n
for a certain number of years and no more. The Portuguese went to the
east and to the south-west to make themselves part and parcel of the
soil of the country they had annexed. To this end they mingled from the
very start with the natives, and inter-married with an entire want of
restraint with the Indian women.

Thus from the very inception of the Portuguese colonial era we are
confronted with a race of half-castes, and we see the forces brought
about by a mixture of blood and climatic conditions working more
powerfully in the Portuguese colonies than in any others. The result
was, in one sense, the formation of a new race, and an almost complete
absence of rebellion and native unrest in those parts where genuine
civilization had been attempted. That the race as a whole lost its
European vigour and its northern principles was inevitable. This was the
price of peace.

The subject is one into which climatic influence enters largely. Many
of the districts of Brazil were not, and are not, in the least suited as
a permanent place of residence for the white man. Were an attempt to be
made to populate such places as these by Europeans, it could only be
done by means of a continual change of inhabitants. That is to say, each
resident, having spent a certain number of years in the spot, must be
succeeded by another in order to preserve the integrity and vigour of
the race.

Portugal, with an extraordinary generosity, flung her handful of white
colonists into the vast lands she had discovered, and hoped by this
means to raise the leaven of the whole. In India, as exemplified in Goa,
the result has met with scant success. In Brazil, however, where the
proportion of white to black was greater, a race of intellect and
culture has been developed, although occasionally subject to the mental
paroxysms of the dwellers in the tropics. In any case it may be said
that the colour question has never existed in Brazil--so far, at all
events, as the Indian is concerned. It was necessarily in evidence to a
certain extent upon the first introduction of the negro slave, but even
here the question has become of less and less importance, until, at the
present day, the negro has in Brazil probably a more congenial
resting-place than anywhere else in the world.

It must never be forgotten that these remarks as regards the Spanish
colonies, and to almost as great an extent as regards the Portuguese,
apply to the general run of the population.