lectures delivered in the capital, he earnestly requested the emperor
that ladies might be allowed to be present,--a privilege till then
denied them on grounds of etiquette. The request was granted, and the
sacred domain of science for the first time was thrown open to the
women of South America.”[3]
[3] _Reminiscences._ Julia Ward Howe.
Now she is verily a new woman, being far less restricted. The sanitary
conditions of the streets have been improved. The sights do not
shock her ideas of propriety. Rio is fast becoming a city like any
in Southern Europe, never forgetting its superior natural charms.
Whoever would have thought that the probable presence of women on the
streets of a town could work a revolution! Even the negro porters and
little children are now reasonably clad. I used to apostrophize the
coffee-sack, ripped a little way at the bottom and a little way on each
side to let a head and pair of arms through, as the only garment of the
poor man, but now the coffee-sack serves only its original purpose. The
curious tin trumpets projecting from the level of the second floors no
longer, so far as I have seen, discharge the pails of water which were
thrown on the floors and swept out through these convenient vents into
the street. There are no longer bonds labeled “descalços,” (barefooted)
in which such were compelled to ride.
[Illustration: ALLEY OF PALMS, BOTANICAL GARDEN, RIO.]
This time you must climb the mountains back of Rio for the night. Had
ever an emperor such a park as Dom Pedro made of these mountains of
Tijuca! Thirty miles of park road, swept every week, lighted by gas,
winding in and out, up and down the precipitous slopes of mountains
green to the top! And such green! the green of palms and tree ferns,
of trees with orchids and sipos. Every few yards brings you to a
distinctly new view: sometimes it includes the Atlantic, sometimes the
Rio harbor, sometimes the distant city, more often a lovely valley,
a waterfall, a height of rock all covered with ferns and mosses, and
another stretch of your winding road with a railing of tall, graceful
bamboos growing at some dangerous place. You are shown the spots which
Agassiz specially studied and stay in the old hotel where he stayed.
Why do people go to Petropolis with this beautiful spot so much
nearer? Because, in the summer-time, between December and April, yellow
fever has been known to get a little lodgment even here; rarely, it is
true, but the foreigner who knows his new home never takes any risks.
He will not stay in Rio during fever-time after sundown. He will not go
out in the early morning without his coffee. If he has the slightest
intimation of fever he takes castor oil without a moment’s delay. If he
has taken the fever he goes at once to the hospital in Rio, not risking
the change to the cool heights of Petropolis, lest he might not have
strength to rally in the cold when the period of collapse comes. You
say you would not live in a place where such a sword hung over your
head, but they read New York and Chicago papers in July with records
of hundreds of deaths from sunstroke while their temperature is hardly
varying five degrees from seventy, and in February, when their fever is
at its worst, they read the numbers of victims of pneumonia, grippe,
diphtheria, and find the ills of life not so unevenly distributed
after all. Men on salaries large enough to live in Petropolis need
have little fear of yellow fever. But the missionaries in Rio, the
secretaries of Y. M. C. A., Bible Society, etc., and the under-clerks
of foreign establishments must have it once. How these men and women
have nursed each other through the sharpness of the fever and the awful
weakness afterwards! Do you wonder that friendships spring up under
these circumstances between people who would hardly find their affinity
at home?
Kipling voiced the spirit of such comradeship in a small community in a
foreign land, when he wrote:
“I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives that ye lead were mine.
“Was there aught that I did not share,
In vigil, or toil, or ease,
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
“I have written the tale of our life,
For a sheltered people’s mirth,
In jesting guise--but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.”
[Illustration: STATE OF S. PAULO (MASSACHUSETTS SHOWS RELATIVE SIZE).]
SANTOS AND SOME BRAZILIANS.
Though you are so comfortable and happy in Petropolis with frequent
excursions to Rio, you cannot leave Brazil without a trip to Santos and
São Paulo. Perhaps you never heard of these places before you arrived,
but now they are all-important. You recall “Santos” as a mark stuck
in coffee-bags at your grocer’s at home. Here you know it is the port
which ships the greatest amount of coffee to Europe and North America
of any in the world--millions and millions of dollars’ worth. And São
Paulo, a city of 200,000, is the capital of a great and wealthy state
of the same name, lying up on the high table-land forty miles from
Santos, its port.
You study the daily papers for a “_vapor_” (steamer) to take you these
two hundred miles farther south, and find them due from every port in
Europe, freighters with cabins for a few passengers. It is a rather
rough voyage, but after twenty hours you round the island which lies in
front of Santos, making the Santos “river” a quiet harbor.
Every flag flies in that harbor, but how the seamen hate it on account
of the awful scourge of yellow fever six years ago, when forty or fifty
vessels were abandoned there for lack of living crews to take them out.
The sanitary conditions are improved since then, and you may safely
sleep on the seashore near by, and go into town during the day. The
stone quays are now fine. The narrow streets are laden with the odor
of green coffee. Barefooted Portuguese and negroes are the beasts of
burden. They walk rapidly up a gang-plank with two coffee-bags, each
weighing one hundred and thirty-two pounds, on the two shoulders and
meeting over the head; then, with a quick motion, dump the bags into
the ship’s hold.
[Illustration: RAILWAY STATION, SANTOS.]
The bright-colored houses and the palms are like those you love in
every Brazilian town. The women mostly sit in the windows, idle,
ill-clad and untidy. The mountains climb abruptly behind the half-dozen
streets. When you go to São Paulo you will climb those mountains by an
English railway, starting from a good station.
By the station stands one of the oldest churches in Brazil, dating
back perhaps to 1550, the Romish church of Saint Antonio. It contains
a curious chapel, wainscoted high with blue and white tiles (Delft?)
forming a panoramic picture. In the center of the chapel an image of
Christ, with the heart exposed, has lines of rope running taut from the
heart to the images of the saints grouped about him--“Will draw all men
unto me.” It is very realistic, very crude, really revolting, but very
illustrative also.
The island which shuts Santos from the vast Atlantic, stretching down
towards the South Pole, has on its ocean side a succession of beaches
each a mile or more in length separated by rocky promontories. In
the most spacious of these _praias_ a Brazilian syndicate has built
a “Brazilian Monte Carlo,” called Guaruja, consisting of hotel,
cottages, a Catholic church with never a service in it, a theater, and
a Casino where roulette was wont to be played every night and Sundays.
If you stay at Santos you will find this spot safe from yellow fever,
and your first twenty-four hours will convince you that you have found
the climate of Paradise. You are at the edge of the south temperate
zone. For weeks the temperature will not vary five degrees from seventy
Fahr. day or night. The lines of nature are exquisite--the slopes of
the hills, the curve of the smooth, hard, sandy beach. The air is soft
to breathe.
The hotel is filled with large Brazilian families, some from the
city of São Paulo, others from the great coffee plantations farther
interior. They are typical wealthy Brazilians. Some have been sent by
their doctors for sea-bathing. The number of baths is prescribed, and
taken literally and seriously at six o’clock in the morning. Some have
come for gaiety, relief from the monotony of life on a plantation. Some
from São Paulo were “monarchists,” do not like the new republic, go to
Paris where the Brazilian Princess holds a little court, and bring back
French clothes which may enable you to take to New York some fashions
in advance from the remote suburb of Santos!
A good quartet plays for dancing in the hotel _sala_ (parlor) every
night, especially Sundays. The Casino is the next building, and a wail
goes up because the state government, in what is considered an excess
of virtue, has sent soldiers to prevent gambling there.
All the ladies speak French fluently and their piano-playing is
brilliant. They use the time which we bestow upon “an all-round
education” upon these accomplishments, and marry by the time they are
sixteen. Some time they will go to Paris. Now they are over-run by
their many little children, and usually look older than they really are.
You are puzzled to know who belongs to whom. The wife of Senhor de
Couto is Dona Margarida. The mother of Senhor Antonio Prado is Dona
Veridiana. The wife of the nation’s president, Campos Salles, is Dona
Anna Gabriella. They might all be members of a royal family, or belong
to the time of the patriarchs, so far as their use of names goes. When
the narrow gauge train brings the papas at night to the front of the
hotel there is pleasant excitement. The sons kiss the hands of their
fathers respectfully. You will select the lawyers and doctors by the
distinctive gem each wears in his ring, diamond or emerald. The barons
are mostly owners of coffee plantations, and the many commissarios are
the coffee factors who often advance much money “up country” to perfect
and bring down the coffee to the port. You meet them all easily on the
verandas or in the park which borders the beach.
The park itself deserves your interest; for the neighboring forests
have yielded their palms, aloes and dragon’s blood to beautify it, and
the little summer houses are thatched with blossoming air-plants all
pink and green.
Your strong, good coffee and fresh French bread are brought to
your bedroom at seven in the morning, and then, before the sun is
unpleasantly strong, you have your walk on the beach after watching the
little narrow gauge train start with the business men for Santos. At
eleven you go to the dining-room for a four or five course breakfast.
At four o’clock you will make your own tea on your spirit lamp and have
some of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits. (When the “biscuits” are eaten
the box is just what you want to keep your kid gloves from mold and
your gluey laces from being eaten by insects. I was not surprised to
read of a British Bible Society making Bibles for Central Africa of a
size and shape “to fit in biscuit boxes,” that they may be preserved
from the ravages of ants, these biscuits being for sale in all such
climates.) At five the Brazilians begin to dine. You wait till six,
but some are still in the dining-room. You wonder at the parents, who
give wine out of their own bottles to babies not more than two or three
years old; and at the seven-year-old who invites a half dozen of her
own age to dine with her on her birthday, and at the close of the
meal has her health drunk in champagne by her mates with experienced
clinking of glasses. You make a note of the little American boy five
years old, lately arrived, who quickly learns the ways of the country.
He asks his mother for a bag of marbles and some money. “What is the
money for, my son?” “Why you can’t play marbles here unless you play
for money,” says the wee man.
You watch the new arrivals and wonder what are the relationships in
this big family--a father, two mothers, or aunts, or what? with those
children. You soon appreciate the exalted place given to the godmother,
and she it is who is neither aunt nor mother at that table--a law
unto herself and them. Of course she is invited when the family comes
to the seashore! I remember an Anglo-Brazilian gentleman once became
very angry at this same hotel because he was not given a very good
room, “and my _compadre_ (associate father, god-father of the son) the
President of this hotel company!”
You watch the keen, unprincipled-looking boy just down from the great
Jesuit school with whom the hotel manager is vexed “because he is such
a little liar.”
You greet your neighbor on the veranda with good-day in Portuguese;
then she speaks more of the same tongue but you shake your head.
“_Parlez-vous Français?_” but there again you are soon beyond your
depth, and at length one is found who speaks “a lit-tle English.”
You have noticed this young woman before, a modest, bright,
intelligent-looking girl, with an expression just a little different
from all the others, evasive but of a more familiar type. “Where did
you learn English?” you inquire. “At the Eschola Americana (American
School), in São Paulo,” she replies; and you tell her you are going to
that city very soon and to visit that school. You have found a friend,
though a shy one; Brazilian girls keep well in the background, and
next day when a box of flowers, oranges and sugar-cane comes down from
her father’s fazenda, she brings you some camelias and tells you about
the sugar-cane, though neither of you cares to chew it. It is for
children, and “children of a larger growth.”
St. John’s Day comes at the end of June. It is one of the greatest
of the many Romish holidays or _festas_. The “American schools”[4]
do not close for saints’ days, indeed one is puzzled to think what
other schools do with such constant interruptions and the overwhelming
illiteracy is partially accounted for! They do close, however, for a
ten days’ vacation at St. John’s Day, for it is midway from Christmas
to Christmas and fits the school semesters. Dr. Lane, President of
the “American schools” and college, and some of the teachers come
down to Guaruja to rest, and you have many a quiet time to talk over
their work with them, such as they could not well afford to give were
they among their five hundred pupils. You enjoy seeing them meet old
friends among these Brazilian families. You sit out on the veranda
in the evening, while St. John is honored with fire-works (saints
always have fire-works) and talk a little with the orphaned Scotch and
Italian girls who have been brought to school and are being trained for
teachers. They have all been under the weather. It has been forty-five
degrees Fahrenheit up in São Paulo morning and evening for three weeks,
a little too cold for a building with no heaters fiercer than little
charcoal braziers, but the Brazilian children are accustomed to such
winter temperatures, even though consumption has more victims than any
other disease.
[4] “American Schools” were founded many years ago by a Presbyterian
missionary and have maintained a high standard.
This is a holiday for business men as well as schools and the
prevailing church.
A picnic to the bay of the second _praia_ is arranged. The islands
boasts two carriages and you charter them for the ladies and the
luncheon. The gentlemen go on horseback. You arrive at a rocky coast
with no beach, no means of reaching the water’s edge. And there in
sight of your picnic party are hundreds of huge turtles in the water!
The question is proposed, “How much does one of those turtles weigh?”
The inexperienced guess wildly from ten to forty pounds. A knowing one
says they will average from one to three hundred! A French steamer is
passing the island as you watch, and soon will round the lower end and
make the Santos harbor, but she is well out from shore. You never see a
little boat among those breakers. No one goes for turtles. If they were
on our northern shores what would their lives be worth! but here living
is too indolent to spend ingenuity on capturing turtles.
[Illustration: HOTEL AND PARK, GUARUJA.]
I must give you some reminiscences of older Guaruja. The town was
created just at the close of the Columbian Exposition. The President
of the syndicate visited the United States and bought the buildings
for Guaruja, all pine, ready to put together. It looked like a section
of Coney Island and very novel in that land of red-tiled roofs and
plastered sides. A narrow-gauge railroad across the island and an
electric light plant proved the enterprise of the company. Only three
of the many sleeping-rooms in the hotel were lighted by electricity,
however. They were arranged _en suite_ with a light in each, but
only one switch, in the middle room, turned the three on and off. It
was our drollest fun to tease the English couple who occupied one of
the side rooms about the hour at which their neighbors sent them to
bed. If there was a baby there they were plunged into darkness before
nine. If there was a “quiet game” going on next door these poor victims
must lie in a brilliant light until late. These two rooms lacked their
own switches for more than a year to my knowledge.
Two words you easily learn with their depths (or lengths) of meaning
are, _paciencia_, patience, and _amanha_, to-morrow (which means some
other time, probably no other time).
If you wish to hear an uproarious laugh listen to any one familiar with
Brazil hearing for the first time Kipling’s:
“Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle
the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, and he
weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here who tried to
hustle the East.’”
Life in Santos--now at high pressure, then idle--now pitiless to one’s
neighbor, then tender as a brother--now mastering business knowledge
of the ports and exchanges of the world as if such accuracy were
all-important, then comes a whirl of speculation in exchange which
seems to take all value out of special expert knowledge--life in Santos
is evasive to one who would portray it faithfully. It seems difficult
to express more than half the truth at one time. If one lives there
a month the personal histories will all be familiar to him, and a
like time on the Praça (Exchange) will acquaint him with the business
characteristics of every firm. It is easy to learn things on the
ground, to get a just and appreciative knowledge of excellencies and
difficulties which is not readily transferrable. There are not only
facts which can be stated, but a spirit of the place and people as
necessary to know as the facts.
CONSULAR SERVICE AT SANTOS.
While these reminiscences of our life in Santos and Guaruja in 1895
and ’96 are uppermost, a figure comes to my mind which deserves your
knowledge. It was still painfully near the horrible epoch of yellow
fever developed by dredging for the new quays. That was why we all
slept at Guaruja, the Barra, São Vicente, or São Paulo, even though
daily coffee, banking or navigation business must be prosecuted in
Santos. Such living was and is expensive, very.
At this time the United States saw fit to pay her consul in Santos
$1,600 a year, since raised to $2,700, without allowance for office
rent and expenses. The port cleared eight to ten millions of dollars’
worth of coffee per annum for the United States, and a large import
business was opening up. The barest existence at Guaruja, or other
healthful suburbs, for a single man, with daily transportation to
Santos, cost $1,500 in gold. But one man could be found to try the
service of our government for this State, and he was an Alabama negro.
He was presumably an immune from yellow fever. At any rate, his income
necessitated his sleeping in his office in Santos, and when even such
undignified economies left him short of funds, he borrowed of the
American merchants. A U.S. cruiser anchored off shore. The U.S. Consul
and American citizens were invited on board. Tide and conditions made
it necessary for the “tars” to carry the guests ashore on their backs
through water about waist deep. The lieutenant in charge prophesied too
sure an accident to do other than advise the consul to wade ashore on
his own feet.
This black man did the routine work of the office, earned more than he
received, and left in debt. Merchants, as consular agents, have filled
emergencies for the government. The lack of a living salary for a good
man as consul in a difficult but important port is the point I wish to
make clear.
The British government rates this as a first-class consulate; salary,
£1,500, nearly seventy-five hundred dollars. Offices for him in both
Santos and São Paulo are maintained at government expense. Each year
here counts for two in his required term of service, and at the end of
the service his pension is based on the salary of the port. Of course
he has been trained to the consular service.
The British Consul when we were in Guaruja had just come from ten
years’ service in Mediterranean ports, a gentleman of intelligence,
elegance, refinement and courtesy. His regalia always adjusted to
a nicety to the diplomatic requirements of the occasion, be it a
wedding ceremony, a Queen’s birthday dinner, a reception or a funeral,
provoked smiles from the Americans. Even the flower in his buttonhole
artistically harmonized or contrasted with the shade of velvet of his
lapels and cuffs.
During his first year the worst of “the fever” was in the shipping.
Sailors from British ships came to his office in all stages of it.
With his own hands he steadied the tottering sick ones, sent them to
the hospital, and knew of his own knowledge that they were being taken
care of. When they died he collected their pay from the ship-masters
and saw that their money and effects reached their relatives at home.
He received while we were there a letter of thanks from an American
mother, whose boy, a sailor on an English ship, had died in Santos. He
had collected his pay and sent home his kit. The mother sent him money
to erect a stone over her son’s grave.
His systematic exercises were a daily swim in the ocean, followed by a
three-mile walk on the beach in the early morning, and two miles more
when the business day was done, thus maintaining his best health and
vigor in tropical conditions.
[Illustration: MACKENZIE COLLEGE.]
The engineer and purser of a British Royal Mail steamer came out to
Guaruja while their ship lay in port. Neither could swim, but both
went for baths in the sea. The current caught one who was drowning, and
the consul rescued him in a seething surf after a struggle to the point
of exhaustion. Reaching the shore, he discovered the other, a very
heavy man, was being carried rapidly out to sea. He swam after him,
but found him dead from sudden apoplexy, and brought his body ashore.
He received a medal from the Royal Humane Society of England for his
action.
These were contemporary consuls at Santos and for the great and rich
State of São Paulo.
The American Manufacturers’ Excursion to Brazil and the Argentine took
place that year for the purpose of promoting trade. Governments fêted
them. Papers and magazines chronicled their movements. Only the very
sad death of one of their number prevented their completing their plan
of coming to the important port of Santos and being received by the
representative from Alabama.
To the most of the American merchants their consul was “that ----
nigger.” To the British Consul he was always the representative of the
U. S., and an individual in a trying and poverty-stricken position, and
treated with corresponding courtesy and sympathy.
En route to Brazil we saw posted in the Oxford, England, post-office,
a notice warning all emigrants against going to Brazil until they had
consulted the Home Office.