The Republican journal., 1892-07-07

of chairs, placed at right angles, with
perhaps a leopard skin OF rug between
them. The hostess leads the guests of es-
pecial honor to the sofa, and the rest sit
upon the chairs, the men occupying one
row and the ladies the other, vis-a7vis.
The sleeping apartments of these casas Of
ten have no windows at all, and the only
means of lighting and ventillating them is
through their open doors. But the great
DINING rooms, in size and style, remind
one of the eating halls in old Baronial
castles
In the same enclosure with the manor
house are also the quarters Of the sup
erintendant and overseers hospital, store
house of general supplies barns for stock,
and buildings in which coffee is prepared
for market; and behind all are the slave
,luarters-a lot of low wooden huts, gen
orally arranged in Il great quadrangle,
closed by high gate which is always
huts. and You will see a dirty hammock
on two, swung from the rafters that up
hold the thatch, a few cooking utensils
piled ON the earth floor, and traces of a
brush fire in the middle OF the tioor-sel-
dom anything more OF less. AS everybody
knows slavery has been abolished in Bra
the interior are virtually slaves as much
Us ever-in the bondage of ignorance, pov-
erty and debt
The freight on sack OF coffee, Obs
lbs. is about one cent per mile: therefore,
coffee coming from the end of the Dom
Pedro II railway must pay in the neigh
horhood of four dollars the sack for trans
portation to the shipping point, one
third of its value when delivered i'll Rio.
From Rio to New York the freight rarely
exceeds sixty cents the sack, and is often
as low as twenty-five cents. Thus fifty
miles of railway carriage in the country
where it grows, cost more than ), 200 miles
of ocean. Many of the planters still send
their coffee to market by mule train; con-
sidering that the cheaper way of transport
tation. The entrance into Santos of a mule
train from the interiors; something worth
seeing. The train is always preceded by
a white horse, wearing string of bells
around its neck, and all the mules ODE
dently follow the leader. Sometimes
troops OF several hundred arrive in a
morning: and again there are weeks when
none appear. Every mule brings two
bags of coffee on his back, each bag
weighing lbs pounds. Having made long,
slow journeys, often of hundreds OF miles,
the animals are pitiable looking objects
when their burdens are removed, for the
constant saving of the load has not only
abradcd the skin, but i'll many instances
ground off the flesh to the bone.
The bags are dumped in hugh piles
them cuyndoroS Immediately collect Ike
owarms Of black flies. There is an export
duty to pay, an1 every bag must be pierre
ed and a sample withdrawn, in order to
determine the quality and the duty there
OIL The tariff, based on the market price,
is regulated anew every Saturday. The
| samplin@ instrument is a brass tube shap-
ed exactly like a pen. When the point is
| pushed into a sack OF coffee, the berries
rum down through the tube and after a
handful has been distracted. the instrl-
over like a crochet hook, thus closing the
opening. The operation occupies only a
few seconds, and the samples taken
out amount to many tons in the course OF
a year. They, together with all samples
of exported sugars, are presented to the
| Lepers' hospital. The gangs of cargadores
employed in ''toting' the coffee away
from the custom house and loading i'll
upon waiting vessels, are feature of
Santos Naked from the waist down and
from the knees up, their chocolate color
ed hides glisten in the sun and their we'll
cultivated muscles stand out like whip
cords Each gang had its leader, general
ly the taliest and most powerful negro
among them, who carries a rattle, which
| he shakes la tamborine, to the barbaric
music of which his followers keep step
in rapid jog trot, singing a low, monot-
onous song meanwhile, in words to us I'M
Ineligible. Sometimes the rattle gives
place to a small flag, which is waved in
unison with the step. but the chant is
never omitted and seems as essential as
the sailors-"Yo no. blow the man
down. 1t is said that the average life
of a coffee carrier does not exceed ten
years, and the wonder is that it lasts So
long.
Time was when all the hills that en-
whom Rio and the shores of its bay were
covered with coffee groves, remains OF
which are still to he seen: but with the
opening of the railways, cotfee-culturo
disappeared from that section and pushed
itself farther and farther into the inte-
rior. Though the commerce OF the Bra
lillian Capital is dependant almost entire
ly upon coffee, the commodity is now
brought down from San Paulo. Minas-
Gereas and other central provinces. The
| railways were built expressly for coffee
~