re of blood will have on the European
element in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may judge from a
few remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the intellectual
standard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I have known had
some color; and other such cases have been mentioned to me. Assumptions
and preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible they may
seem."[78]

A Brazilian writer said at the First Races Congress: "The cooperation of
the _metis_[79] in the advance of Brazil is notorious and far from
inconsiderable. They played the chief part during many years in Brazil in
the campaign for the abolition of slavery. I could quote celebrated names
of more than one of these _metis_ who put themselves at the head of the
literary movement. They fought with firmness and intrepidity in the press
and on the platform. They faced with courage the gravest perils to which
they were exposed in their struggle against the powerful slave owners, who
had the protection of a conservative government. They gave evidence of
sentiments of patriotism, self-denial, and appreciation during the long
campaign in Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of the ships in
the naval battle of Riachuelo and in the attacks on the Brazilian army, on
numerous occasions in the course of this long South American war. It was
owing to their support that the republic was erected on the ruins of the
empire."[80]

The Dutch brought the first slaves to the North American continent. John
Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "a
Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."[81] This was probably one
of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading companies which early
entered into the developed and the lucrative African slave trade. Although
the Dutch thus commenced the continental slave trade they did not actually
furnish a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the
West Indies. A small trade had by 1698 brought a few thousand to New York
and still fewer to New Jersey.

The Dutch found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in
1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began to
revolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badly
treated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior.
From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes or
insurrections, until at last in 1749