The condition was the result of Nature's geological work here. It was discovered about the year 1885 that Nature had disposed large areas of what came to be called "red earth"--a certain diabasic soil of rich decomposed lavas--in this part of Brazil, and that the coffee-shrub flourished wonderfully upon them. A coffee-planting "fever" was the result. Rich and poor flocked in to take up these lands and plant the berry; other forms of agriculture were despised; all hunted for the red-earth deposits, built their homes, set out rows of young shrubs. The forests receded, cut down by the axe of the new settlers. Towns sprang to being as if by magic, where people were drawn from the four quarters of the globe, from every nation. _Fazendas_ rapidly spread, railways were multiplied, coffee occupied all minds. They thought it the one thing on earth. Coffee was their art, literature, religion. Thus the great and to-day rich and handsome city of San Paolo grew up, into which coffee pours, to have its final outlet for the market beyond the sea, at Santos--once a dreadful and fever-stricken port, whose very name was anathema to the traveller, now a fine and fairly healthy seaport of vast importance. [Illustration: A VIEW IN SAO PAULO. Vol. II. To face p. 140.] The life and circumstances of the immigrants or "colonists," as they are termed, in these coffee-growing districts of Brazil is one of peculiar interest for the student of race matters and human geography, of great value in the science of colonization. Here is an account by a careful observer: "Each _fazenda_ constitutes a little isolated world, which is all but self-sufficient, and from which the colonists rarely issue; the life is laborious. The coffee is planted in long regular lines in the red soil, abundantly watered by the rains, on which a constant struggle must be maintained against the invasion of the noxious weeds. The weeding of the plantation is really the chief labour of the colonist. It is repeated six times a year. Directly after the harvest, if you ride on horseback along the lines of shrubs, which begin, as early as September, to show signs of their brilliant flowering season, you will find the colonists, men and women, leaning on their hoes, while the sun, already hot, is drying behind them the heaps of weeds they have uprooted. "Each family is given as many trees as it can look after; the number varies with the size of the family. Large families will tend as many as eight or ten thousand trees; while a single worker cannot manage much more than two thousand.