[Illustration: MAP OF TWO HEMISPHERES.]
A SUMMER JOURNEY
TO BRAZIL
By Alice R. Humphrey
“To the general American public Brazil is a _terra incognita_.
Less is known of it than of Asia, Africa, the distant islands
of the sea, or even of the North Pole.”
“I asked no other thing,
No other was denied.
I offered Being for it;
The mighty merchant smiled.
Brazil? He twirled a button,
Without a glance my way:
‘But, madam, is there nothing else
That we can show to-day?’”
EMILY DICKINSON.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
BONNELL, SILVER & CO.
LONDON: 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900, by
BONNELL, SILVER & CO.
_All rights reserved_
Press of E. Scott Co., New York
CONTENTS.
PAGE
New York to Lisbon 1
Two Weeks in Tropical Seas 11
Pernambuco 20
Two Beautiful Bays 26
Petropolis 40
Santos and Some Brazilians 51
Consular Service at Santos 65
The City of São Paulo 72
Homeward Bound 96
APPENDIX.
An American System of Schools 102
Religious Instruction in Schools 112
Facts about Brazil 118
The Samaritan Hospital 122
Brazilian Naval Revolt Ended by U. S. Protection
of her own Merchant Ships 124
Roman Catholic Church in Brazil as a State
Church and as Related to Protestantism 141
1864 and 1900 147
John T. Mackenzie 148
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Map of Two Hemispheres 1
Place du Commerce, Lisbon 6
Harbor, St. Vincent, Cape Verd Islands 14
Cable Station, St. Vincent 16
Reef, Pernambuco 20
President of Brazil.--Wife of President 32
Docks and Arsenal, Rio de Janeiro 34
Petropolis 40
Alley of Palms 48
Map of the State of São Paulo 50
Railway Station, Santos 52
Hotel and Park, Guaruja 62
Mackenzie College 68
Government Normal School Building 82
Coffee Picking 95
Coffee Washing 98
Coffee Drying 106
Blacks of Bahia 120
PREFACE
Experiences indicated in these pages are not merely incidental and
exceptional but prove by repeated journeys to be really characteristic.
We first visited the Empire of Brazil when Dom Pedro was at his best;
then in the critical period following the revolution; last when the
era of discord had culminated and the first _civilian_ President
was peacefully elected. The short but severe apprenticeship in self
government transformed a Latin Empire into a settled Republic in eight
years. Now for three years the rapid advance in things which pertain
to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” has been so quiet and
steady as to pass unnoticed.
The eleven years’ history of this sister Republic is full of hope for
Porto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. The New York Evening Post, June
26th, 1900, says: “Under republican institutions individual effort has
been stimulated and rapid development has gone forward in the wilds of
the Amazon as it has in the coast regions of Brazil.” _But nearly six
years of military government were necessary before it was practicable
to elect a civilian President._
The English expectation of a collapse of a Brazilian Republic was not
given up until about 1896.
Great Britain’s equipment for _ruling other nations_ is so far in
advance of the United States that any thought of our copying her
methods is as absurd as it would be to expect England to set up a
self-governing Republic. The St. James Gazette of June 26th, 1900
expresses the opinion that China is “teaching America the impossibility
of a great trading nation avoiding Imperialism,” and adds “America’s
experience will teach her that it is not the desire to grab distant
lands, but unavoidable destiny that drives Great Britain ever forward.
Washington has no choice but to protect the imperilled American
citizens and having once interfered in China to protect her interests
she will never be able to shake from her shoes the dust of the
Celestial Empire.” When Edwin H. Conger was Minister to Brazil the
United States in protecting American shipping ended the Brazilian
Republic’s most serious revolt. _But the United States interference in
Brazilian affairs went no further._
Little as the United States has otherwise done for Brazil the expressed
feeling is “Our greatest wish is to model the new Brazilian Republic
according to the Constitution of the United States and to develop
and consolidate our friendship and commercial relations with that
incomparable Nation.”
H. M. H.
PLAINFIELD, N. J.
AUGUST, 1900.
A SUMMER JOURNEY TO BRAZIL.
NEW YORK TO LISBON.
Five winters in succession without one summer is an experience which I
recall with pleasure these hot days! How did I manage it? Just crossed
the equator to Brazil in May, back to New York in November, down to
Brazil in May again and back once more in October.
Many people “who loved geography when they were young” have still no
realizing sense of the reversal of the seasons south of the equator,
and do not know how interesting a voyage they might easily make if they
went “up and down in the world,” instead of going around it.
Everybody who is fortunate enough to have the money to do it has
treated himself or some of his family to a trip around the world, and
missionaries and commercial men have added to the list until we all
speak with familiarity of life and travels in China and Japan, India
and Egypt; but what American ever started for a pleasure trip to the
southern half of his own hemisphere! Why not?
I have gone there by two different ways, and for variety recommend
them both. Suppose you go in May--as you can most comfortably and with
the largest number of new experiences--by way of the American Line
to Southampton, England; thence, sailing from that same Southampton
harbor, to Rio de Janeiro by the English Royal Mail Line. You find
yourself leaving England in a good-sized, well-built steamer named for
some river, “Nile,” “Danube,” “Magdalena,” or “Clyde,”--let us say the
“Nile,”--and evidently made for different seas from the North Atlantic.
Your cabin may be 7 × 10 feet, its walls on the gangway made of slats
like blinds slightly open for ventilation; and the wide decks covered
with permanent awnings suggest a summer veranda. This line of steamers
makes the trip from England to Buenos Ayres in twenty-four days, and
winter and summer they must heat the cabins at one end of the trip for
the comfort of the passengers; for at one end it is winter if at the
other you find summer. You will arrive at Rio de Janeiro at the end of
seventeen days.
Out of the English Channel, stopping at Cherbourg for a few passengers
from Paris, across the Bay of Biscay, it takes from Friday morning till
Sunday to reach the quaint Spanish harbor of Vigo. Perhaps, so far,
there will have been in the ship’s company one or two wine merchants
who now leave for Oporto. Here you will receive your first instalment
of emigrants, Spanish peasants, going to the Argentine Republic, the
women with black hair and eyes and the most brilliant colors in their
clothes. They may have nothing on their feet but their heads will be
tied in kerchiefs, suggestive of a tulip-bed for hues.
You wish with your careful American training that a dignified old
English steamship line would not regularly plan to spend that first
Sunday in such a heathenish port, loading and unloading freight and
taking on such irreligious-looking passengers. There is no service for
you but what you make for yourself, and you look on with a painful
sense that the great outside world is different from your gentle home,
and go down to your room and get your Bible and try to think while the
hoisting apparatus outside is lifting bumping boxes out of lighters and
creaking them down into the hold, and scores of little boats full of
Spanish vendors are screaming their fruits and earthenware or helping
their poor countrymen into the steerage of your ship.
You wonder if “Boss Tweed” really enjoyed life here up to the time when
Nast’s cartoon strayed into the town and inspired the authorities to
report the discovered “child-stealer.”
One lesson you may learn from the foreign conditions of the day--to
sympathize more sensitively with the daily life of our Lord spent
among people who did not think as He did.
One day more and you anchor off Lisbon. Of course you will make one
of a party with some of your shipmates, hire a boat and go ashore, a
mile or more of rowing or sailing. How pretty the cream-colored city
looks in her green palms! and how substantial the great stone quays!
You hire a guide and go to drive. You get an impression of ornate
public buildings and memorial statues, of narrow business streets with
numberless insignificant shops, of the broader avenues of thick-walled,
stuccoed, gay-colored residences, standing low and square in heavy
shrubberies, of the Botanical Garden which no well regulated Portuguese
city could be without and which here lies on the brow of a hill looking
over the town; and now you know you must have your luncheon, and find a
good one at a hotel. The semi-tropical life is comfortable behind “the
Venetians,” and you have been getting glimpses of pretty courts through
open corridors.
Now you must try to think what best use you can make of the remaining
hour before you must cross the Place du Commerce, or Black Horse Square
as the English call it, looking out on the harbor and surrounded the
other three sides by government offices and custom-house, with spacious
arcades, a triumphal arch, and bronze statue of Joseph I., then pick
your way down the wet stone steps to the little boat which will row you
out to your ship.
But where shall you go _for one hour_? Down to the dirty, narrow, old,
Moorish quarter? No. Out to the church and palace of Belem built on
the site whence Vasco de Gama embarked in 1500, and now containing
the tombs of that explorer and of the great poet, Camoens (whom many
readers will also connect with Macao, China). No that’s too far and
too interesting for a mere hour. So is its neighboring tower in which
the peerages of Portugal and her colonies are kept, and which looked
so picturesque from the steamer, Moorish architecture in yellow brick.
Can you go to see what the irreverent traveler calls “the dried
kings” in the fine church of San Vicente de Fora, where you may see the
remains of royalty of the line of Braganza preserved in glass coffins?
Can you go to the beautiful suburb of Cintra, the summer resort of the
nobility, the favorite of the English residents? No, it is fourteen
miles away, through orange groves, and up, up from two to three
thousand feet.
[Illustration: PLACE DU COMMERCE, LISBON.]
I remember when we were seeing the sights of Lisbon we had one very
entertaining man in our little party who proved to be an American
missionary in Brazil. He had been over this ground before, and seemed
never to forget anything. He told us the story of a Lady Bountiful,
blessing the poor with her generosity, no other than our old
fellow-countrywoman of Woman’s Rights’ fame, Victoria Woodhull, now
married and living near Lisbon. Indeed she is a very great lady, said
the tale, and very gracious to American visitors.
But no! It would require too much time to see any sights more than
the marvelous pictures of three scenes in the life of our Lord, done
in Rome in mosaic after Raphael, Michael Angelo and Guido Reni, which
we find in a small chapel in the church of San Roque in the heart of
the city. About 1740 King John V. had this alcove or chapel made in
Rome. He was a devoted Romanist, had been enriched by the discovery
of the gold and diamond mines of Brazil, so this could be very costly
in mosaic, bronze, porphyry, lapis lazuli, etc. It was set up in St.
Peter’s in Rome and the Pope celebrated the first mass in it, then it
became one of the treasures of Lisbon.
And now you are again on the ship. You look at beautiful Lisbon and
know that if it had not been for Brazil you would never have seen it.
It has been so easily reached from England on this steamer, but what an
interminable journey it would have been by rail! Spain seems far enough
away when one is traveling “on the Continent,” but Portugal! Indeed,
this enterprising, seafaring, colonizing country of three hundred
years ago is nearly forgotten. How many know now that her sailors named
Formosa (beautiful) as they found its lovely shores, or think to trace
her hand on every Continent!
But the anchor is being drawn up and you feel like old residents on the
“Nile,” and hardly know whether you are English or Americans as you
look about at the new passengers, French, Portuguese, Brazilians and
Argentinos; for the English tongue and simple brusque manners fall into
slight minority. French clothes, which these wealthy new-comers love,
are well displayed by their ladies, and you will soon be shrugging
your shoulders and gesticulating dramatically unless you are very
unsympathetic. Your next meals amuse you; for the bill-of-fare which
so far has had English names and dishes, now caters to at least three
sets of people. The English get their bacon, their “grilled bones,”
and their cold meat pies, the Americans have hash (with a foreign
element of grease and onions which the true Yankee would not own), the
Portuguese have baccalhao and feijao (codfish and black beans), and
plenty of mutton stewed with carrots. What else? Good soups, meats,
vegetables, salads and desserts, and one dish daily required by the
original charter of the Royal Mail Steamship Co.--curry and rice!
These people and you are to be two weeks together now, in summer seas,
a most _al fresco_ life. Each passenger has brought a deck chair to his
own taste, varying from the simplest camp variety to the East Indian
adjustable luxury of rattan with bottle-sockets in the arms and places
to keep one’s books, field-glasses and games.
TWO WEEKS IN TROPICAL SEAS.
What will you do with yourself during the two six-day stretches from
Lisbon to St. Vincent of the Cape Verde Islands and from St. Vincent to
Pernambuco?
You find yourself an old resident of the ship now, and mean to gain
some sense of the real life of the people about you. The passengers are
clannish at table and on deck. The English and Americans fall together
in groups according to their taste or experience. The Portuguese,
Brazilian and Argentine elements do the same. If you speak French you
can converse with any of the three latter, for they are not confined to
their mother tongues. “You Americans speak so few languages,” said one,
once, to me with polite derogation.
You soon settle into a routine. Early salt bath to which your steward
calls you on schedule time, a cup of black coffee, breakfast
at nine. Perhaps you have already been on deck and greeted your
fellow-passengers, as they all do, “Have you slept well?” After
breakfast a “constitutional” on deck, pausing now and then at the
end railing to look down a few feet upon the five hundred steerage
passengers, the common details of whose lives are very public. They
are nearly all barefooted, fearfully dirty, and you gratefully watch
the ship’s doctor going among them with energetic disinfectants, and
take perhaps your first lesson in seeing English officers control the
ignorant and unclean Latin. Your admiration rises; for their discipline
is perfect even of this temporary charge. The “Nile” carries a thousand
souls. Among those poor steerage people there are nearly always deaths
at sea, but all is managed with quietness and consideration, and you
probably will not know when the sorrowful burials take place.
You have had your walk, or your energetic game of ring-toss or
shuffle-board, and sit down to rest and read, when up comes a charming
young English passenger and says, “May I include you in our sweepstakes
for the ladies?” and you may be as ignorant as I and answer “Yes,” in
response. “Two shillings, please;” and your best friend will explain
to you that you have been betting on the ship’s run for the day. If
you say no, you will probably be the only woman on the ship, rich or
poor, who has no chance to win, and you must be as gracious and clever
as you know how to make up for your incomprehensible Puritanism. At
12.30 P.M. the ship’s run is posted, and by the time that excitement is
over you go to luncheon. At 4 o’clock comes the cozy cup of tea, when
perhaps some English lady will give you a slice of delicious cake she
has brought from the famous Buzzard’s in London, and you will offer her
American ginger snaps crisp from the can in return.
When you left England your 7 o’clock dinner not only began, but ended
in broad daylight. As you near the equator the days shorten rapidly
until at 6 o’clock you see the sun at the horizon, take out your
watch, in three minutes you are in darkness without twilight. A week
later when you land at Rio de Janeiro the sun will set at 5.15 P. M.
You change temperature as well as the length of your days. Leaving
England with cool weather and thick clothing, you graduate yourself
into the lightest of raiment soon after leaving Lisbon. The water, the
air and the sides of your cabin all maintain a temperature of 82° day
and night for five or six days, and you keep yourself sheltered from
the hotter rays of the sun.
One could easily imagine one’s self a guest at a summer
house-party--the decks some great verandas overlooking an illimitable
lawn of the bluest blue, so quiet is the water. For dinner the
gentlemen wear their dinner coats, the ladies make careful toilets, and
Englishmen who have lived in India wear dress suits of white linen with
short jackets and broad sashes of rich silk.
[Illustration: HARBOR, ST. VINCENT, CAPE VERDE ISLANDS.]
At least four days before the equator is reached the young people,
with the assistance of the officers, make out a two days’ program
of athletic sports. Every first-class passenger is asked to
enter his name for one or more of the contests, and nearly all are
obliging enough to do so. Then comes the fun of appointing judges and
committees; the ladies search their trunks for ribbons for badges, and
trinkets for prizes are selected. Then the two days of “sports.” The
veterans’ race in which old men run who haven’t done it for years, and
young men’s and young women’s and children’s, three-legged races and
“obstacle races,” “potato races” and “thread-and-needle races,” and the
ship’s company is going from side to side and up and down to watch it
all, or try to win, or compliment the winners. Well! you will have your
exercise and many a good laugh, and in the evening the prizes will be
distributed in the music-room by the captain or the most distinguished
passenger.
After dinner you will watch the phosphorescent water gleaming like
a trail of fire at the stern, take more walks with the promenaders
around the decks, and repair to the music-room where your talented
fellow-passengers are sure to furnish a concert, including everything
from the classics to Irish ballads and college songs. Even a
prestidigitator may give you a performance some night. Oh! you are all
great friends now. The Portuguese Countess and you have been having
an hour’s womanly visit; and you are anxious about the baby of the
fascinating English wife of the Argentine ranchman who lives in such
dignity in their little colony on the pampa. The baby feels the rapid
change to summer heat, and you advise the mother to fill her rubber
(hot) water-bag with ice-water and slip it under baby’s little pillow,
and she thinks it might be well and says she has always heard the
Americans were “keen after ice.”
[Illustration: CABLE STATION, ST. VINCENT.]
You will be glad to see land for a few hours, though it is a dreary,
treeless spot, picturesque St. Vincent. Thirty-five English telegraph
operators form the nucleus of the town and are there to repeat
cablegrams from the systems of wires which center there in mid-ocean.
At a center of information, yet what fearful isolation! Other steamers
stop for coal as yours does.
The second Sunday at sea is one to be remembered. It is spent in
mid ocean, in the tropics. In the companionway is posted a notice
of service in the great dining-saloon at 10.30 A. M. At ten you are
sitting on deck, in a fresh white dress, waiting. Soon after the crew
begins to gather, stewards, cooks, quartermasters, every one who can
be spared from duty. They come in neat uniform, white trousers, navy
blue jackets and caps with the Royal Mail device embroidered in color.
The line of men, over a hundred, stretches the length of the deck. The
captain and purser, followed by all the officers walk the length of
the line for roll-call and review. The officers lead the way to the
dining-saloon followed by the crew, then by the passengers. The stately
service of the Church of England is read by the captain; the psalms are
all sung, led by an accomplished English lady at the organ.[1] How
many fine voices there are among those sailors! It is an impressive
service, and you are glad that it is required by law, and that all
sorts and conditions of men join in it.
[1] As the hymns and chants are those of the English Church an English
musician is naturally chosen, and there are always those among the
English passengers who are fully competent to render this service.
After this luncheon, and a deck unusually full of novel readers, for
some of the gentlemen do not play “poker” in the smoking-room Sundays.
I remember we saw during that Sunday afternoon two men whom we had not
seen before. They were reading Bibles. A notice of a Gospel service
at 8 P. M. by the forward hatch was posted. We went; so did all the
passengers. The two new men were the evangelists. They gave out a
Gospel hymn and started it, but no one seemed to know it or joined
in the singing. They read the Scripture and exhorted, expressing
themselves strongly on unrighteousness, betting and the use of tobacco,
while the listeners occasionally took their cigarettes out of their
mouths long enough to smile derisively. We felt pained at the apparent
failure and asked the captain for the cause. “Well,” said he, “these
men are in the world but not of it. They have shut themselves away from
the passengers, the sports; shown no friendliness to the sailors. My
men are very obliging and often sing well when these missionaries come
along, but this sort offends them, makes them ugly.” We saw no more of
the men until they landed four days later.
PERNAMBUCO.
You cannot help being properly excited when you anchor off your first
Brazilian city, Pernambuco--the sugar-shipping port. It lies two
miles away--a low line of light-colored buildings with palm trees
interspersed. Between you and it is the strange wall, the natural
breakwater, which looks as if some human engineer had planned it there;
narrow, level, twelve feet above high water, with the surf broken into
white foam against its side. This reef follows the coast for several
hundred miles, but not always above the water line. Opposite your
anchorage is the break in the wall which would let a lighter vessel
than yours over the reef; and in the quiet harbor lie the smallish
craft from everywhere. At the end of the reef near you is an old bit of
a Dutch fort, and it dawns on your mind that in the colonizing times
between 1530 and 1660 this land was owned successively by Portugal,
Spain, England, Holland and finally by Portugal again.
[Illustration: REEF PERNAMBUCO.]
You may feel very superior in some ways to what you see when you go
ashore, but not in the antiquity of your country nor the superiority
of your coffee. The truth is you are in a life wholly different from
anything you live in at home. You look down the narrow streets at
buildings which remind you of the different colonists who built there.
Close by is a public building, the outside walls of which are faced in
pattern with glazed tiles in green and yellow like your neighbor’s new
mantelpiece. Next is a stucco building, tinted to imitate pink marble,
with sky-blue trimmings. It makes you laugh, it’s all so gay, but it
seems pleasant after all that any people should want their very houses
and stores and town halls to look so cheerful. You are not quite used
to seeing fair-sized children in the street without clothes, but they
are black mostly who avail themselves of such liberty. You look at
the street cars, which your English companion calls a “tram” and your
Brazilian escort a “bond,” and their unsleek little mules with their
long fur all welted where they have been beaten, suggest room for a
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
You ride over the long iron bridge built in Dom Pedro’s time to the
suburb where fine residences make you realize anew how the people
love brightness--for in the gardens are not only brilliant flowering
plants, but wire frames among the shrubbery holding great quicksilvered
balls, and your confused sense is of a continuous Christmas tree in hot
weather with no gift for you. Indeed you feel in a very foreign land.
There is not a tree or plant you have seen outside of greenhouses. The
colors are all more brilliant, the motions more slow, the greetings
more elaborate, the beggars more loathsome, the whole place more
ancient and semi-decayed than anything you know. Every wall is thick to
keep out the heat, every window has its “Venetian,” behind which you
fancy are eyes.
A fellow-traveller on the steamer knows the life here and has been
assuring you that the climate is delightful: that no one ever takes
cold; that windows never are shut; that the same weight of clothing
can be worn the year around; that the foreign colony is agreeable, the
hand-made lace is pretty and durable, and the best “drawn-work” simply
exquisite.
Six strong men row you over the two miles to your ship. Outside the
reef it is rough enough to keep you very still in your little boat and
glad to exchange it for a steamer, and you wonder if you can be quick
enough to catch the ladder as the wave lifts your boat to meet it.
It has seemed to you the last few minutes that the miracle of Peter
walking on the water was being repeated several times about you on that
rough sea, only these modern sea-walkers have a mast and a bench. It is
really the fishermen’s catamaran, a raft constantly washed by the sea,
navigated by a sail.
The ship is as familiar a home now as you can remember, and you think
you know everything that can happen to you there. You have loaded and
unloaded freight, listened to the noise of the ice-manufacturing, the
dumping of the ashes from the furnace-room in the early morning, and
the daily scrubbing down of the decks at 4 A.M. You have watched the
crew go through the fire drill and the drill of manning the lifeboats.
You have listened to the Captain’s stories of helping disabled ships
in mid-ocean, and the heavy expense of it, and learned how they signal
their distress with rockets. You know Sunday in port and Sunday at sea,
how to count the “bells,” and change your watch daily to the new time.
But while you are eating the first half of your dinner that night you
realize that you are an object of interest to your next neighbor at
table, a _bon vivant_ who has made this journey many times before. You
cannot think what is the cause of his suppressed excitement. You like
the fresh vegetables that have come aboard and remember your childhood
when you look at the new bouquets which decorate the tables--such
old-time solid pyramids of posies. At length dessert is reached. The
steward brings a whole pineapple, lifts its cap (the entire outside),
reveals the juicy inside cut in slices which you taste. Now you know
what your neighbor wanted to see, your surprise and delight in the
Pernambuco “pines,” the abacaxi (abà-ca-shee). Make the most of the
abundance of this ripe, rich-flavored, tender, fiberless fruit here,
for you probably won’t find anything else that tastes so good.
TWO BEAUTIFUL BAYS.
It is two days from Pernambuco to Bahia. The ship does not keep in
sight of land, for coast currents are not safe.
I remember well our anchoring in 1895, in the great bay--Bahia means
bay--surrounded by bluffs on which the bright-colored buildings of the
city show to fine advantage. The fleet of little boats rowed out the
mile to meet us. The Presbyterian missionary friends we had known so
pleasantly in our own land, the Chamberlains and the Kolbs, were in one
of them and we no longer felt unknown and far away.
Mr. Chamberlain said, “We came out to see you and Bishop Granbery.”
“The Bishop is not on this ship,” we replied. But persistent
investigation discovered him, his wife, and the Secretary of
the Foreign Mission Board of the Methodist Church South in the
“second-class.” The quarters located over the screw had kept them
miserable from the constant vibration and seasick the entire voyage, so
they were thoroughly used up.
Whoever has read “The Bishop’s Conversion”[2] will appreciate the
story. Most merchants “economize some other way.” There are differing
views of this economy among missionaries, and individual needs should
enter into the decision, but the nervous system should be strong to
endure the perpetual motion of the screw.
[2] Published by the Methodist Book Concern.
That half-day in Bahia harbor with our friends was a taste of missions
at short range. Their flourishing school had just closed. It was a
new venture with Miss Laura Chamberlain for principal. The last day
of school had been a memorable one, visited by parents who sent their
children with fear and trembling, but who came to see the ending with
pride and astonishment. The secular papers had commented unrequested
on the high quality of instruction--a brave deed there where
Protestantism had no friends. The Brazilian owner of a great factory in
a suburb had been present and proposed to pay the expenses of such a
school among his employees if “we” could provide such teachers. How we
all planned! How worth while it seemed to live! to plan schools for a
great state in which only sixteen in a hundred could read! even if it
were only for two schools, “ours” and the factory owner’s.
Mr. Chamberlain had just returned from his first long journey in the
saddle away, away into the interior of the state, and found material
for Gospel teaching which filled him with enthusiasm--the sturdy
“cowboys,” men clad in leather, of fine physique and stamina. “Rough
Riders” were not then renowned, but Mr. Chamberlain’s prophetic eye saw
his men as they might be and longed to get plenty of help and be at
work to realize the vision.
The religious history of the state of Bahia has been making since that
day, but not without persecution. A third school was planted, and
grew, out on the nearest edge of “the interior” at the cattle-market,
Feira St. Anna, in spite of warnings of priests and Romish fanatics,
with Christine Chamberlain as principal teacher, beloved by the
children and admired by their parents, who needed such goodness,
efficiency and magnetism as hers to overcome their fear of a Protestant
school. Now the burning torch which was beginning to lighten that dark
spot has been taken away to the land where there is no more night.
Both Miss Chamberlain and her Brazilian assistant, Noemi, have died
of fever, contracted while going through an unsanitary part of Bahia
on a visit of friendly inspection to that “factory school.” And the
factory school is like a green bay tree. The patron was warned that it
might cost him his friends and even his great business, but he has been
determined to accomplish such instruction for his people in spite of
the fact that the Bible was to be used as freely as any text-book. He
is a convert to modern (Christian) education.
Pretty Bahia seems more nearly in a comatose state than the other
Brazilian cities you have heard described so freely on the steamer. You
gather that there is less intelligence, more superstition, less broad
public spirit, more fevers, less elegance of speech and courtesy of
manner. Your steamer does not wait long enough for you to verify these
impressions. You only climb the bluff in an elevator, go in a bond to
see pretty suburban residences, passing consular offices with their
national colors. You come back through the narrowest of streets, and
stop at one church “of Our Lady,” and have a hurried look within. It is
old-looking, bare and dirty to your eyes, and the image of the little
Christ in His mother’s arms shocks you by its ugliness and frippery.
Hung about are waxen imitations of arms, legs, heads, etc., with sores
and various ailments depicted on their surfaces. You recognize them as
the offerings you have heard about, and to be found in many churches,
of sufferers who plead with the Mother of Our Lord to heal their
diseases. Time and dust do not make these objects more pleasing to the
eye.
Back again you row to the ship and dine, then go on deck. Forget the
few unpleasant things you saw ashore, remember the palms and the
colors, and give yourself up to the pleasure of the soft night-air and
that great crescent of lights--electric and gas--from the water’s edge
to the height of the bluff, with the lighthouse shining nobly at the
point.
Some new passengers have come for the south, one coffee-merchant, from
Boston, you are told; the others all Brazilian. You have never met
people more courteous than this Brazilian Senator and his wife, but
their manners are very conservative compared with their countrymen,
who are now taking leave of each other after a champagne party given
down in the dining-saloon by those about to sail. The men literally
embrace each other, in true Brazilian style, patting each other’s
shoulder-blades, and their kissing is on both cheeks. A criticism I
once heard there of an average gentleman of the United States was, “He
had no manners whatever. Why, he did not even know enough to shake
hands.” So from now on you must have your hand ready, and soon learn
_bom dia_, good-day, to say to every one you really meet.
[Illustration: DR. MANOEL FERRAZ DE CAMPOS SALLES PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL]
[Illustration: DONA ANNA GABRIELLA DE CAMPOS SALLES. WIFE OF THE
PRESIDENT.]
A little over two days and you are about to enter the famous harbor of
Rio de Janeiro. Deeply serrated mountains form the coast, with varying
altitudes from one to four thousand feet, and the city of four hundred
thousand people is so crowded by these precipitous heights that it
must wind its way up several valleys and over the lesser hills with at
least two cog-wheel railroads to the upper levels. These items have
been told you by some new friends you have made on the ship, who are
generous with all they know; and one man even brings you a paragraph
he has copied from the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, which says: “The Bay
of Rio de Janeiro has been the subject of poetic panegyric ever since
it was discovered; and the traveler who comes to it after a voyage
round the world seems as susceptible to its charm as if it were his
first tropical experience. This bay is the very gate to a tropical
paradise. There is nowhere so bold a coast, such a picturesque cluster
of mountains, such a maze of inlets and outlets, such a burst of
all-pervading vegetation. The actual entrance between Fort São João and
Fort Santa Cruz is 1700 yards wide. Within there are fifty square miles
of anchorage, or even more for vessels of light draught, the bay having
a width varying from two to seven miles, and stretching inland from the
sea for sixteen miles. Its coast line, neglecting minor indentations,
measures sixty miles. Such a sheet of water would be beautiful
anywhere; but, when on all sides it is surrounded by hills of the most
varied contour, the beauty is enhanced a thousandfold. Its surface is
broken by a large number of islands from Governor’s Island, six miles
long, down to the little clusters.” This man, by the way, started
from England for the round trip of the “Nile,” making altogether a
two months’ voyage. He has a large state-room, with books, mostly of
science and reference.
For seventeen days you have heard of Rio, and Rio, and Rio, on deck and
at table; for many of your companions live there or are eager to see it
for the first time. You are up by six o’clock to lose none of the early
morning view. The ship is nervous among the shore currents outside the
harbor, then makes one great plunge over the bar, whereat all the old
residents laugh familiarly, and glides in stately quiet within the
smooth harbor.
[Illustration: DOCKS AND ARSENAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.]
You have had your early black coffee, so stay with all the rest to take
in the exquisite beauty. Seeing is better than being told. Your lungs
drink in the soft air. Your eyes drink in the forms and colors. Here is
the old Sugar Loaf, sheer rock a thousand feet up out of the water, a
sharp cone, gray, softened by green mosses, the sentinel of the city.
There is the city built to the water’s edge, with sharp hills in the
midst, crowned each with a church, “built in Jesuit style.” The groups
and alleys of the royal palms are tall and straight, some of them a
hundred feet in height, your neighbor says.
The ship anchors not unduly near another ship. There are many others,
warships and sailing vessels and steamers, “tramps” and “regular
liners.” In an incredibly short time a fleet of launches and row-boats
surround you, and happy are you if you, too, find some one there to
meet you. Here is an Englishman to meet the gentle wife and troop of
little children he sent “home” a year ago to build up in cold weather.
You look the other way at the bank clerk sent to meet two new recruits,
and at the manager of an American coffee firm who comes to meet the
man who is to be his substitute while he goes “home” for six months’
change. But perhaps you are most interested to see the Scotchman who
has come for his bride, for she has been such a cosy, little body all
the way down. She sailed “in care of the captain,” brought her wedding
dress, her wedding cake and requisite legal papers along, has been
everybody’s helper and nobody’s trouble, and finally has the nickname
of Sammy, which is short for good Samaritan. She will have a Brazilian
civil marriage service first, then the chaplain of the Church of
England will perform a religious one, and three weeks after she lands
the British consul will marry the couple a third time and the notice
can be recorded “at home.” England does not intend to countenance
runaway marriages. At the end of the third service you may telegraph
your good wishes to “the Bride of the Nile.”
The American knows the Rio Secretary of the International Young Men’s
Christian Association, and invites him to the steamer breakfast, of
which nearly all now partake, both passengers and visitors. You and
your husband are invited to be of the party to go ashore in that
launch, and spend the day till four o’clock sight-seeing. You are
advised to spend your nights in Petropolis; for it is beautiful up
there, and a slight risk to stay down in the city at night on account
of “the fever.”
You prove during that first day in Rio that the narrow streets are
lined with really interesting stores containing goods quite beautiful,
but very expensive. You see French clothes and fine diamonds;
brilliant birds, stuffed; and humming-birds set in gold for jewelry;
feather flowers of the most beautiful colors, made from the natural,
undyed plumage of tropical birds--crimson, pink and snow-white rose
buds, pale pink morning-glories, scarlet coffee-cherries, all with
green feather foliage. Such blossoms would not suffer in your bonnet if
you wore them in the rain, but no one does it.
You stop a moment at the large music-store, having its own and foreign
publications, and there catch the first strains of a Brazilian Tango,
the dance of Spanish rhythm which you find quite new and fascinating.
You will hear this same rhythm many times before you leave Brazil, but
will not find it used for dancing.
You visit the large and elegant library building, containing they say
one hundred and twenty thousand volumes, but see no readers. It was of
royal origin long ago.
You go to see the new Young Men’s Christian Association Building,
the only one in Brazil, while your guide, Mr. Myron Clark, from
Minneapolis, tells you the demand upon it in this port, and you wish it
were not such a struggle to raise money for it. “The foreigners” are
quite ready to contribute to the English hospital, for any of them may
need its care; but the use of a Y. M. C. A. is not familiar to many of
them. How shall it get the money it deserves?
You go to see the National Art Gallery and find a few good pictures
of local feeling or history, but otherwise the work of artists who
have studied in Paris. You have climbed one precipice of five hundred
feet by the “Plano inclinado,” looked down over the brilliant city
flecked with palms, and followed the substantial aqueduct “built by
the Jesuits” long ago, which brings water into town from the heights,
over arches at first low, but rising about a hundred feet across one
valley. The masonry is stuccoed, moss-grown, fern-draped; the water
pure and refreshing. You ascend to the top of Corcovado, twenty-five
hundred feet high, by another cog-wheel railroad, and find a little
shelter-house at the peak from which you see the wonderful view of
city, bay, other mountains and ocean bathed in light; then hurry down
to get the “barca,” the large fine ferry-boat which takes you ten
miles across the bay on your way to Petropolis. It leaves at four in
the afternoon. How you love that sail in the soft air across that
beautiful bay! You look forward to the great Organ Mountains up which
you will soon be climbing, and wonder what harmonies came from those
giant fluted pipes when the morning stars sang together. You have good
company, English, German and American in addition to the Brazilian.
Too soon you are in the train which speeds along the few level miles,
then dismembers and climbs the heavy grade in sections. You will never
forget the outlook from these windows and wonder if so much beauty has
existed all these years known to so few.
PETROPOLIS.
Four thousand feet up, and back from all sight of the harbor, you
reach Petropolis, built first as the summer residence of the Emperor,
Dom Pedro, and named for himself. It is a beautiful town, the home of
rich Brazilians, foreign merchants and foreign legations, for it is
the diplomatic center. While you stay at the English Pensáo Honoria,
some ship-friends are near by at the Hungarian Pensáo Central, both
with unusually good food and service. In the garden great bushes of
the camelia are covered with waxen blossoms and the poinsettia blazes
beside a hedge of heliotrope. Humming-birds dart in and out among the
shrubs. Through the middle of every street runs the mountain stream in
a stone-curbed channel, spanned by Indian-red bridges at the street
crossings.
[Illustration]
Dom Pedro was the “village improvement society,” and the main street
is still called the “Rua Imperador” although it was renamed when he
was banished. The town follows the narrow valleys between hills always
green. The gardens are bewildering in their profusion of flowers.
Lilies blossom as they do in California. Orange trees perfume the air.
The verandas are but a step up from the ground, and the rooms open upon
the verandas. You feel little need for a house. Only hotels and palaces
are two stories high; the rest are one.
The British Minister, the American, the Swedish, the Belgian, the
German, the Argentine, with their suites, are soon recognizable. You
go to call on your American Minister, find it is an afternoon “at
home,” and imagine you know what the confusion of tongues was like,
for all the other kinds of foreigners are there. You go also to call
on the Methodist missionary, sent by the Southern Church from Georgia.
He is the only Protestant minister living in this region except the
German Lutheran, who is the shepherd of a colony of good German workers
imported by the Emperor long ago.
These Methodists have begun with a school instead of a church, and
have honored their work by buying a beautiful building in beautiful
grounds for a seminary, which is the only rival of the school of the
nuns in the old imperial palace. These are both boarding as well
as day-schools. You smile when you become conscious of some of the
difficulties these teachers have in preparing text-books and explaining
general literature, for the North Star is not visible--the Southern
Cross has taken its work. December, January and February are the
hottest months; Christmas will probably be scorching; the sun shines in
at the north windows, and the farther south you go the colder it grows;
for you are south of the equator. Have Australia and South Africa and
South America had to read all our best literature all these years with
a commentary to make it intelligible!
The Portuguese days of the week suggest Old and New Testament instead
of the heathenish origin of Anglo-Saxon names:
Monday _Segunda Feira_ Second Market Day.
Tuesday _Terça Feira_ Third Market Day.
Wednesday _Quarta Feira_ Fourth Market Day.
Thursday _Quinta Feira_ Fifth Market Day.
Friday _Sexta Feira_ Sixth Market Day.
Saturday _Sabbado_ The Sabbath.
Sunday _Domingo_ The Lord’s Day.
You have made several friends among coffee, insurance, banking,
exchange, diplomatic and missionary people, and have discovered mutual
friends “at home”; so you have had visits and invitations to drive and
to walk, and now have one for a breakfast at one o’clock on Sunday.
Really just what would the Sabbath Observance Committee do here? There
is no English service till four in the afternoon, to be held in a
hall over a grocery store by the missionary of the Methodist Church.
A Frenchman comes to mind who mentioned with bewildered disgust the
American plea for closing the Exposition on Sunday: “What do they
expect us to do, then! Sit on a bench in the park all day!”
The business men are all at home, glad to rest one day in seven from
the three hours’ journey to their Rio offices and the three hours back,
besides their exciting markets. Through the week they have little
chance for exercise, for the only train down the mountain leaves at
seven in the morning, and one cannot reach home much before seven
at night. The early coffee has thoroughly wakened and fortified the
system against malaria. You see with what keen pleasure the various
parties start off on horseback or a-wheel. They will ride until they
are healthily tired and come back to be entertained in little groups
at hospitable boards. What will you do? accept the invitation and join
one of the groups? or stay in your own garden, and eat your own hotel
breakfast?
In any case you attend the service in the hall, in company with thirty
or forty others. Double this number in town are English or Americans.
One of the Methodist schoolteachers plays the harmonium. Moody and
Sankey hymns are sung. It is more nearly a piece of North America
than anything you have seen since you left that beloved spot, but the
setting is foreign, from the different wall-paper patterns to the very
wide boards of very hard wood which compose the bare floor, and the
foreign-looking houses you see through the window. Your missionary
preacher has held a Portuguese service, attended by the poor, in the
morning, and a collection keeps this English service self-supporting,
so far as room-rent goes.
You must make another trip to Rio. This time your first objective point
will be the Botanical Garden, with its magnificent alley of palms,
its more beautiful alley of bamboos, old tamarind trees and other
attractions. You will not be disappointed in the beauty, but you will
be surprised to find yourself there almost alone. The “bond” has taken
you through interesting streets, and quite a long distance on the edge
of the bay. You have skirted hills built to the top and others too
steep for that. You return to the heart of town in time for a late
breakfast, one o’clock, which you may have invited some friends to
share at a capital restaurant on “the Ouvidor.” You climb a long flight
of stairs to a large, cool, pleasant room with many open windows. Every
room by law must be at least fifteen feet high, whatever its floor
dimensions, and public rooms are always frescoed with old-time panels
and bunches of flowers.
What is the Ouvidor? A very narrow street, too narrow for vehicles,
lined on both sides for seven or eight blocks with the best stores
of Rio. It is also a meeting-place for politicians and newsmongers,
gentlemen of leisure and fashion.
When I went to Rio first in 1884 it was not proper for a woman to go in
the street without some man to take care of her. She certainly could
not go to shop alone in the Ouvidor as she sometimes does now.