Brazil, in 1909 / by J.C. Oakenfull.

  • Oakenfull, J. C.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Brazil, in 1909 / by J.C. Oakenfull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    99/260 (page 89)
    To those who have been misled by malicious and interested persons, I would say, get hold of the books in English, mentioned at the end of this work, and digest them carefully. Hear what Professor Wallace says, laugh at Captain Burton’s quaint criticisms (he was British Consul at Santos) and study Fletcher and Kidder, Scully, Bates, etc. The overwhelming testimony of the greatest and best scientists, business men, and ordinary travellers, during the last 50 years, is that Brazil is a country eminently fitted for the European. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, and then treat with the contemptous scorn it merits, the attempt to discredit a country that, but for the short-sightedness of the British in the days of the conquistadors, would have been now the brightest ornament in the constellation of colonies. Again, he who is afraid of the security of his earnings need have no care. His wages are the very first call on an estate. If he hires himself out through the medium of the Government, the latter will see that the contract is entirely in order, and enforce its provisions. 1 speak, however, more to the man who will plough his own furrow, he who wishes a stake in the country, and I say wdth St. Hilaire, if ever there is a place that could do without the rest of the world, it is Minas Geraes, and I go further, and add to Minas at least one half of the 7i>hok of Brazil, irom the Amazon to the Parana. There is room for all, and the only condition necessary is ability to work, and the leading of moral lives. There are no religious disabilities of any kind, and one may find members of almost any faith, scattered over the Republic, including Mohammedans, Jews, Evangelicals, Positix ists, as well as the majority, Roman Catholics. There are, as we have stated in another place, Methodist churches in plenty, especially in the State of Minas Geraes.