to Rio Janeiro, and when we came in sight of St. Sebastian, I left
M. Houlet to proceed to the city alone, charging him to take the
very greatest care of our package of tea-plants, as well as of the
nursery-ground at St. Theresa, while I should visit the flourishing
colony of Ubatuba, inhabited by French families, who cultivate most
successfully _coffee_, and other useful vegetables. After a
delightful sail through an archipelago of enchanting islands, I
landed at Pontagrossa, where I was most kindly received, and spent a
week, obtaining much and varied information, both respecting
cultivated plants and the kinds of trees which grow spontaneously in
the virgin forests of this lovely land, and afford valuable woods
for building, cabinet work, and dyeing. Finally, I visited the tea
plantations of M. Vigneron, which are remarkably fine, though their
owner finds a much more profitable employment in the growth of
_coffee_, which is very lucrative. He kindly gave me a quantity of
young tea-plants and chocolate trees. Reluctantly quitting these
worthy colonists, I re-embarked in a Brazilian galliot, which took
me back to Rio Janeiro in the close of February. There I found the
tea-plants from St. Paul, set by M. Houlet, in our garden at St.
Theresa, and I added to them the stock I had brought from Ubatuba.
All the very young ones had perished on the way, from the excessive
heat, and M. Houlet had much difficulty in saving the others.

* * * * *

M. Guillemin concludes his interesting narration with this partially
discouraging fact;--that though the culture of the tea-shrub
succeeds perfectly well in Brazil; though the gathering of the
foliage proceeds with hardly any interruption during the entire
year; though the quality (setting aside the aroma, which is believed
to be artificially added) is not inferior to that of the finest tea
from China--still the growers have not realised any large profits.
They have manufactured an immense quantity of tea, to judge by what
he saw in the warehouses at St. Paul, but they cannot afford to sell
it under six francs for the half kilogramme (a pound weight), which
is higher than Chinese tea of equally good quality. This is,
however, precisely one of those commodities in which free labour,
that is, the labor of a free peasan