Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social conditions, that of the Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy Barbosa said the other day, “Americans are descendants not of Apaches, but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins.” The Indian admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical hardihood. The extreme south of Brazil, as we have already seen, has had during the last century an enormous influx of European white blood other than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Germanic, while all the large coast cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In the interior of the northern promontory a noticeable feature is the blonde average of the population, partly an inheritance from the days of Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the groups of unhappy _retirantes_ from the drought districts, encountered in the streets of Pará and Manáos, waiting for shelter and work, there are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue eyes who might have come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany. On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there is another very strong admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but occasionally the cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says frankly that the European was not, in early colonial days, “strong enough to repel the native savage and cultivate the soil, and so resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa ... the ally of the white men.” He calls the negro “a robust civilizing element,” and says that from the close association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood descendants, who constitute today “the mass of our population and the chief beauty of our race.” “Still today,” he declares, “the most beautiful feminine types are these agile, strong, brown-skinned girls with black eyes and hair, in whose veins run, although well diluted, many drops of African blood.... The coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our statesmen, and he spoke truth; the negro has influenced all our intimate life and many of our customs are transmitted from him. It is sufficient to remember that the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the _cozinha bahiana_, is entirely African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature of ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this energetic race should have suffered the brand of slavery; we should make a vow to revindicate its place in our history. There are means of utilizing the negro without degrading him.”