TRANSPORTATION
_I. River and Road_
All the great railway systems of Brazil are pioneers, lines of
penetration, driving into new country like hopeful explorers, and
starting from one of the old centres of population on the sea-border.
Within the last few years links have been completed between some of the
cities where the lines originate, so that there are now long strips of
line running parallel to the coast, and thus Central and South Brazil
are benefited by this junction so far as it exists: but for several
neighbour states the only means of communication with each other is the
sea.
The Brazilian, descendant of the seafaring Portuguese, is a good
waterman by instinct; thousands of little sailboats navigate the sea
margin of Brazil, homebuilt, doing an active petty traffic in raw
materials and fruit and merchandise. This traffic figures in Brazilian
statistics as _cabotagem_. Passengers of a humble class are carried in
addition to freight and there is also a fishing fleet attached to every
sea town, so that the total of Brazilian vessels of this useful little
class is large.
When the first hardy Portuguese and their descendants the _mamelucos_
began, very early after the acquisition of a few strips of coast by the
first captains, to penetrate the interior of the Land of the True Cross
they used the rivers as highways. The settlers of São Paulo sailed their
canoes on the Tieté, the “sacred river of São Paulo,” and it was a
facile system of exploration because this river flows inland from the
heights of the mountain barrier where it takes its rise; running
north-west for four hundred miles it joins the great Paraná and thence
continues southward, finding its way to the sea as part of the Rio de la
Plata. The water systems of the east coast of South America are so
enormous and so closely linked that it is possible, with but a few miles
of portage, to traverse a river path all the way from Buenos Aires in
the Argentine to Pará in North Brazil, a journey of some four thousand
miles.
What the Tieté was to the pioneer Paulistas, the slave-hunting
indomitable _bandeirantes_, the São Francisco was to the early colonists
of Bahia, no less energetic, fearless and predatory. This noble river
rises in the mountains of Minas Geraes, flowing north and eventually
turning east towards the sea and forming the renowned Paulo Affonso
Falls. When the mineral riches of the “General Mines” were discovered
this river became a busy highway of travel, the Bahianos flocking to the
regions of gold and precious stones in such numbers that the coast
settlement was almost deserted.
It was during this period of gold fever that two of the very few good
roads in Brazil were constructed: one ran between Rio de Janeiro and the
first capital of Minas, the mining town of Ouro Preto (“Black Gold”),
and along it caravans travelled weekly, bringing out ore and hides and
taking in slaves and merchandise. Villages which sprang up along the
line of this old highway still exist although the road itself has long
fallen out of repair, and one, Juiz da Fora, has grown into an important
well-built town, the centre of a mining and agricultural section now
served by a railroad.
The other road which owed its construction to the exciting tales from
the gold camps ran between São Paulo city and the mines; its existence
was limited by the days of prosperity of the gold-seekers, and when the
rich deposits of alluvial gold were exhausted and the _batea_ had
perforce to be exchanged for the spade, the road was abandoned. The ill
luck which attended the pitched battles of the Paulistas with other
claimants to the General Mines caused the withdrawal of many fortune
seekers back to the plantations of S. Paulo and hastened the decay of
the highway.
Another of the few much-travelled roads of the colonial or indeed any
period of Brazilian history, until the opening of the flat lands of the
extreme south by imported European colonists, was one built by the
Jesuits from the coastal colony of São Vicente to their own mission
settlement at São Paulo; this highway negotiated the mangrove swamps of
the flat belt edging the sea and then climbed the rocky barrier of the
Serra do Mar to the cool interior plateau. Before the construction of
this _Caminho do Padre José_ the ascent must have taxed even the stout
spirits of those indomitable priests. The good Padre Vasconcellos wrote,
three hundred years ago, of the journey:—
“The greater part of the way one cannot really travel, but must make
one’s way with hands and feet, clinging to the roots of trees, and this
amongst such crags and precipices that I confess I trembled whenever I
looked downwards. The depth of the valleys is tremendous and the number
of mountains rising one above another appear to leave no hope of
reaching the climax.... It is true that the labour of the ascent has its
compensations now and again, for when I rested upon one of the rocks and
looked below it seemed as if I were gazing from the heaven of the moon
and that the whole round universe lay spread beneath my feet.”
When Fletcher (_Brazil and the Brazilians_) visited São Paulo in 1855,
he made the trip from Santos on horseback over a Serra road, remarking
on the excellence of the section on the flat to Cubitão; he was two days
on the journey and says that the road “which traverses this range of
mountains is probably the finest in Brazil, with the exception of the
Imperial highway to Petropolis.”
This was not the first road constructed to bridge the barrier range, for
in 1790 the Portuguese Governor superseded the Jesuit highway by a new
one which included four miles of solid pavement and had more than one
hundred and eighty angles before it reached the plateau. It was still
too steep for wheeled traffic and the troops of mules which traversed it
in thousands, bringing coffee from the interior after this product
became a commercial factor and before the railway was built, often slid
down the steep slopes on their haunches. It is said that both this and
the first road were lined with the bones of mules that died by the way.
Similar stories are told of the Imperial road, built by that genuinely
progressive ruler, Dom Pedro _segundo_, from Rio de Janeiro to his pet
colony and residence Petropolis, a lovely nook in the heart of the Serra
behind Guanabara Bay. This road, too, traversed flat, marshy ground
before it began to climb the terrible Serra, and the latter section
remained in use for some years after a railroad was constructed over the
flats to the foot of the mountains: engineering difficulties were
considered too great for a railroad until eventually Swiss engineers
applied the same methods as had solved the problem in their own mountain
country.
Many people in Brazil talk of the old coaching days in Petropolis, when
stout mules toiled up the sharp gradients with their loads of passengers
and freight. The team was changed in Petropolis and the route pursued on
into Minas Geraes. This road is still in good condition—Petropolis the
flower-decked and spotless is a centre of fine valley roads leading in
seven different directions—and is a panorama of charming scenes. Like
its sister mountain road in São Paulo and the “Graciosa” road from
Curityba in Paraná, it has entered upon a new lease of life with the
coming of the automobile.
Will the entry of the cheap automobile develop road-making in Brazil as
it has assisted in that good work in the United States? It is possible.
Before the War, the chief importation of motor-cars was from Europe, the
class was high grade, beautiful and extremely powerful. It is said that
no city in the world can show more expensive high-power cars than Rio de
Janeiro, where every hired machine is called upon to climb the steep
grades of Tijuca or some neighbouring mountain. There are large numbers
of such cars also to be seen in wealthy S. Paulo, but they do not go far
from the Avenida Paulista for lack of good roads; the luxurious European
car does its chief duty within city bounds.
But with the introduction of the inexpensive car of North American
build, the _fazendeiro_ is acquiring a car for country use. It seems
certain that what may be called the agricultural use of such cars will
help to bring about improvement in interior highways that was not
necessarily called for when a trusty horse or mule could negotiate any
kind of a boggy track. At the same time it is not to be expected that
Brazil will soon be extensively traversed by great high roads such as
France possesses or such as the Romans left in Britain. The climate of
half the country opposes itself to road permanence with all the force of
the tropics. Burned and disintegrated by fierce sun, deluged and beaten
by even fiercer rains, choked by the lush growth of a soil so fertile
that a tangled green maze springs up almost overnight in any cleared
space, a road has poor chance of surviving in many parts of Brazil
unless unceasing labour and unending money is spent upon it. In the very
regions where roads are most wanted on account of lack of other
transportation means, there is usually the least chance of money being
raised for their upkeep. In thinking of possible Brazilian highways, it
is necessary to eliminate from present consideration much of the great
teeming forestal belt of the north, and the precipitous Serra regions of
the south sea-border; the areas where automobile roads could be built
with a chance of permanence without exhausting expenses in upkeep are
the flat lands of the north, where some excellent plans and beginnings
have been made in Bahia and Pernambuco; part of Minas, where the
Triangulo already has a public automobile highway service, connecting
Uberabinha with the railway; the wide uplands of S. Paulo, Paraná, Santa
Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul; and the interior plateau of Goyaz and
Matto Grosso.
The proof that permanent, and not too costly roads, can be made in
Brazil lies in the fact that they have been made: the Russian carters of
Paraná take their teams over rough but serviceable trails on prairie
lands, and across the high sertão of Matto Grosso that great and gallant
explorer, Rondon, has built roads over which services of automobile
trucks are maintained for the convenience of the telegraph building,
geological and charting work of the Commission. The tale of the
magnificent work in the interior done by the Rondon Commission is an
epic of the Brazilian interior, and one of its great merits has been the
proof that this unknown country is no terrible jungle, but an open,
honest country awaiting the plough.
_II. Rail_
Initiative in railway construction in Brazil is credited to a clever
priest who acted as Regent during part of the minority of Pedro II. In
October, 1835, Padre Feijó presented a bill to the Legislative Assembly
in Rio de Janeiro advocating the creation of a railway system; amongst
other suggestions his scheme included a limitation of rates for freight
and passengers—the former to a maximum of twenty reis for each arroba
carried a league, and ninety reis for each passenger carried a like
distance. Nothing was done for seventeen years, and then in June, 1852,
the Brazilian Government sanctioned a concession for a railroad to link
the port of Pernambuco to a point upon the river S. Francisco, above the
falls which blocked the way of boats traversing the busy interior river
highway. This road was never built. In 1853, another concession was
granted for a line to reach the river from the more southerly port of
Bahia: this plan was carried out and the road opened to traffic (Bahia
to Joazeiro) in the year 1860, but before that day three other railways
had been built and brought into operation.
The first of all railways to operate in Brazil was the Emperor’s road
running from the outskirts of Rio city across level ground to the foot
of the Serra: it was opened in 1854. This, and the subsequent mountain
climbing section extending from the _Raiz da Serra_ to the _Alto da
Serra_, are part of the important system of lines owned and operated by
one of the big English companies, the Leopoldina: I refer in detail to
this series and its development work on another page. A short strip, now
part of the (English) Great Western of Brazil Railway, running on level
country from the city of Pernambuco was opened in 1857, and a line from
Rio de Janeiro to Queimados, a distance of sixty kilometers, was opened
to traffic by Dom Pedro in the year 1858: it forms part of the valuable
series of penetrating lines owned and operated by the Federal Government
today.
Before 1870 the most important producing states, the seaboard
territories with surplus sugar, coffee, tobacco, cacao and cotton had
been furnished with strips of line penetrating limited areas of the
interior. In the north engineering problems were easier, for the
frowning wall of the Serra do Mar melts away in South Bahia, but it was
in the temperate zones of the more southerly regions that transportation
was urgently demanded to serve the needs of the rapidly expanding coffee
regions; São Paulo was feverishly planting all over her best red lands,
and the only outlet for the crop was the steep mountain road to Santos.
An English company took up the work of building a railroad, completed it
after surmounting a series of difficulties and opened it to traffic in
1867. It is a triumph of engineering, and has never had a competitor;
from S. Paulo city itself a fan of railway lines branches out in every
direction except seawards, and while other great centres of rail
networks in Brazil originate at the sea edge, here in S. Paulo the point
of departure is from the plateau above the hill barrier. The São
Paulo-to-Santos line is world famous: it is the channel through which
the bulk of the coffee of the whole world is carried, and is for its
length one of the notable money earners of the railroad world. The road
crosses the coastal swamps following the old Jesuit road as far as
Cubatão, and thence climbs the granite wall of the Serra on one of the
steepest grades known in railway construction, rising two thousand five
hundred feet within a distance of ten kilometers. It is a joy to ride
over this line, with its magnificent equipment, minute neatness,
drainage system of the mountain sides involving a remarkable series of
cemented channels—the very rocks beside the track are tarred to preserve
them from decay, and the sides of the hills are built up with elaborate
care unparalleled in railway work; the company’s power-houses, cottages
for employees, and stations along the route, with the fine terminal in
Santos and the beautiful “Estação da Luz” in S. Paulo, are models. Once
upon a time, it is said, an American railroad man was shown over this
line and asked if he could suggest any improvements. “Not unless the
ends of the ties could be carved or the rails set with diamonds,”
replied the visitor.
Upkeep of the line is costly, soil and climate working against
durability of any human effort; the climb up the steep Serra,
electrically operated by rope haulage on the “endless rope” system,
requires incessant watchfulness, as does the condition of the several
tunnels blasted through the heart of the mountains. There is no better
way to appreciate both the engineering problems and the superb beauty of
the green Serra with its abrupt peaks and deep valleys than to ride on
the brake of a train making the descent to Santos.
The distance between Santos and S. Paulo is about seventy-nine
kilometers, but the company owns branches, and there is a duplication of
the track, the result of reconstruction and the choice of a new route
for the Serra ascent in 1901, which brings the total length of line
owned to one hundred and fifty-three kilometers; the old track may be
seen below the new one on the hillside, and is being electrified with a
view to renewed activity as a freight carrier. The enormous volume of
Paulista coffee seeking an outlet by the line—17 million bags in
1915–16—is a strain upon capacity in the busy season; the exports of S.
Paulo are also developing in a new direction with the entry of Brazil
into world markets with chilled beef, and refrigerator cars are monthly
increasing in traffic over the road.
The capital of the company, whose headquarters are in London, is six
million pounds sterling, and up to the year of war in Europe a dividend
of fourteen per cent was regularly paid: in 1914 twelve per cent was
paid, and in 1915 there was another drop to ten per cent, chiefly
consequent upon the fall in Brazilian currency which caused heavy losses
when earnings counted in milreis were turned into sterling for
remittance to Europe. Lowered exchange has caused serious embarrassment
to most companies operating in Latin America with foreign capital,
especially the transportation companies whose rates are fixed, and it
was loss on this account rather than reduced business which brought
gloom into railway and street-car circles in 1915.
[Illustration:
_The São Paulo Railway._
Operates between São Paulo City and the port of Santos, and is the
great coffee-carrying line. Above, Estação da Luz, S. Paulo City.
Below, part of track traversing the steep Serra do Mar, showing
tunnels blasted through granite.
]
There are three railways which climb the mountain wall of South Brazil:
the first was the São Paulo line, and the second the Petropolis link,
built on the rack system; some wonderful views are passed on the
two-hour journey. The third mountain climbing line connects the port of
Paranaguá to Curityba, in the State of Paraná, some three hundred miles
south of Santos. The construction of this line was as remarkable a feat
as that of the São Paulo railway, and is even more spectacular; it was
only completed after the first daring attempt had failed, and today the
line hangs breathlessly on the sides of mountain precipices, traverses
canyons on apparently frail bridges, and plunges into tunnels blasted
through granite. The Serra is extremely steep in the region traversed by
the railroad and the scenery is quite the most wild and beautiful of the
Brazilian mountain barrier. The line is the outlet for the products of
the mills of industrious Curityba, and from here the _herva matte_ of
the interior woods of Paraná is sent to Paranaguá and thence by boat to
its chief destination, Argentina. Paraná and the neighbouring forests
comprise almost the sole source of supply of _matte_ leaves, and thus
the mountain line has a practical monopoly in the transportation of this
wild product; if recent Argentine plans for planting the shrub are
successful a heavy blow would probably be dealt to this industry.
Brazil built her first railway three years before the Argentine brought
her first line into operation—a modest strip of thirteen miles running
west from Buenos Aires—although British Guiana has the credit of
possessing the earliest railroad of South America; during the Empire
construction proceeded steadily but with a certain caution, and it was
not until after the formation of the Republic in 1889 that floods of
concessions for railway construction invaded Brazil. The years 1890–91
show the highwater mark of such plans, and while many of these dried up
without leaving a trace there remained sufficient impetus for much
genuine and useful construction.
Lines began to go farther afield, to form networks and connected links;
they were part of general improvement plans which presently included
harbours and wharves, waterworks and sanitation schemes, city paving and
draining and beautifying. It is true that from the time of the Republic
is dated Brazil’s plunge into debt upon a great scale, but since the new
American countries could not wait until they had sufficient money in the
national pockets to pay for railway, harbour and sanitation, and Europe
stood ready to lend her surplus gold in aid of the work, Brazil is
scarcely to blame for borrowing as did her sisters, north and south. Her
very extravagance helped to advertise and advance Brazil, the
royal-spending world customer with rich products for sale to justify
her; she attracted immigrants, merchants, capitalists, technical men and
scholars as she never would have done without her renown as a land of
careless magnificence.
Borrowing and building went on without any serious check until 1912,
when the first Balkan War cast long shadows into the financial world;
less than two hundred miles of new railway line have come into operation
since that year in Brazil. But the previous fat years, many more than
seven, had by that time not only brought about rail access to many
fertile interior belts, but also the linking of the more important
systems by lines reaching up and down the coast. The brilliant French
author, Pierre Denis, was able to say ten or twelve years ago that there
was “no general railway system in Brazil; there are small independent
systems, covering with their meshes the regions of long-established
colonization, but without inter-communicating lines.” He found
connection between two groups only, remarking that “the line from S.
Paulo to Rio is today the only means of transit between two groups of
states, excepting the ocean highway.”
At the end of 1922 the situation is greatly changed. Not only have many
states been linked up but three sister Republics are in direct
communication with Brazil by rail. São Paulo city communicates by
systems under allied control with Uruguay; Argentina is in touch at the
western edge of Rio Grande do Sul, where the town of Uruguayana stands
on the river boundary between the two countries opposite to the
Argentine port of Libres; Bolivia is reached at the frontier town of
Corumbá, on the border of south-western Matto Grosso, as well as at the
Madeira-Mamoré Falls in the north. Linking up with south-eastern Bolivia
is the result of the penetration of south Matto Grosso by the
North-Western of Brazil Railway; this line, which has direct
communication with the city of S. Paulo, reached Itapura on the river
Paraná a few years ago, and pushed on energetically from that western
edge of S. Paulo State across the narrow southerly neck of the huge
neighbour, arriving early in 1916 at Porto Esperanza on the river
Paraguay, only a few miles from the objective of the road, Corumbá town
on the frontier of Bolivia. This transportation service gives Bolivia an
outlet of which the interior republic has stood in need since she was
deprived of a seaport of her own on the Pacific; perforce sending her
products out through other republics, Bolivia has been already aided in
the north with the opening of the Madeira-Mamoré line, giving better
access to the river highway of the Amazon.
The North-Western line has pushed farther afield from the seacoast than
any other in Brazil: the constructing company is Belgian, with
headquarters in Brussels, and the Federal Government in this as in many
other instances guarantees interest on the capital expended, a loan
having been raised for this purpose in Paris in 1909. An able Brazilian
engineer, Dr. Firma Dutra, directs the work; all the rolling stock,
including dormitories and restaurant cars, has been built in Brazilian
workshops with Brazilian hardwoods. Another approach, parallel to and
south of the north-western, to the great stock-raising lands of Matto
Grosso is offered now that the extension of the Sorocabana line from
Salto Grande to the port of Tibiriça on the Paraná river is completed;
Tibiriça is a famous cattle crossing where thousands of head of the
stocky beasts reared on luscious interior pastures are brought into the
State of S. Paulo. Their numbers have been greatly augmented since the
opening of two packing-houses in S. Paulo at the end of 1914, and
excellent service has been rendered by the Paulista enterprise, the
Companhia de Viação São Paulo-Matto Grosso, which owns the port of
Tibiriça, operates ferries, runs a steamboat service up the Paraná river
to Jupiá (Itapura) where the North-Western brings merchandise from S.
Paulo city, as well as service on three or four tributaries of the
Paraná; the company has constructed a highway, now bordered with coffee
plantations, rest-pastures for the passing cattle, and embryo villages
along the route, all the way to the city of S. Paulo.
There are three chief fans of radiating railroad lines in Brazil,
starting from the coastal border from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and
Pernambuco. The first two form networks of lines of much greater extent
than the third, and besides these systems there are several points along
the littoral where a railway penetrating inland is already the handle of
a new fan. The southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, is well
served, lines running through the middle of her territory from north to
south (the Auxiliaire, now part of the Brazil Railways group) and east
to west, so that the state is in touch with Argentina, with Uruguay,
with the States of S. Paulo, and Santa Catharina and with the seat at
each end of the Lagôa dos Patos, a busy lagoon with the town of Rio
Grande at the entrance and Porto Alegre at the northern end: the
railroad splits into two at Cacequy in order to serve both the rival
ports. Superior docking at Porto Alegre sent practically all visiting
vessels to the upper end of the lagoon until the end of 1915, when the
new harbour of Rio Grande was formally opened. The work, a long and
expensive series of tasks, was performed by a French company, and
includes the deepening and maintenance of the channel to permit the
entry of deep-draught vessels, docks and wharves; Rio Grande is a fine
state with a cool climate, an industrious population, and thriving
business. It has been carefully colonized with white European settlers,
has space for a million more, and with its easy access to other centres
of population by sea and rail has much to attract newcomers. Increasing
exchange is carried on with the Argentine, chiefly by water.
Santa Catharina’s rail service consists of the north-and-south link of
the São Paulo-Rio Grande line, a short local line between the colonies
of Blumenau and Hansa, and two short strips running inland from the sea,
one from Imbatuba to Laguna and thence inland to Lauro Muller, serving
the coalfields of that region; the other from the excellent little
island port of São Francisco, across to the mainland at Paraty, and
thence inland to Joinville, Rio Negro and Tres Barras, where the lumber
yards of a company controlled by the Brazil Railway Company feed it with
freight. The Tres Barras yards operate with the Paraná pine for which
the southern States of Brazil are famous, ship it to many other parts of
the Brazilian Union, and in 1915 arranged to supply Argentina alone with
forty million feet a year.
S. Francisco port has entered upon a new life since the lumber business
has been flourishing; a double row of settlements has sprung up beside
the track of the railroad and agriculture is showing development in a
region that has been steadily if slowly settled by the descendants of
the early colony of Joinville.
The State of Paraná is better off for connections; in addition to the
north and south link with the sister states of São Paulo and Santa
Catharina, she has a railroad running off from it at the station of
Ponta Grossa due east to Serrinha (whence a branch connects with Rio
Negro directly to the south), on to the pleasant capital town, Curityba,
and down the wonderful mountain road already referred to until the port
of Paranaguá is reached, one of the lively younger shipping points of
the southern littoral.
São Paulo, the next state northwards, is the possessor of the best
system of penetrating railroads in Brazil: she has more mileage than any
other single state in the Union, counting over four thousand miles. In
his Message read before the S. Paulo Congress on July 14, 1916, the
President of the State, Dr. Altino Arantes, remarked:
“During the past year we had an addition of one hundred and forty-two
kilometers to the railroad mileage of the State, bringing the figures of
the total system to six thousand two hundred and seventy-nine kilometers
on December 31. Of this total four thousand three hundred and fifty-five
kilometers belong to private enterprises; one thousand five hundred and
sixty-nine to the State and the remaining three hundred and fifty-five
to the Union.”
The most important of the lines belonging to the State referred to by
Dr. Altino Arantes is the Sorocabana, with over eleven hundred
kilometers of track, which is leased to the Brazil Railways: the other
two state properties are the Funilense Railway and the Cantareira
Tramway, running from S. Paulo city up a green, well-settled valley to
picturesque waterworks among woods.
The Sorocabana with its general westerly direction is one of the lines
which are pushing ahead towards the Matto Grosso boundary; building on
from Salto Grande on the Paranápanema river, the line reached Caramarú
in 1916. As we saw when on the subject of the line from Santos to S.
Paulo, railroads in the State of São Paulo only began forming a network
at the top of the plateau after the Serra had been conquered[6]; the
next to be constructed was the Paulista, which has its northern terminal
at Barretos, in the heart of good cattle lands: a flourishing packing
house owned by the Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril of S. Paulo is
situated near Barretos, and has as its president the same energetic
Paulista who heads the railway, Conselheiro Antonio da Silva Prado. Both
packing house and railway are purely Brazilian enterprises financed with
Brazilian money, but the construction of the road was headed by an
American named Hammond, and was in consequence known for a long time as
“Hammond’s road” to distinguish it from “Fox’s road” as the pioneer line
to Santos was called after the English engineer. The Paulista both
served and created coffee plantations, following the lines of richest
deposit of the red diabasic soils that have made S. Paulo the great
coffee country of the world; the same may be said of the Mogyana, almost
parallel to the Paulista but farther north, also a Brazilian owned and
operated company, and the Northwestern.
Today these paralleled lines are linked with branches and possess steel
arms reaching out into rich developing districts so that there is a
genuine “rede ferroviario” over Paulista territory. The great coffee
centre of Campinas is the point of departure for a star of lines, and so
is the more northerly Riberão Preto, in the heart of the dark blood-red
lands.
In a particularly fortunate position with regard to communication with
other States as well as interior service, S. Paulo is linked directly to
Rio by the line owned and operated by the Federal Government, the
Central system, and onward from Rio due north to the port of Espirito
Santo State; to the interior of Minas Geraes by way of Uberaba, Araguary
and over the border into Goyaz to Catalão and Roncador; by following the
Central’s lines the capital of Minas, the new town of Bello Horizonte,
is reached; southward, the series of lines controlled by the Brazil
Railways take the traveller from S. Paulo all through the States of
Paraná, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande to the Republic of Uruguay, with
connection at the border town of Santa Anna do Livramento with a line
running south to Montevideo.
The writer followed this route in December, 1915. The journey took six
days and nights, three of the latter being spent in the train and three
at points en route while waiting for connections, certain trains running
but twice a week. My path was smooth by official courtesy and the trip
was pleasant as well as interesting; the sparsely occupied country, with
colonies set down here and there near the track, has a delightful
freshness born of bright empty spaces, woods and a multitude of shallow
rapid streams.
The pine forests of Paraná and Santa Catharina with their flowery
carpets were a series of fine pictures, while the wide-spread sunny
pastures of southern Rio Grande, a perfect cattle country with a cool
climate, are waiting for more white immigrants. Herds stray on the sides
of gentle grassy slopes and in the valleys where a cluster of green
marks the bed of a little river, fields are marked out and a red-tiled
house nestles—but these are all too few.
The Brazil Railway Company was formed in 1906 through the initiative of
Percival Farquhar with the object of unifying railway lines in South
Brazil, then in several different hands as a result of the concessionary
system which was the only way of inviting foreign capital in earlier
days: the project also included the control of accessory ports and large
industrial development along the line of the roads. About the same time
the syndicate formed by Farquhar obtained interests in railways in
Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile; a huge unification plan was
foreshadowed.
Some of these plans have fallen through—the narrow-gauge Argentine lines
leased have, for instance, returned to their former control, and Chilean
interests have been dropped—partly because disturbed conditions in
Europe since the first Balkan war in 1912 ended opportunities for
obtaining more metal props.
Registered in the United States, the Brazil Railway Company is really a
monument to French confidence in Brazil, in that the capital employed,
as well as the properties acquired, is Gallic in origin to a large
extent. The capital of the company is fifteen hundred million francs,
and of this huge sum nine hundred million francs were subscribed in
Paris, the rest of the money coming from Brussels and London. The
company is interested in thirty-eight subsidiary companies, including
several railroads which were bought or leased (and, in the case of the
Madeira-Mamoré, constructed), a frigorifico recently completed on Rio
docks, a flourishing cattle company, a land and colonization company,
lumber business, interest in ports, as at Pará, Rio Grande City and Rio
de Janeiro (leased out to another company), a steamship service on the
Amazon river, et cetera. Land owned by the cattle company totals to over
eight million acres, in the States of Matto Grosso, S. Paulo, Paraná and
Rio Grande do Sul, and serious efforts are being made to improve the
stock of the two or three hundred thousand head of cattle kept in
various regions by the introduction of first-class breeding stock.
Animals are sold to the second of S. Paulo’s packing-houses, the
frigorifico at Osasco, just outside S. Paulo city, an American owned and
operated enterprise[7] dating also from 1914, which has friendly
connection with the Brazil Railways.
A few of the interests of the Brazil Railways are in a prosperous state,
as the lumber and cattle businesses, but the position of the company as
a whole suffers from the weaker elements of the group, perhaps
particularly the Amazonian, which were injected into the earlier South
Brazilian plans; many of the development companies not only do not pay
but need money to carry them along. The affairs of the company are now
in the hands of an American receiver, and the latest report presented to
long-suffering shareholders at a London meeting was optimistic in tone.
It is the most ambitious group of enterprises under one control in
Brazil, and perhaps this is one reason why its plan of line, land and
port management has not been always looked upon with a favourable eye by
Brazilian authorities. Objection seems also to be made to the
introduction of foreign capital not for the purpose of development work
of a new kind, but when employed in acquiring properties already
existing.[8]
In South Brazil the company operates over three thousand miles of line,
including the State-owned Sorocabana, the São Paulo-Rio Grande, the
Paraná line, the Auxiliaire traversing Rio Grande do Sul, and the little
Thereza Christina in Santa Catharina.
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are linked by the line owned by the Federal
Government, the Central do Brasil, a series running off from a point on
the S. Paulo line into the State of Minas Geraes; the writer followed
this road when visiting Bello Horizonte, the new capital of Minas, a
beautifully placed city with mountains rising behind it and terraced
plains and valleys sweeping away in front. The line into Minas traverses
a hilly country, green, fertile, well-watered with turbulent rivers
whose valleys are sedulously followed. From near Bello Horizonte a long
arm of steel reaches out past Sete Lagôas, Curvello and Curralinho,
where a branch runs to the famous diamond fields of Diamantina, and to
Pirapora on the river São Francisco: from this point steamboats meeting
the trains take their goods and passengers down the waterway to Joazeiro
in Bahia State. It Is from this river port of Pirapora that an extremely
bold railway has been planned, to run almost due north to the city of
Pará, the latter part of the route following the valley of the Tocantins
river: the line would be some two thousand miles in length, traversing
country never properly explored or charted. Authorization to contract
for the work was given in 1911 to the brilliant Brazilian engineer,
Frontin, to whose genius the beautifying of Rio de Janeiro is due, and a
beginning was made between Pirapora and Formosa, but the universal lack
of money has given a check to operations. The headquarters and main
station of the _Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil_ are situated in Rio
de Janeiro. Three trains are run daily each way between Rio and São
Paulo, those starting in the early morning landing passengers about six
in the evening; they are equipped with a satisfactory and inexpensive
restaurant service. The two night trains leave each city at intervals of
an hour and a half every evening; the first leaves about seven o’clock,
and is modestly furnished with beds on the North American Pullman plan,
while the famous “luxo,” on which newspaper reporters always attend to
take down the names of the illustrious, starts at nine o’clock; each
camarote is a separate apartment with an individual toilette, fans,
electric light, bells, and very prompt attendants always at hand, in the
style of the best European trains. Leaving Rio the track runs through a
pretty green valley, intersected with palm decked little ravines and
numbers of round hills, until the uplands of São Paulo are approached.
The line has never paid its way under Government control, although
deficits have been recently much reduced by stern elimination of free
passes for politicians and their friends. Expenses of operation were in
1915–16 abnormally inflated by the cost of coal which at one time
reached one hundred and twelve milreis a ton (over twenty-eight dollars)
and alterations were made in many of the locomotives to permit the use
of oil as fuel. Coal used in Brazil is practically all imported,
development of national southerly fields not being yet sufficient for a
tithe of the needs, and while Welsh hard coal soared high when the
British Government checked exports, North American was offered at prices
little inferior on account of the making-hay methods of United States
shipowners. Oil, too, is imported, but the Federal Government procured a
large stock before changing the fuel methods of the Central, and is able
to buy supplies from three different firms. Several railroads of Brazil,
in these days of stress, burn wood.
From Rio de Janeiro city is an exceedingly important “rede” of lines,
for in addition to the excellent system of the Central is the series
belonging to the Leopoldina company, an admirable constructor, operator
and developer company. The Leopoldina owns about one thousand eight
hundred and fifty miles of track, serves an area of two hundred thousand
square miles, and penetrates the three States of Rio de Janeiro, Minas
Geraes and Espirito Santo, linking the port of Victoria to Rio by a
lateral line with little branches joining up small ports by the way, and
passing through the rich sugar country of Campos and the active town of
Itapemirim (Cachoeiras) where several industries obtain power from the
falls; other lines run off from Itapemirim, Campos, Macahé and several
points penetrating fertile interior country with good transportation
service. This coastwise series, and another running to Nova Friburgo and
on in a general northerly direction, start from Nictheroy, across the
bay from Rio city: the bay is traversed by a thoroughly up to date
system of ferries, of the Cantareira Company, which originally belonged
to a Brazilian firm but was purchased and is now operated by the
Leopoldina.
The fine line to Petropolis starts from the Praia Formosa in Rio, the
ascent taking two hours, apparently never grudged by the scores of
business men whose homes are in the mountain city during the summer and
who travel daily to Rio; from Petropolis it runs on into the Minas
interior, serving a coffee and dairy country.
The Leopoldina Railway Company was formed in London in 1897, and with
the capital subscribed existing lines were acquired which have since
been improved and largely extended; the series was bankrupt when taken
over but with unification of the lines and the encouragement of
agriculture along the course there has been a respectable
dividend-earning for the last ten years. The company maintains
demonstration farms at Nova Friburgo and Bem Fica in the interior of Rio
State, where irrigation is applied to the rich little valleys that
intersect a multitude of hills; on the hilltops coffee has been grown
for half a century, and while this process has been one of gradual but
certain exhaustion the valleys have been neglected. It is interesting to
see, all along the Leopoldina’s lines, efforts made by the Brazilian
small farmer to imitate the methods of Bem Fica. Another demonstration
farm at the station of Campos, on the way to Victoria, was changed in a
few months from a piece of waste land to a lusty field of cotton as an
example; all this coastal belt is an old sugar country which should also
be a great producer of cotton and fibres and fruit. Running on to the
capital and port of the State of Espirito Santo, Victoria, the line
serves at the latter end a hilly coffee country with one of the most
wonderful winding panoramas of scenery in South America; a dormitory and
restaurant service of high-class type operates between Rio and Victoria,
and from this exquisitely framed little port, “_O Rio em miniatura_,” go
out four million bags of Brazil’s coffee crop. The city lies at the end
of a bay entrance of great beauty, green, broken by fantastic hills
reflected in pellucid water; port works of the best modern design have
been begun by the Leopoldina engineers, but when the writer visited the
port in late 1915 work had practically ceased as a result of financial
stringency. The hopes of Victoria to become one of the busiest centres
of activity are high, for in addition to her coffee export trade she may
serve as a great doorway for outgoing minerals from Minas Geraes:
enormous iron deposits for which Victoria is probably the most logical
outlet have been acquired by a British company and with the war over,
are awaiting loosened purse-strings, for development.
In addition to the coastwise link with Rio, the State of Espirito Santo
is traversed in a north-westerly direction by a line which enters the
valley of the Rio Doce and passes on into Minas Geraes; about four
hundred and fifty kilometers are in traffic of this system, which,
linking up with other lines in the south of Minas, will serve a fine
region and add to the prestige of Victoria.
Looking up the coast from Victoria there is observable a gap between
that pretty port and the cacao centre, Bahia, as regards railroad
connections parallel to the sea coast. The greatest networks of lines
have ceased in Espirito Santo, and above this region there is only one
linking series of lines, the system of the Great Western of Brazil,
serving the whole of the great north-east promontory of Brazil. The
lines of Bahia do not form a coherent system, important as they are as
regards local needs.
Below the port of Bahia (properly the city of São Salvador, but as
little popularly known by that name as Rio is recognized by her official
title of São Sebastião) there are two lines penetrating from coast towns
inwards to cacao-producing country: the most ambitious runs from Ponta
da Areia, close to the port of Caravellas, westwards across the narrow
southern neck of Bahia State, into Minas Geraes to the town of Theophilo
Ottoni, a distance of three hundred and seventy-six kilometers. The
second penetrating line runs from the port of Ilhéos to Conquista, a
distance of eighty-two kilometers. During the war and post-war booms
this was a notable freight carrier and profit maker, for the cacao
plantations tributary to the line have yielded unprecedentedly large
crops at a time when every ounce of cocoa in the world has been called
for at high prices. The isolated little Ilhéos rolled in unexpected
money in 1915–16, and prospered again in 1919.
Bahia’s great port farther northward stands on a peninsula at the north
of a large, deeply indented, island-studded bay. There is no river delta
here to assist transportation problems, and connection between the lines
originating at different parts of the bay is rendered difficult by the
depth of sea inlets and the marshy character of the intervening land. It
is for these reasons that a line runs south from Nazareth, itself south
of the bay, west from São Felix, north-westerly from Cachoeira, with the
most important line of all running from Bahia city across country until
junction with the legendary river S. Francisco is effected at Joazeiro:
this latter line branches off at Alagoinhas (“Little Lakes”) to Aracajú,
the port of the little-known State of Sergipe, and forms the only
linking railroad of the series serving Bahia. The cacao crop of the
State is all marketed in and shipped from Bahia city: it reaches that
distributing point from the producing centres of the more southerly
lands by sea, a state-owned service of small steamboats, the “Navigação
Bahiana,” helping in this transportation work, besides operating on the
S. Francisco river and running to and from certain productive islands
off the Bahia coast. In 1915 Bahia exported 41,546 tons of cacao with an
official value of 37,000 contos of reis, or about nine and a quarter
million dollars, yielding in taxes to the State 6,388 contos, in
addition to large sums contributed by the tobacco and coffee export. As
far as rail connection is concerned Bahia is practically out of touch
with active regions of Brazil, but since her one city of first-class
importance is situated on the sea margin, and she is very well served
both by _cabotagem_ and by ocean-going vessels, national and foreign, no
complaint is heard in Bahia concerning the deficiency. The line from S.
Felix, a town reached by boat across the bay from Bahia which has
achieved fame for cigar manufacture, penetrates richly producing tobacco
country: Nazareth is the headquarters of a district exporting manganese
ores.
[Illustration:
Rua Barão da Victoria, Pernambuco.
Inauguration of Avenida 7 de Setembro, Upper Town, Bahia.
]
Proceeding northward past the mouth of the São Francisco river no
railway is encountered between Aracajú and the coconut-embowered port of
Maceió (Jaraguá), capital of the State of Alagôas: construction of such
a link would involve engineering difficulties in crossing the wide river
delta and, north of it, negotiating the chain of picturesque lagoons
(“lagôas”) which give the State its name. Alagôas, wedged under the
shoulder of Pernambuco, is a fine sugar country: the lower, business
section of Maceió literally runs and drips with sugar; the warehouses
along the waterfront are piled with bags from which cane juice leaks,
and the heady smell of it permeates the streets. From this busy, hot
little city the most southerly arm of the Great Western’s series of
linked lines reaches, a branch penetrating sugar lands by way of Atalaia
and Viçosa, while a more northerly track connects with Garanhuns, runs
thence north-east, and, with a sea-ward branch to Barreiros, connects
with the fan-handle of the system at Recife (Pernambuco).
The Great Western of Brazil Railway was formed in London in 1872; the
first work done was the construction of one hundred and eighteen
kilometers from the port of Recife to the town of Timbauba with an
extension to Limoeiro; in 1901 connection was carried on to the Conde
d’Eu line in Parahyba, and in the same year the company leased seven
other disconnected lines of the north-east promontory, with the object
since attained of forming a linked system. Of the seven thus controlled
three had been built by, and still belong to, the Government, while four
were English built.[9] As operated today the Great Western line includes
more than eleven hundred miles of track, links and penetrates the four
States of Alagôas, Pernambuco, Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, and
serves the ports of Maceió, Recife, Parahyba, Cabedello and Natal, an
independent line extending north of this point to the town of Pedra
Preta. The system has done excellent work in developing sugar, tobacco
and cotton country, but it has suffered from the financial difficulties
of the last three years, droughts reducing the agricultural product of
northerly regions and adding to troubles consequent upon fallen
exchange: the company has asked the Federal Government for relief from
the onerous financial obligations of the original contract, and, with
this revision accomplished, will be in a better position.
North from Natal, with the land sloping sharply east towards the Amazon
delta, no more railroads are encountered until almost midway along the
shore-line of the State of Ceará the port of Fortaleza is reached. From
this point a line runs south-west into the interior to the town of
Iguatú, the track with a couple of little branches including four
hundred and twenty-three kilometers. Ceará is unenviably famous for the
terrible droughts which from time to time scourge and depopulate it, but
when rains visit this territory it is extraordinarily fertile, crops are
abundant, the fecund Cearenses return and cattle-raising is resumed. A
second strip of line runs inland, almost due south, from sea-margin
Camocim to Granja at the head of the bay and thence to Cratheus, three
hundred and thirty-five kilometers distant. Exports of carnauba wax, of
a special class of rubber (_maniçoba_ = _manihot_), and of hides, go out
from the ports of Ceará, and since the last drought of 1914–15 broke in
abundant rainfall there has been unprecedented planting of fine cotton
which is said to promise well. The next state northward is Piauhy, with
but a span of coast and no railroad as yet, although one is projected to
connect with Ceará. Maranhão has two lines: one, planned from São Luis
to Caxias, of which some separate sections are already in operation, and
the other running from Caxias to Cajazeiras, serving interior country.
An important branch, to penetrate the sertão, is projected from a point
along the first-named line to Barra do Córdoba.
The last strip of railway which serves the north Brazilian coast extends
from Pará city (Belem), which is situated inside the mouth of the Amazon
about one hundred and sixty miles from the sea, to the seacoast town
Braganza, three hundred kilometers away. The country traversed produces
Brazil nuts, tobacco, cotton and sugar, and free grants of land have
been given beside the track to settlers.
For the extreme north of Brazil the great fluvial network with the
Amazon as the great main channel serves as the only means of
communication: it will probably remain the sole highway for a long time
to come. There is a total of over forty thousand miles of navigable
waterways in the Amazon valley, with service by steamers and small
_embarcações_ which suffice for the present needs of this immense but
sparsely populated territory. The waterways of Brazil are of such extent
and size that it is not possible as yet to foresee the time when they
will be superseded either by rail or road.
There are in the Brazilian interior several strips of railroad which
serve no other purpose but that of supplementing riverine ways; the most
spectacular and important of these is the renowned Madeira-Mamoré, one
of the most costly railroads in the world and the imposer of the highest
tariffs. Planned for the purpose of passing the dangerous falls blocking
the Madeira-Mamoré river, outlet for rubber districts of Peru and
Bolivia as well as of the Brazilian State of Matto Grosso, the line was
completed in 1912 by the engineers of the Brazil Railways Company. Work
was originally started more than forty years ago by the initiative of
Colonel Church, two or three attempts ending in failure; when the last
relay of American engineers took up the task in 1908 many relics were
found of previous effort, one a locomotive imported by the Collins
expedition of 1878: it was cleaned up and put into use. The line as
completed has a length of two hundred and ninety-two kilometers; the
chief enemy to construction was the deadly climate which took a terrible
toll of lives both of engineers and labourers until sanitation measures
similar to those enforced in Panama were taken.
The line is said to be paying its way, but its success depends very
largely upon the fate of Amazonian rubber in world markets. With the
price of “hard fine” reduced by the competition of the rubber of Eastern
plantations, it is difficult to see how freight rates over the railroad
can be maintained at the present very high scale, necessary in order to
give a return on cost; and, rich as the tributary country is in drugs,
dyes and hardwoods there would have to be a great deal of development in
production before the place of rubber could be filled. It will be
extremely regrettable if this remarkable line, a band of steel in the
middle of a country of deep wild forests cannot succeed financially: it
is one of the world lines which are life as well as time savers, for
before its inauguration the annual loss in the falls of both freight and
men was twenty-six per cent.[10]
[Illustration:
Porto Velho, Madeira River, in construction period of Madeira-Mamoré
Railway.
Igarapé of S. Vicente, Manáos.
]
Another line whose _raison d’être_ is the necessity for avoiding falls
on a river is the Estrada de Ferro Paulo Affonso, on the S. Francisco
river, extending from the port of Piranhas in Alagôas State to Jatobá,
in Pernambuco territory; the line is one hundred and fifteen kilometers
long, runs on the left bank of the river, and serves as a carrier for
the raw material and output of the big cotton-spinning mill (_Fabrica da
Pedra_) recently established. The factory obtains power from the
tremendous Paulo Affonso Falls, about thirty miles distant, and several
plans have been made to convey force to Bahia city, dependent upon
imported fuels for generating motive power.
The third interior, river-serving little strip of railroad is in the
State of Maranhão, running from Therezina on the Parnahyba river,
boundary with Piauhy State, to Caxias; the fourth is a line in the
interior of Pará, and is still under construction although about fifty
kilometers are in operation. It runs from Alcobaça on the Tocantins
river past a series of troublesome runs and cascades to the Praia da
Rainha, near the junction of the Tocantins with the greater Araguaya.
Railways in Brazil have thus chiefly served the settled sea ports,
penetrating the producing agricultural areas behind them; coastwise
linking from town to town has been an afterthought, and has not been
greatly needed with the maintenance of good shipping service. The
Brazilian lines have been criticized for lack of coherence, but the
fact is that no other plan could have been followed at the time when
Brazilian building began; mileage may appear small in relation to the
republic’s 3,300,000 square miles of territory, but it is not poor in
regard to the great centres of population, all of which are grouped
upon sea or river borders and possess ample shipping facilities. At
the beginning of 1922, according to the calculations of
_Brazil-Ferro-Carril_, there were twenty-one thousand miles of
railways in operation in Brazil, with three thousand under
construction and twenty thousand miles projected; as we have seen,
today a great deal of interstate linking has been accomplished, as
well as junction with sister republics.
Lack of coherence in operation is perhaps more open to criticism than
any other point in connection with Brazilian railroads. Certain lines
are owned and operated by States; others are owned by States but leased
to private foreign or Brazilian companies; again there are groups of
lines built, owned and operated by private foreign or Brazilian
companies, and there are lines owned by the Federal Government some of
which are leased to private operating companies and some operated by the
Government itself. The building of the lines was extremely cosmopolitan,
lines having been built preponderantly by the British but also by
French, Belgian, German and, in the case of the Madeira-Mamoré,
American, companies: this entailed remarkable variety in equipment—for
instance, when taken over by the Great Western in 1901 the little São
Francisco line had a gauge of five feet three inches. As some other
strips then acquired were narrow gauge much work had to be done before a
uniform width of one meter was created.
At the beginning of the present century the Federal Government
determined upon a plan of ownership of lines which has been followed as
far as finances would permit; a large sum of money, of which £12,935,480
is outstanding, was borrowed in London at four per cent interest and
with the proceeds many railroads were bought up. In most cases the
Government decided not to operate the lines acquired, and leased them to
foreign companies. As a result of the concession system Brazilian
Federal accounts show the curious financial anomaly of the Government
paying out sums to railroads because interest had been guaranteed on the
foreign capital invested, while the same road is paying rent to the
Government.
The lines owned and operated by strong British companies are quite the
most prosperous in the country: many of them were fortunate in their
choice of locality, each of three climbers of the Serra do Mar for
example remaining the only negotiable link of the coast with interior
regions: the Brazilian Government, in common with certain of the other
countries where Federal control of transportation has been tried, has
reaped small financial reward from lines officially operated.
In an exposition of Brazilian railway conditions made before the Rio
Legislature in October, 1915, Elpidio de Salles declared that better
supervision was badly needed: “deficits constitute the normal state of
the Federal services” and it is only from privately owned companies that
profits are obtained, he declared, proceeding to show that from systems
leased to other companies by the Union an average income of five
thousand contos of reis is paid to Brazil, these contributions coming
regularly from the Great Western, the Ceará-Piauhy, the Viação Bahiana,
Sul-Mineira, Central of Rio Grande do Norte, Madeira-Mamoré, the
Auxiliaire and the Santa Catharina lines. On the other hand, Cardoso de
Almeida has shown that the Brazilian Government has spent 1,100,000
contos of reis (at normal exchange, about £75,000,000 or $375,000,000)
on construction and “rescision” of railroads, bearing the burden of
forty thousand contos due annually as interest. Railroad debts are,
however, those which a sturdy developing young land can bear better than
older countries can hope to do, and Brazil certainly is not
over-railroaded: Argentina, next door, with a quarter of Brazil’s
population and one-third of her territory, has thirty-five thousand
kilometers of line.
Brazilian “estradas de ferro” have nearly all one promising feature in
common: they are pioneer paths, with new towns camped beside their
tracks, and new industries growing up about them: with the exception of
the old mining settlements in the interior of Minas and Bahia, scarcely
any development existed in the Brazilian hinterlands until the railroads
drove a way; nearly all give access, and as they move farther across
sertão and through forest, will give greater access, to virgin lands
uncharted and unknown. In the southern states many of the concessions
given to railway companies carried colonization clauses as a
continuation of the deliberate, thoroughly worked out plan of the
authorities by which during the nineteenth century settlements were made
of Poles, Russians, Swiss, Germans and other European races, with the
object of feeding the lines and stimulating agriculture. The European
War has checked these plans: settlers from Europe will in all
probability be scarce for many years to come, engaged as the racked
countries will be in their own rehabilitation. But to other nations
where populations are crowded or conditions no longer offer wide land
spaces and large agricultural rewards, the railroads of Brazil open a
country of unsurpassed beauty and fertility.
What railway construction is waiting in Brazil for capital, good
engineering, and—an urgent necessity in dealing with huge empty spaces—
imagination? The great heart of Brazil, which is also the great heart of
South America, is only newly entered by little pioneer tracks. What bold
projects could open up the interior sertões to the planter?
Frontin’s daring scheme to build a line from Pirapora (due west from
Caravellas in Bahia) along the valley of the Tocantins to Pará has
already been mentioned: the scheme lags for want of money. Another
conception is that of a railroad which would run almost parallel with
the Pirapora-Pará line: it would extend from Cuyabá in the middle of the
diamond district of Matto Grosso almost due north along the valley of
the Tapajoz river to the town of Santarem, a pretty trading point at the
junction of the black river with the yellow Amazon. A third ambitious
project is a railroad to run from Manáos northwards, along the valleys
of the Negro and the Branco into British Guiana.
None of these schemes is less justified than the Transandine line
farther south, the transcontinental lines across the United States and
Canada or that conception of Cecil Rhodes, the Cape-to-Cairo road of
Africa. In no case were those pioneer tracks built to serve an existing
population—they brought population and consequent production along their
trail over the prairie and the veldt, and these new Brazilian lines
would bring people and agriculture into the sertão. The climate is
unhealthy only in the swamp regions, and railroad construction with
accompanying drainage accomplishment would be the best means of
sanitizing the country; it is no worse than many parts of India, East
and West Africa, and the low-lying borders of the Caribbean where
successful railroads have brought malarial jungle into such a condition
that white men dwell there with safety, and a hardy native race can
cultivate the rich soil.
Engineering difficulties are probably least in the Cuyabá-Santarem plan.
There is less _matto_ (thick woodland) country, no important system of
_serras_ to climb; much of the track would run on the high level land of
the Matto Grosso interior. The regions served could be expected to
produce meat and hides from the enormous pastures of the State; minerals
from the mountains of Goyaz; hardwoods from the northerly forests;
rubber from the same forestal lands, together with dyes and drugs; the
line would greatly encourage cattle-raising and cereal planting. The
packing industry is yet in its infancy in Brazil, for the first
_frigorificos_ were only opened in the latter part of 1914, and the
world has not yet realized the extent to which it may attain. Brazil has
more head of cattle than has the Argentine, and almost illimitable space
for scientific breeding; she has areas for cereals which could make her
a rival granary of the world. She has room and to spare for one hundred
million population.
But her two great interior states, Matto Grosso and Goyaz, the heart of
Brazil, with their two million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand
square kilometers of land, are traversed by less than five hundred
kilometers of railroad. Small wonder that their combined population is
only about half a million.
A new influx of bandeirantes is needed. They need the same big
imagination of their antecessors, the same grit and indomitable will:
they should carry gold in their pockets, surveying instruments in their
hands, and behind them they should bring an army of workmen, in lieu of
the earlier bandeirante’s sword and slaves. Some day the task will be
accomplished: it rests with the capitalist of today to say whether he or
his successors will take it up.
_III. Shipping_
The rivers of Brazil, highways of necessity, and a wonderful penetrating
system in themselves, are quite well served; the Amazon river with its
tributaries comprises a fluvial network of over forty thousand miles,
and the producing areas are served partly by steamers and also by small
launches and native embarcações which fearlessly traverse narrow water
lanes almost closed by verdure, darkened from the sun by walls of tropic
green, and negotiate the runs and cascades of the more distant reaches.
The excellent steamers of the Amazon Steam Navigation Company are now
part of the interests of the Farquhar syndicate, but formerly belonged
to a British firm which acquired the rights of the early Brazilian
operators. To force the sale of the Amazon company, a few years ago, a
number of new steamers were brought from the United States and put into
use; when rubber boomed there was freight for most of them. But today,
with the object of their introduction attained and at the same time a
shrinkage of commerce upon the Amazon, many are idle. In lines outside
the Port of Pará these vessels are lying, empty, motionless, just so
much good money thrown away for lack of foresight.
Besides the ships of the “Amazon Steam” serving the route between Pará,
and intervening ports (Santarem, Itacoatiara, Obidos, etc.) to Manáos,
ships run up another thousand miles to Iquitos, and also up the Madeira
to the hither side of the Falls, where the railroad ends. The English
Booth line and the Lloyd Brasileiro also run up from Pará to Manáos, and
there is a service on the Tapajoz and Tocantins by small steamers. The
Amazon has all the riverine service that is called for, and chiefly
feels the need of more ocean-going steamships.
The São Francisco river is served by a line belonging to the State of
Bahia, the Navigação Bahiana, which runs up and down the navigable
stretch between the headwaters and the Paulo Affonso Falls, touching one
railhead at Pirapora in Minas Geraes and another at Joazeiro in Bahia.
The Paraná river is served by the ships of a Paulista company, running
up and down from Itapura to the Tibiriça ferry, and up various
affluents, while every coastal town traverses its nearby rivers with
small steamboats privately owned. One of the most actively traversed
water regions of Brazil is the Lagôa dos Patos in southern Rio Grande,
where communication between the towns at each end of the lagoon is
carried on entirely by boat. The Brazilian has been in the forefront of
enterprises helping in the water communication between port and port in
Brazil, and, as the thriving condition of the Lloyd Brasileiro
demonstrates, is able to go abroad and compete with foreign companies.
[Illustration:
Water-front of São Salvador (Bahia).
Floating docks at Manáos, Amazonas.
]
The Lloyd had a marked advantage after the War started in being able to
offer neutral transportation for passengers and freight, and while as a
matter in which all Brazil was interested the charges for coffee
carrying were long kept at a low level, there has been during the last
year a natural tendency to raise general rates under tempting
conditions. When the British Government’s Statutory List went into force
in Brazil, about March, 1916, the British boats serving the Amazon were
unable to carry rubber shipped by firms of Teutonic ownership; the Lloyd
thenceforth remained the sole carrier of German-shipped rubber, and it
appears reasonable to suppose that this fact had something to do with
the Lloyd’s price of transportation to New York rising to fifty-four
cents per cubic foot while Booth’s were charging their British and their
neutral customers but thirty-four cents. All South American services
made big money while these rates held, and for the Lloyd palmy days were
especially opportune after a long season of poor returns. In common with
the Central Railroad, it has been in the past an instance of a
non-paying governmental company, but with drastic reforms and present
good management it is in an enviable position.
Sea communication between Brazil and the rest of the world is carried on
mainly by European steamship companies: good work is also done by the
fleet of the Lloyd Brasileiro, which in addition to serving most ports
of the country maintains a busy tri-monthly passenger and freight
service to New York. Japanese vessels call at south Brazilian ports, as
also do ships of the Australasian trade; the most conspicuous laggard in
the shipping world was formerly the United States. In sailing-ship days
American shipping was busy in these waters, but the lines were gradually
displaced by more enterprising service from Europe; before the war the
harbours of Brazil sheltered fine ships of the Royal Mail, Lamport and
Holt, Booth, Harrison, Hamburg-American, Compagnie Générale
Transatlantique, Transportes Maritimes, the Sud-Atlantique, of Italian
and Austrian lines, Scandinavian, Belgian, Dutch—every flag was common
but that of the United States, and when this entered it was at the stern
of an oil tanker or a sailing vessel bringing lumber. The lines
connecting with Europe were many; sailings to New York were few; service
from New York direct to Brazil was still rarer, for the European lines
created a dexterous commercial triangle by which merchandise of European
origin came across the Atlantic to Brazil in ships which discharged
their hardware and textiles, took on a load of coffee and hides for New
York, there discharged the Brazilian goods and re-loaded with North
American grain or cotton and with this steamed across the Atlantic home
again.
The war stimulated direct service between the United States and Brazil,
several lines now competing for business formerly held by Europeans;
fast steamers offer quick passenger and freight service, following the
hasty war revival of the wood-built sailing-ship: during 1915 there was
a remarkable increase of activity in these vessels, and the writer has
seen ten or more at the same time lying in some bright Brazilian port,
their long graceful lines of the schooner taking one back to the days of
Midshipman Easy or Tom Cringle of the famous Log. Many shipowners of
these sailing craft must have made fortunes, for whereas in normal times
they would have gladly carried freight for three dollars a ton, they
were able to get four to four dollars and a half and so on in an ever
ascending scale until over fourteen dollars was taken, and with a
somewhat haughty sniff at that in late 1916.
In 1916 the only steamers under the United States flag operating in
Brazilian waters were oil tankers, the coal-carriers of the Berwind
company, and the vessels of the United States & Brazil S. S. line,
carrying the products of the United States Steel corporation and taking
back manganese ores and general cargo. Later, with the creation of a big
American mercantile marine by the U. S. Shipping Board, and the
allocation of a large number of ex-German steamers to the service of the
United States, strongly sustained direct lines between North American
and Brazilian ports were created which carry immense quantities of
coffee in exchange for manufactured goods. Chilean, Cuban, Peruvian,
Argentine and Uruguayan vessels now visit Brazil from sister Republics,
and her own mercantile marine has undergone a remarkable development.
Not only did the Cia. Nacional de Navegação Costeira and the Cia.
Commercio e Navegação add in a most enterprising manner to their fleets,
but the Lage firm created important repairing and ship-building yards
upon an island in Rio Bay, which performed great service to the Allies
during the war; and the Government-supported Lloyd Brasileiro began to
send its steamers far afield to North American and European waters.
The list of the Lloyd’s vessels presently received notable additions. At
the outbreak of war a large number of German and Austrian steamers took
refuge in Brazilian ports, and there lay for two and a half years, idle
and rusting. After Brazil’s entry into the conflict many of these ships
were brought into use, seventeen being added to the national fleets,
while twenty-eight were chartered to France. By the middle of 1922
France had returned these vessels in first-class condition, and the bulk
of them were permanently added to the Brazilian mercantile marine, the
Lloyd counting forty ex-German steamers out of her total fleet of one
hundred and two. Brazil’s claim for the price of the coffee seized by
Germany at the beginning of the war, for the four Brazilian vessels
torpedoed, and the maintenance of about seven thousand German sailors,
is offset by the value of these merchants ships.
Smaller Brazilian lines are the Amazon River Steam Navigation Co.; the
Cia. de Navegação de Maranhão; the Cia. de Navegação Bahiana; the
Empreza Brasileira de Navegação; the Lloyd Nacional; and the Lloyd
Transatlantico Brasileiro. The service to Brazil performed by the
home-registered lines is proved by statistics: for out of 24,736 vessels
calling at Brazilian ports during 1920, 19,542 were under the flag of
Brazil. It is true that the size of the ships was comparatively small,
the tonnage of nearly 25,000,000 being divided between 15,000,000
“Foreign” and 10,000,000 Brazilian, but the low average is due to the
small boats employed in various riverine services. The Brazilian
merchant service is the largest in South America and performs invaluable
interstate transport work.