Two chief ethnic periods of formation have been distinguished in Brazil’s development, the first from the XVIth century to the end of the XVIIIth; the second, from the opening of the XIXth century to the present day. In the first period there was, chiefly, a crossing of the Portuguese with the Indian (_mameluco_), of the Portuguese with the Negro (_mulato_) and of the Indian with the Negro (_cafuso_). Later interbreeding becomes more complex, owing to the influx of new immigrants from Europe (Italians and Germans in particular, and Slavs in the south), and to the abolition of black slavery. So that the question has arisen whether the future of the land will be in the hands of the Luso-Brazilian or the Teuto-Italo-Brazilian. Brazilians naturally favour the former eventuality and in order to insure dominance by the Portuguese-Brazilian element propose new systems of colonization as well as immigration zones. Romero reached the conclusion that the Brazilian people did not constitute a race, but rather a fusion. As to whether this was a good or an evil he answered, in his “scientificist” way, that it was a fact, and that this should be sufficient. Since the Indian is fast disappearing and as traffic in blacks was abolished in 1851, and slavery in 1888, white predominance seems assured. “Every Brazilian,” said Romero, “is a mestee, if not in blood, in ideas.” So that white supremacy, never an unmixed blessing, does not, and cannot under the circumstances, imply an unmixed mentality. III What of the effect of this milieu and this racial blend upon the nation’s tongue and its creative output? The Brazilian is by nature melancholy, for melancholy is an attribute of each of the three streams that flow in his blood. The peculiar, haunting sadness of the Portuguese lyric muse is summed up in their untranslatable word “saudade”;[10] both the conquered native and the subjected black are sad, the first through the bepuzzled contact with superior natural forces, the second through the wretchedness of his economic position. It has been recognized that the climate of Brazil has resulted in a lyrism sweeter, softer and more passionate than that of the Portuguese. “Our language,” says Romero, “is more musical and eloquent, our imagination more opulent.” So, too, De Carvalho: “Brazilian prosody has more delicate accents than the Portuguese and numerous interesting peculiarities.”