Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/558

554 and a few convicts. The total white immigration for the whole colonial period was about two hundred thousand.

No census was taken in 1807, but partial enumerations made shortly before indicate that the population of Brazil was then composed approximately of 900,000 whites or very light mulattoes; 3,000,000 negroes; 400,000 mulattoes, and 260,000 civilized Indians. In 1808 the mother country was overrun by Napoleon's armies, and the Portuguese king fled for refuge to Brazil, accompanied by thousands of officeholders and soldiers and most of the court. Fifteen thousand persons crowded the ships which carried John VI. out of the Tagus. His first act on arriving in Brazil was to open its commerce to all the world, and thenceforward immigration was unrestricted. White arrivals from 1808 to 1817 were 40,000, and those of negroes, 200,000.

The census taken in the latter year gives the white population at 1,043,000; negroes, 2,350,000; mulattoes, 426,500, and Indians, 259,500. The whites had constituted only 8 per cent, of the original components of the population, but now numbered 28 per cent., while the negroes had fallen from 74 to 62 per cent, and the Indians from 18 to 7.

In the fifty-five succeeding years until 1872, 813,000 blacks were imported and 432,000 white immigrants arrived from Europe. The census taken in the latter year gives the white population as 3,787,289, and that of negroes as 1,959,452. Therefore the 672,000 whites who had come to Brazil up to that date had increased 562 per cent., while the 3,013,000 negroes had decreased to 65 per cent, of their original numbers. The civilized Indians surviving were only half as numerous as their ancestors.

In making a calculation of the total proportions of the three races in the total population of the country there are two uncertain elements which must be taken into consideration. In the census of 1872, 3,750,000 persons were returned as mulattoes or 'caboclos' (white and Indian, or negro and Indian), and no data is given as to what proportion of the three bloods entered into the mixture. Some of those returned as 'whites' were in fact light mulattoes or 'caboclos.' The latter fact would certainly tend to increase the apparent ratio, and it is also probable that the proportion of white blood in those returned as mulattoes is smaller than the proportion of negro and Indian blood. Personal observations indicate that the non-Caucasian element in those returned as 'white' is less than one fourth, and that about two thirds of the ancestors of the mulattoes are negroes or Indian—principally the former. Assuming these ratios in default of statistics on the subject, the population of Brazil in 1872 was 42 per cent, white, 53 per cent, negro and 5 per cent. Indian, while the percentages in the original immigrants were, respectively, 16, 72 and 12.

European immigration from 1872 to 1889 inclusive amounted to