficult even for a Portuguese citizen to obtain the required passport. About twenty thousand emigrated to central Brazil with the early expeditions by the colonial proprietors and the government. In the beginning of the eighteenth century several thousand Azoreans went to northern Brazil. A century later the discovery of gold in Minas Geraes stimulated a rush estimated at twenty or thirty thousand. In the middle of the eighteenth century there was a considerable influx of Azoreans into extreme southern Brazil. With these exceptions whites came singly or in small bodies, being mostly officials, soldiers, proprietors coming to take possession of huge land-grants from the crown,