CHAPTER XI

BRAZIL

That more than half of South America was settled by and still belongs

to the men of Portugal is due to what may be called an historical

accident. In the year following the discovery of the West Indies by

Columbus, Pope Alexander the Sixth issued his famous Bull (A.D. 1493)

which assigned to the Crown of Castile and Leon "all the islands and

lands to be discovered in the seas to the west and the south of a

meridian line to be drawn from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole, one

hundred leagues to the west of Cape Verde and the Azores." Though there

is in the Bull no mention of Portugal, it was intended to reserve the

rights of Portugal in whatever she had discovered or might discover on

the other, _i.e._ the eastern, side of the line of delimitation. The

Portuguese, however, were not satisfied, and next year a treaty between

Spain and Portugal moved the line three hundred and seventy leagues

farther west. This had the effect, as discovery progressed, of giving

to Portugal the eastern, to Spain the western, part of the Continent

which was first touched by Columbus in his third voyage (1498). Now

it so happened that one of the first navigators who actually saw that

eastern part was a Portuguese, named Cabral. Driven out of his course

while sailing for India, in A.D. 1500, he touched the South American

coast, in latitude 8° south, and took possession of it in the name of

his sovereign. A few months earlier the Spanish sailor, Pinzon, had

struck the same coast and had taken possession of it for Spain, but as

Spain had plenty of discovered land already, and did not care to depart

from her treaty of 1494, the territory was left to Portugal. Both

nations had recognized the Pope as the authority entitled to dispose of

all new-found lands, and possibly they may have supposed in 1500 that

these new lands were part of the same Indies which Portugal had reached

by the eastern route in 1498, six years after Columbus had, as was then

supposed, reached them by the western.[89] Thus Brazil became and has

ever since remained a Portuguese country, except during the eclipse of

Portugal, when, after the death of King Sebastian, it fell for a time

under the Crown of Spain.

The area of Brazil is about 3,300,000 square miles, larger than that

of the United States, and more than double that of India. Most of its

territory is inhabited only by aboriginal Indians, many of them wild

savages, and a good deal is still practically unexplored. As I saw,

and can attempt to describe, only a very small part, it may be proper,

lest any reader should fancy that particular part to be typical of the

whole, to sketch very briefly the general features of the country.

It is geologically one of the oldest parts of the South American

Continent. The mountains which form its central nucleus stood where

they stand now long before the great volcanoes of the Andes, such as

Aconcagua and Chimborazo, had been raised. This mountain centre of

the country falls abruptly on the east to the Atlantic, more gently

on the west towards the level ground in the middle of the Continent,

and is composed of ancient crystalline rocks, which have probably been

reduced from a much greater height by the action of rain, sun, and

wind, continued through countless ages. It may be roughly described

as an undulating plateau, 800 miles long by 300 broad, traversed by

various ranges which are seldom of great height. Their loftiest summit

is Italiaya, about fifty miles to the southwest of Rio de Janeiro

and nearly 10,000 feet high. Few exceed 7000 feet, while the average

elevation of the highlands as a whole is from 2000 to 3000. The scenery

of their richly wooded eastern side, where they break down steeply

towards the Atlantic, is as beautiful as can be found anywhere in the

tropics. They are continued northward and southward in lower hills, and

on the west subside gently, sometimes in long slopes, sometimes in a

succession of broad terraces, into a vast plain, only slightly raised

above sea-level, from which streams flow southward into the Paraná,

northward into the Amazon. In this plain, still imperfectly explored,

Brazil touches Paraguay and Bolivia. The inland regions, both highlands

and plains, are less humid and, therefore, less densely wooded than is

the line of mountains which faces the Atlantic, the climate steadily

growing drier as one goes inland from the rain-giving ocean. Large

parts of them are believed to be fit only for ranching, but settlement

has in the western districts not gone far enough to determine their

capacity for agriculture, though it is known that some are unprofitable

because marshy and others because sandy. On the other hand the country

south of latitude 20° is for the most part fertile and well watered,

and more developed than any other part of Brazil except the coast strip.

There remains another and still larger region which lies in the

northwest part of the republic; I mean the vast plain of the Amazon

and its tributaries. It is the so-called Selvas, or woodland country,

covered everywhere by a dense forest and for part of the year so

flooded by the tropical rains which raise its rivers above their banks

that much of it can be traversed only in boats. Except for a few white

settlements here and there, its sole inhabitants are the uncivilized

Indian tribes, of whom there may be several hundred thousands in

all, a number very small when compared to the space over which they

are scattered. To these Selvas and their possible future I shall

return.[90] Meanwhile the reader will have gathered that: (1) The whole

eastern part of Brazil from latitude 5° south to latitude 30° south is

mountainous or undulating, with here and there wide valleys. All of

this country is valuable either for cultivation, for pasture, or for

timber, and it contains rich mines. (2) The western part and the whole

plain of the Amazon and its tributaries is practically quite flat,

and most of it is a forest wilderness. (3) Though there are some arid

districts along the coast north and south of the mouth of the Amazon,

there are nowhere in Brazil such deserts as those which cover so large

a space in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. (4) The only parts

that are as yet comparatively well-peopled are the coast strip and the

fertile valleys debouching on that strip, some inland districts in the

state of Minas Geraes, and in the southern states of São Paulo, Santa

Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Even in these the population is still

far below the capacities of the country.

I have made these few remarks in order to give the reader some notion

of the general features of this immense country. The only parts I

saw were on the east coast; and these I shall try to describe before

returning to a discussion of the people and prospects of Brazil as a

whole.

The south Atlantic all the way from Buenos Aires to the Amazon has the

credit of giving passages as smooth and pleasant as any in the world.

Very different was our experience between Montevideo and Santos, for

there was some rain, more wind, and quite a heavy sea, with weather so

thick that little could be seen of the coast along which we sailed. We

were, of course, told that it was "quite exceptional weather," but old

travellers know that nothing is commoner than exceptional weather.

When at last our steamer, rounding a lofty cape, turned her prow

shoreward to enter the harbour of Santos, how unlike was the landscape

to any which we had seen since passing the Equator at the northern

extremity of Peru. All down the west coast there had been a stern and

mostly barren coast, with cold grey clouds over a cold grey sea. But

here at last were the tropics. Here was the region of abundant and

luxuriant vegetation, a soft, moist air and a sea of vivid blue, with

the strange thin-bodied, long-winged frigate birds hovering above

it. As we came near enough to see the waves foaming on the rocks, an

amphitheatre of mountains was disclosed, surrounding the broad, flat

valley through which a river descends to form the port of Santos.

To the north there ran along the coast a line of lofty promontories

against which the surges rose. The mountains behind, all densely

wooded, were shrouded with heavy mists, but the sun bathed in light the

banks of the river, covered with low trees and flowering shrubs, and

the gaily painted houses of the suburb which stretches out from the

town of Santos, embowered in palm groves, to the white sands of the

ocean beach.

Moving slowly up the winding channel into smooth water, we found many

British and German ships lying at the wharves, for the harbour has now

been so deepened as to admit large steamers, and its improvements,

accompanied by draining operations, have made the place reasonably

healthy. Twenty years ago it was a nest of yellow fever. I was told

that once, during an inroad of that plague, forty-three British ships

were lying idle in the river with their crews all dead or dying. Now

the disease has practically disappeared, and the port is one of the

busiest in South America, since it is the exporting centre for the

produce of the vast coffee country which lies inland. All day long, and

during the night, too, at some seasons, an endless string of stalwart

porters may be seen carrying sacks of coffee from the railroad cars on

the wharf to the ships lying alongside. In 1910 coffee to the value of

nearly £19,000,000 ($93,107,000) was exported from Santos, more than

half of what went out of Brazil to all quarters of the globe.

Such a trade gives plenty of traffic to the railway which connects the

coffee-planting interior and the thriving city of São Paulo with the

sea. It is quite a remarkable railway. First built in 1867, its most

difficult portion, which climbs a very steep slope, was laid out afresh

along a better line between 1895 and 1901, and is a really skilful and

interesting piece of engineering performed for a British company by

British engineers and contractors. As was observed a few pages back,

there lies behind this part of the Brazilian coast a plateau, here

averaging from 2500 to 3000 feet in height, which breaks down abruptly

to the sea. The edge of the plateau, which, from below, appears like

a mountain range, is called the Serra do Mar (Sea Range). To reach

the plateau from the flats at sea-level it was necessary to ascend

some 2500 feet, and this had to be done in a distance of about six

miles, which means an average gradient of about eight per cent from

the bottom to the top of the slope. The line has accordingly been

constructed in a series of five inclines, on which the trains are

worked by wire-rope haulage, each incline having its own power-house

and haulage plant, and safety being secured not only by the "locomotive

brake" which is attached as a last car to each ascending and descending

train, but also by the simultaneous descent and ascent of trains each

way, and other devices too numerous to describe. These, taken together,

are sufficient to ensure perfect safety. The extraordinary completeness

and finish of every part not only of the roadbed and rails, but also

of the stations and other buildings, and of the iron bridges and the

thirteen tunnels, together with the neatly set tile drains which have

been laid down the slopes to carry off in channels the rainwater

which might otherwise dislodge loose earth from above and weaken the

embankments below,--all these things witness to the unusual success

and prosperity of the line as a business undertaking. It has been the

best-paying one, next to that at Panama, in South America. Since the

dividend assignable to the shareholders is restricted, the directors

spend their surplus in securing not only efficiency and security, but

even elegance. The saying, current among Europeans in Brazil, is that

the only thing that remains to be done upon the São Paulo and Santos

line is to gild the tops of the telegraph poles.

The scenery, which we saw to advantage from seats placed in front of

the leading car, is extremely beautiful as the train winds along steep

slopes from which one looks down into richly wooded glens, with tiny

waterfalls descending through ravines amid a profusion of tall ferns.

It is a very wet bit of country, and before reaching the top, we were

enveloped in clouds and heavy rain, and so lost what are perhaps the

finest views, those looking back from the higher levels down the

main valley and out to the now distant ocean. On the top one seemed

suddenly to lose sight of the mountains, for we came out upon level

ground without any descent to the other side of the hill. The weather

cleared, and across a sparsely wooded undulating plain, in some parts

open moorland, in other parts under tillage, we could descry distant

peaks that rose sharp and clear in the less humid air. Whoever has

travelled from north to south in Spain will remember a similarly abrupt

transition when the railway, after climbing the mountains south of

Santander, dripping with the rainstorms that constantly drive in from

the Bay of Biscay, emerges on the bare dry plateau of Old Castile.

The train, speeding along the perfectly smooth roadbed which this

gilt-edged railroad boasts, brought us after fifty miles to the city

of São Paulo, the briskest and most progressive place in all Brazil,

though with less than half the population of Rio de Janeiro. It is

one of the oldest towns in the country, founded in 1553 by a Jesuit

missionary. The early settlers, many of whom intermarried with the

native Indians, became the parents of a singularly bold and energetic

race, who, in their search for gold and silver, explored the land and

raided the Indians and whites, too, if there were any, all the way

down from here to the Uruguay and Paraná rivers. In those days the

Portuguese government at Bahia, far off and weak, seldom interfered

with its subjects. The free spirit of these "Paulistas" has passed to

their descendants. Living in healthy uplands, they have shewn more

industrial and political activity than the people of any other state

in the federation. Since 1875 the planting of enormous tracts of land

with coffee has rapidly raised the wealth of the region, and this city,

being its heart and centre, has risen in sixty years from a small

country town to be a place of four hundred thousand inhabitants.

It stands upon several hills, from the highest of which there are

charming views to the picturesque ranges to the north and along the

valley of its river, the Tiete. Rising only thirty miles from the sea,

this stream flows away northwestward to join the Paraná and enter

the ocean above Buenos Aires, the slope of all this region, so soon

as one has crossed the Serra do Mar, being from east to west. The

city has grown so fast as to shew few traces of its antiquity, except

in the centre, where the narrow and crooked streets of the business

quarter have a picturesque variety rarely found in the rectangular

towns of the New World. The alert faces, and the air of stir and

movement, as well as handsome public buildings rising on all hands,

with a large, well-planted public garden in the middle of the city,

give the impression of energy and progress. This plateau air is keen

and bright, and, though the summer sun was strong, for we were in mid

November, the nights were cool, and the winter, which sometimes brings

slight frosts, restores men to physical vigour. We drove out a few

miles to see the Independence Building, a tall pile, which from its

hilltop looks over a wide stretch of rolling country. It was erected to

commemorate the revolt of Brazil from Portugal in 1822, and contains

what is one of the largest fresco paintings in the world, shewing Dom

Pedro of Braganza, then Regent of Brazil, surrounded by his generals,

proclaiming the independence of the nation, a spirited if somewhat

theatrical composition. There is a collection of objects of natural

history, as well as of native weapons and ornaments, but both here

and elsewhere in Brazil, and, indeed, generally in South America, one

is struck by the small amount of interest shewn in all branches of

knowledge, except such as have a direct practical bearing and pecuniary

value. Considering the enormous field of research which this Continent

presents, and what advances have been made in scientific natural

history during the last sixty years, far too little is being done to

gather or to arrange and classify specimens illustrative either of the

world of nature or of prehistoric and savage man. The collections are

for the most part inferior to what European museums were seventy years

ago. Let it be said, on the other hand, that the state of São Paulo has

set an admirable example to the rest of Brazil in the liberal provision

it is making for elementary schools.

Many immigrants from Italy have in the last decade entered the state

and the city, and now by their labour contribute largely to the

prosperity of both. Negroes are comparatively few; it is these Italians

that do the most and the best of the work. The larger business, both

commercial and industrial, for there are now a good many factories, is

chiefly in the hands of foreigners, Italians, Germans, and English,

with a few French, a state of things which accelerates material

progress and leaves the native or Portuguese Brazilians more free

to devote themselves to politics, a sphere of action into which, as

already observed, the modern Paulistas have carried the energy of their

ancestors. The state is not only the most prosperous, but politically

the most influential, in the republic. One way or another, what with

Paulistas and foreigners, city and state are vigorous communities, and

to see them disabuses the traveller of the common belief that the South

Americans are slack and inert.

The railway--a government line--from São Paulo to Rio runs at first

through that high, rolling country which lies behind the escarpment

facing to the coast. Its variety of surface, and its patches of

woodland, the trees handsome though seldom tall, make it very pretty,

and there are glimpses of the mountain range to the west, one of whose

summits is the loftiest in all Brazil. The line, as it approaches the

coast, begins to descend, running along the edge of deep gorges, where

the bright green herbage and luxuriant growths of shrubs and ferns

contrast with the deep red of the soil produced by the decomposition

of granitic rocks. After the arid severity of the Andean valleys of

Argentina and Bolivia, and the sternness of chilly Patagonia, there

was something cheering in this exuberance of vegetation, this sense

that Nature is doing her best to give man a chance to live easily

and happily. The train sweeps down a long ravine, and passes many a

waterfall, till at last the ravine becomes a wide valley and opens into

the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

How is one to describe Rio? I had read a score of descriptions, yet

none of them had prepared me for the reality. Why should a twenty-first

description be any more successful? Its bay has been compared to the

bays of Naples, of Palermo, of Sydney, of San Francisco, of Hongkong,

and of Bombay, as well as to the Bosphorus. It is not in the least like

any of these, except in being beautiful, nor, I should fancy, is it

like any other place in the world. Suppose the bottom of the Yosemite

Valley, or that of the valley of Auronzo in the Venetian Alps, filled

with water, and the effect would be something like the bay of Rio.

Yet the superb vegetation would be wanting, and the views to far-away

mountains, and the sense of the presence of the blue ocean outside the

capes that guard the entrance.

The name (River of January) suggests a river, but this was a mistake

of the Portuguese discoverers, for nothing but trifling streams enter

this great inlet. It is a landlocked gulf, twenty miles long and from

five to ten miles wide, approached from the ocean through a channel

less than a mile wide between rocky promontories upon which forts have

been erected. On the north side, inside the entrance, is the town of

Nictheroy, whose name commemorates a long-extinct tribe of Indians.

Bold rocky isles lie in front of it and high hills rise behind.

The city of Rio lies upon the south side of the gulf, the great bulk of

it inside, though two or three suburbs have now grown up which stretch

across a neck of land to the ocean. It runs along the shore for five or

six miles, occupying all the space between the water and the mountains

behind, and cut up into several sections by steep ridges which come

down from the mountains and jut out into the water. The coast-line is

extremely irregular, for between these jutting promontories it recedes

into inlets, so that when one looks at Rio, either from offshore in

front or from the mountain tops behind, it seems like a succession of

towns planted around inlets and divided from one another by wooded

heights. All these sections are connected by a line of avenues running

nearly parallel to the coast, so that the city sometimes narrows to a

couple of hundred yards, sometimes widens out where there is a level

space between the water and the hills, sometimes climbs the hill

slopes, and mingles its white houses with the groves that cover their

sides. Behind all stands up the mountain wall, in most places clothed

with luxuriant forests, but in others rising in precipices of grey

granite or single shafts of rock. Thus Rio stands hemmed in between

mountains and bays. There is hardly a spot where, looking up or down a

street, one does not see the vista closed either by the waving green of

forest or the sparkling blue of sea.

Other cities there are where mountains rising around form a noble

background and refresh the heart of such town dwellers as have learnt

to love them. "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh

my aid." Such cities are Athens and Smyrna, Genoa and Palermo, San

Francisco and Santiago de Chile. But in Rio the mountains seem to be

almost a part of the city, for it clings and laps round their spurs

just as the sea below laps round the capes that project into the bay.

Nor does one see elsewhere such weird forms rising directly from the

yards and gardens of the houses. One can hardly take one's eyes off the

two strangest among these, which are also the most prominent in every

prospect. The Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf) is a cone of bare granite, so

steep as to be scaleable at one point only by the boldest climbers,

which stands on the ridge between the bay and the ocean. The other peak

is the still loftier Corcovado, a vertical shaft of rock something like

the Aiguille de Dru,[91] which springs right out of the houses to a

height of over two thousand three hundred feet. Such strange mountain

forms give to the landscape of the city a sort of bizarre air. They

are things to dream of, not to tell. They remind one of those bits

of fantastic rock scenery which Leonardo da Vinci loved to put in as

backgrounds, though the rocks of Rio are far higher, and are also

harder. A painter might think the landscapes altogether too startling

for treatment, and few painters could handle so vast a canvas as would

be needed to give the impression which a general view makes. Yet the

grotesqueness of the shapes is lost in the splendour of the whole,--a

flood of sunshine, a strand of dazzling white, a sea of turquoise

blue, a feathery forest ready to fall from its cliff upon the city in a

cascade of living green.

It is hard for man to make any city worthy of such surroundings as

Nature has given to Rio. Except for two or three old-fashioned streets

in the business quarter near the port and arsenal, it is all modern,

and such picturesqueness as there is belongs to the varying lines of

shore and hill, and to the interspersed gardens. A handsome modern

thoroughfare, the Avenida Central, has been run through what used to

be a crowded mass of mean houses, and it has the gay effectiveness of

a Parisian boulevard. Villas surrounded by trees crown the hills that

rise here and there; and one street is lined by two magnificent rows of

Royal palms, their stems straight and smooth as marble pillars, crested

by plumes of foliage. At the east end of the city the semicircular bay

of Botafogo is surrounded by a superb palm-planted esplanade, whose

parapet commands the finest general view over the entrance to the bay

and the heights behind Nictheroy, and as far as the Organ Mountains

which rise in a row of lofty pinnacles thirty miles away.

In such a city, the curious traveller does not need to hunt for

sixteenth-century churches or quaint old colonial houses. Enough for

him that the settings of the buildings are so striking. The strong

light and the deep shadows, and the varied colours of the walls and

roofs of the houses, the scarlet flowers climbing over the walls, and

the great glossy dark green leaves of the trees that fill the gardens,

with incomparable backgrounds of rock and sea,--all these are enough to

make the streets delightful.

Not less delightful are the environs. The Botanic Garden about a mile

away has long been famous for its wonderful avenue of royal palms, each

one hundred feet high, all grown from the seed of one planted a hundred

years ago, in the days when the king of Portugal held his court here.

But it has other things to shew, equally beautiful and more interesting

to the botanist. Not even the garden of Calcutta contains a more

remarkable collection of tropical trees, and its vistas of foliage and

bowery hollows overarched by tall bamboos are enchanting. As respects

situation, there is, of course, no comparison; for at Calcutta, as at

our own Kew, all is flat, while here the precipices of the Corcovado on

the one side, and the still grander crags of the Tijuca and Gavea on

the other, shoot up thousands of feet into the blue.

A longer excursion to the south of the city carries one in the course

of a five hours' drive through a succession of mountain landscapes

unsurpassed even in Brazil. A road winds up the hillside through leafy

glens, where climbing plants and tree-ferns fill the space between

the trunks of the great trees. Now and then it comes out on the top

of a ridge, and one looks down into the abysmal depths of forest,

bathed in vaporous sunlight. Through a labyrinth of valleys one

reaches a clearing in the forest, above which is seen the beautiful

peak of Tijuca, and beyond it, still higher, the amazing Gavea, a

square-sided, flat-topped tower of granite. In their boldness of line

these peaks remind one of those that stand up round the Mer de Glace at

Chamouni. There moraines and masses of fallen stones are heaped upon

the bases of these Aiguilles, and nothing breaks the savage bareness

of their sides except snow beds in the couloirs. Here the peaks rise

out of a billowy sea of verdure. The steepness of their faces seems to

defy the climber; yet on their faces there are crevices just big enough

for shrubs to root in, by the help of which a daring man might pull

himself aloft. Nature, having first hewn out these peaks into appalling

precipices, then set herself to deck them with climbing plants and to

find foothold for trees on narrow ledges and to cover the surface with

the bright hues of mosses and lichens, and fill chinks and crannies

with ferns and pendulous flowers that wave and sway in the passing

breeze. Some way further, from the top of a gap between the peaks, the

open ocean is suddenly seen a thousand feet below, its intense blue

framed between green hills, with long billows rushing up over the white

sands of the bay, and lines of spray sparkling round the rocky isles

that rise beyond, like the summits of submerged mountains.

Though the bay of Rio was discovered as far back as 1531 by the

Portuguese sailor who took its mouth for a river, and was settled not

long after, first by Frenchmen in 1558 and then by Portuguese in 1567,

the settlement grew slowly, and it was not till 1762 that the seat

of government was transferred here from Bahia, seven hundred miles

further to the north. Now the population, estimated at a million,

is in South America exceeded by that of Buenos Aires only, and in

recent years much has been done to improve both the city and its port

and wharves. Still greater service has been rendered by sanitary

measures which have not only cleared away slums, but have practically

extinguished yellow fever, and reduced the mortality from other

tropical diseases. Rio is now a pleasant place of residence in winter,

and the sea-breeze makes the climate agreeable in all but the hottest

months, during which Europeans find it debilitating. Fifty years ago

the then Emperor Dom Pedro the Second built himself a summer residence

among the mountains which rise beyond the further end of the bay, and

this presently became the "hot weather station," as people say in

India, for the richer class of citizens and for the representatives of

foreign countries. Now that Rio itself is more healthy, the need for

an annual migration is less imperative, but the natural charm as well

as the much cooler air of Petropolis--so the place is called--have

maintained it as a summer resort. It is an excellent centre both for

the naturalist and for the lover of scenic beauty.

The railway from Rio, after traversing the low and marshy ground along

the margin of the bay for more than twenty miles, reaches the foot

of the Organ Mountains, which form a part of the Coast Range already

referred to.[92] These Organ Mountains (Serra dos Orgãos) rising in

a row of granite towers to a height of 7300 feet, the ravines between

their peaks filled with luxuriant forest, make a noble ending to the

view from Rio along the length of the bay. A botanist could spend no

more delightful week than in rambling among them at a season when the

rains are not too heavy. The railway climbs the Serra at its lowest

point, about 2600 feet above sea-level, descending a little on the

other or northeastern side to Petropolis. The grade is so steep as to

require trains to be hauled up by a wire rope. Nothing can surpass

the beauty of the views which the ascent gives over the bay with its

islands and all the way southeastward to the mountains that surround

Rio.

Petropolis is a pretty little spot, nestling under steep hills, its

streets well planted and shady, its rows of shops which address

themselves to the summer visitor reminding one of a Pyrenean or Rhenish

bathing place. But the charm of its surroundings is beyond that of any

place in Europe, for in no temperate clime are such landscapes with

such woods and such colours to be found. Here, better even than in

the neighbourhood of Rio, one can explore the glens and penetrate the

forests on foot, wherever a path can be found to follow, for to force

one's way along without a path, by cutting openings through the tangle

of shrubs and climbers with a _machete_, is a task beyond the powers of

the solitary walker. It is not so easy as in Europe to get to know the

mountains, for the pedestrian cannot go where he will. The thickness

of the wood stops him. He cannot fix upon some attractive summit

and say he will climb there for a view, because access on foot, and,

still more, access on horseback, is possible only where there exists

a regular "trail" or well-marked path. Yet it is a genial country,

fit to be loved, and not on too vast a scale, like the Himalayas or

the Andes. When one rambles along the valleys, new beauties appear as

the mountains group and regroup themselves with rock peaks springing

unexpectedly out of the forest, and new waterfalls disclose themselves

along the course of the brooks, for in this land of showers every

hollow has its stream. The heights are sufficient to give dignity,[93]

and the forms are endlessly varied, with here and there open pastures

or slopes of rocky ground rising to a rocky peak, while the heat is

tempered by the elevation and by the seldom failing breeze.

We learnt still more of the character of the country in an excursion

over the Leopoldina railway, down into the valley of the Parahyba

River, and back up one of its tributary glens, to the top of the Coast

Range whence we descended to the coast at Nictheroy opposite Rio.

In general one does not get the best impression of any scenery, and

perhaps least of forest scenery, from a railroad. Here, however, a

railroad must be turned to account, because roads are few and driving

difficult. Our train moved slowly and the rains had laid the dust.

This Leopoldina railway (the property of a British company, to the

kindness of whose managers we were greatly beholden) descends a

narrow valley, hemmed in by steep mountains whose projecting spurs and

buttresses turn hither and thither the course of the foaming river.

Right and left waterfalls leap over the cliffs to swell its waters. The

slopes are mostly too steep for tillage, but here and there a cluster

of houses clings to the slopes, and round them there are fruit trees

and maize fields or little gardens. At last the ravine widens and we

emerge into the broad valley, bordered by lower hills, of the Parahyba,

one of the chief rivers of the Atlantic side of Brazil. Running down

it, through a rich country, we stopped at a wayside station to take

horse and ride up to a _Fazenda_ (estate) whose hospitable owner had

invited us to see his coffee plantations and live stock. The house, set

on a hill with a pretty garden below it and charming views all round,

and inhabited by a large family of his children and grandchildren, gave

a pleasant impression of Brazilian rural life. Here was simplicity

with abundance, the beauty of groves and flowers, a bountiful Nature,

labourers, nearly all negroes, who seemed contented and attached to

their kindly master. A band of coloured people turned out to greet

us and played the national air of Britain. The plantation and stock

farms are managed by the owner and his son, who take pleasure in

having everything done in the best way. We saw the process, quite an

elaborate one, and carried on by machinery, of washing and drying the

coffee-beans, sorting them out by size and quality, separating the

husks and membranous coverings from the beans before they are fit to

be packed and shipped. Coffee is an exhausting crop. Fresh land must

be taken in from time to time and the old land allowed to rest; and we

were to see next day many tracts where it used to be cultivated, which

have now been abandoned to forest because the soil had ceased to repay

tillage. A large piece of ground was ready to be planted with young

coffee-plants, and we were asked to inaugurate it by planting the first

trees, which was done to the accompaniment of rockets let off by the

negroes in the full afternoon sunlight. The love of fireworks, carried

by the peoples of southern Europe to the New World, reaches its acme

among their coloured dependants.

Leaving with regret this idyllic home, we sped all too quickly down

the vale of the Parahyba. Everyone knows that there is nothing more

beautiful than the views one gets in following a river. But here we

felt as if we had not known before how beautiful a valley can be till

this Brazilian one was seen in its warm light, with the heavy shadows

of tropic clouds falling upon woods and pastures, the broad stream now

sparkling over the shallows, now reflecting the clouds from its placid

bosom. The nearer ridges that fell softly on either side were crowned

with villages clustering round white church spires; other ridges rose

one behind another to the west, their outlines fading in the haze of

distance. Not often in the tropics does one get the openness and the

mingling of cornfields and meadows with forest which make the charm of

south European scenery. Here the landscape had that Italian quality

one finds in Claude and in the backgrounds of Titian but bathed in the

intenser light of a Brazilian sun. In Brazil, as in Mexico, scenery

that is both splendid and romantic stands awaiting the painter who is

worthy to place it on canvas.

At last, turning away from the Parahyba, which the main line of railway

follows to the sea, we mounted by a branch up a lateral valley, passed

through great stretches of rough pasture land into the higher region of

thick woods, and halted for the night in the midst of a thunderstorm

which pealed and growled and flashed all night long, as often happens

in these latitudes where one bank of clouds comes up after another to

renew the discharges. Next morning the line, after keeping along the

heights for some miles, descended through a forest more wonderful in

its exuberance than any we had yet seen. From the summit we looked

over a wilderness of deep valleys, the waving green of their tree-tops

seamed with the white flash of waterfalls, with many ranges and peaks

rising in the far distance, few of whose tops any European foot had

pressed, for it is only the bottoms of the valleys that are inhabited.

The views were all the more beautiful because the precipices on the

hillsides beneath which we passed were dripping with rivulets from last

night's rain, and cascades leapt over a succession of rock ledges and

hurried in foaming channels down the bottoms of the glens.

In the hollow of the valley lies a quiet little town called Novo

Friburgo, because first inhabited by a Swiss colony brought here many

years ago to grow coffee. These Brazilian villages are loosely built,

the houses scattered along wide streets, among spreading trees, and

this one had retained something of the trimness of the industrious

people who first settled it. Many of the coffee plantations of forty

or even thirty years ago have been abandoned, and their sites are now

practically undistinguishable from the rest of the forest. How long it

will take for the land to recover its pristine vigour is not yet known,

and there is still so much virgin land waiting to be planted that the

question is of more importance to the individual owner than to the

nation at large.

From this smiling vale the line climbs another high ridge and then

descends once more through a long valley to the level land that lies

behind the bay of Rio, coming out at last in the town of Nictheroy

opposite the city.

This long run through the mountains on the top of the ridges and down

along the terraces cut out in their sides, whence one can look over

great spaces of woodland, completed the impressions of the forest

which our excursions round Rio and Petropolis had given. Regarded as

a piece of Nature's work, these Brazilian forests are more striking

than those of the eastern Himalayas or of the Nilghiri Hills in

India, more striking even than that beautiful little forest at Hilo

in Hawaii, which no one who has visited that extraordinary island can

ever forget. It is not that these Brazilian trees are very lofty. I was

told that further north there are places where the great trunks reach

two hundred feet, but here none seemed to exceed, and not very many

to reach, one hundred. Thus, as respects either height or girth or

general stateliness of aspect, these trees of the Serra do Mar are not

to be compared either to the so-called "Big Trees" of California[94]

or to the red woods of the Pacific Coast Range,[95] nor do they equal

the forests of the Cascade Range above Puget Sound, where many of the

Douglas firs and the so-called "cedars" approach, and some are said

to exceed, three hundred feet. But they have a marvellous variety

and richness of colour both in flowers and leaves. Very few--in this

part I could see none--are coniferous, but very many are evergreen,

changing their leaves not all at the same time, like the deciduous

trees of temperate countries, but each tree at its own time, so that

there are always some with fresh leaves coming as the others are

beginning to go. The variety of tints is endless, from the dark glossy

green of many a forest tree to the light green of the bamboos. Some

leaves have white undersurfaces, which when turned up by the wind are

bright enough to give the effect of flowers; and one tree, frequent

in these mountains, has a group of what seem white bracts round the

corymb at the end of its flower-shoots. Still more varied and still

more brilliant are the flowers. These are seen best from above because

it is the highest boughs touched by the sun that burst forth into the

most abundant blossoms. Though we were too early in the hot season to

see the blossom-bearing trees at their best, the wealth of colour was

delightful even in November. Yellow and white were perhaps the most

frequent, but there were also bright pinks and purples and violets.

Palms rising here and there often high above the rest gave a variety

of tint and form, while the space between the trunks was filled by

tree-ferns rising to twenty feet and by a bewildering profusion of

climbing and hanging and parasitic plants, many of them girdling the

boughs with flowers. There were far more than anybody could give me

names for, and as I had no means of ascertaining the scientific names,

it would not serve the reader to give the popular Portuguese ones,

especially as I found that the same name was sometimes applied to quite

different plants because their colour was similar.

It is in a region like this that one begins to realize the amazing

energy of nature. In the Andes we had seen the power of what are

called the inanimate forces acting from beneath to shake the earth

and break through its solid crust. There heat, acting upon water, has

produced volcanic explosions and piled up gigantic cones like Misti

and Tupungato, and has destroyed by earthquakes cities like Valparaiso

or Mendoza. Here heat and water are again the force and the matter on

which the force works; but here it is through life that they act. Every

inch of ground is covered with some living and growing thing. While the

tall stems push upward to overtop their fellows and let their highest

shoots put forth flowers under the sunlight, climbing plants slender

as a vine-shoot or stout as a liana embrace the trunk and mount along

the branches and hang in swinging festoons from tree to tree. The

fallen trunks are covered thick with ferns and mosses. Orchids and

many another parasite root themselves in the living stem, and make it

gay, to its ultimate undoing, with blossoms not its own. Even the bare

faces of gneiss rock, too steep for any soil to rest upon, support a

plant with a thick whorl of succulent leaves that is somehow able to

find sustenance from air and moisture only, its roots anchored into

some slight roughness of the rock. When a patch of wood has been cut

down to the very ground, five years suffice to cover the soil again

with a growth of trees and shrubs so rank that the spot can scarcely be

distinguished from the uncut forest all round. But this swift activity

of life is hardly more wonderful than is the variety of forms. Each

of the great forests of Europe and North America consists of a few

species of trees. In the New Forest in England, most beautiful of all,

in one place chiefly beeches are found, in another chiefly oaks, mixed,

perhaps, with some birches and white thorns. The woods of Maine and New

Hampshire are composed of maples and birches, white pines and hemlocks

and spruces, with now and then some less frequent tree. In the majestic

forests of the Pacific coast there are seldom more than three or four

of the larger species present in any quantity and this is generally

true also of the Eucalyptus forests of Australia. But on this Brazilian

coast the diversity is endless. Those who have traversed the Amazonian

forests have made the same remark. There as here you may find within

a radius of eighty yards, forty kinds of trees growing side by side,

species belonging to different families with myriad shapes and hues

of leaf and flower. Not content with the abundance of its production,

this creative energy of nature insists on expressing itself also in

an endless variety of forms. Do any principles which naturalists have

yet discovered quite explain such a marvellous diversity where the

conditions are the same?

After the doctrine of the Struggle for Life had been once propounded

by two great naturalists who had seen, one of them South America, and

the other, the tropical islands of the Further East, men soon learnt

to recognize and observe the working of the principle in every part of

the earth until in the arid desert or the freezing north a land was

reached where life itself was extinct. But it is in Brazil that the

principle is seen in the fulness of its potency. Here, where life is so

profuse, so multiform, so incessantly surging around like the waves of

a restless sea, this law of nature's action seems to speak from every

rustling leaf, and the forest proclaims it with a thousand voices.

Rambling round Rio, and noting the physical characteristics of the

ground it occupies, the rocky hills and the promontories and the

islands, the traveller is reminded of the historic cities of Greece

and Italy and naturally asks himself: Supposing Rio to have been one

of those cities, where would the Acropolis have been, and where would

the citizens have met in their assembly before they rushed to attack

a tyrant, and to what sea-girt fortress would a ruler have sent his

captives by water as the East Roman emperors seized their enemies

and sent them into exile from the Bosphorus? Then, remembering that

few streets or hills in Rio have any associations with the past, he

wonders whether such associations will come into being in the future,

and whether insurrections and civic conflicts may ever render some of

these spots famous. In old cities like Florence and Paris and Edinburgh

historic memories make a great part of the interest of the place. How

much of English history connects itself with the Tower of London and

with Westminster Hall! It so happened that during our stay in Rio there

befell an incident which shewed that the smooth surface of things may,

even in our own days, be troubled by explosive passions, an incident

which revealed a new kind of danger to which in times of domestic

strife modern engines of warfare may subject a maritime town.

On the day when we were to embark for Bahia and Europe, we started

early in the morning from Petropolis to come down by train to Rio,

and heard at the station rumours of a revolution, confused rumours,

for no one could say from whom the revolution, if there was one,

proceeded or against whom it was directed. When we reached Rio, things

cleared up a little. It was not a political revolution nor a military

pronunciamento, but a marine mutiny. The crews, almost entirely

negroes, of the two great Dreadnought battleships which the Brazilian

government had recently ordered and purchased from an English firm of

shipbuilders, and which had shortly before arrived in the harbour,

had revolted during the night. The captain of one of the vessels, the

_Minas Geraes_, had been murdered by his crew as he stepped on board

upon his return from dining on a French ship. The story ran that he had

been first pierced by bayonets and then hewed in pieces with hatchets.

Of the other officers some few had been killed, the rest put on shore.

The only white men left on board were some English engineers forcibly

detained in order to work the engines. The crews of a cruiser and

two smaller war vessels had joined in the revolt. All the ships were

in the hands of the crews, who, however, were believed to be obeying

non-commissioned officers of their own colour, and who were led by

a negro named João Candido,[96] a big man of energy and resolution,

who had shewn his grasp of the situation by ordering all the liquor

on the _Minas Geraes_ to be thrown overboard. The grievances alleged

by the seamen were overwork, insufficient wages, and the frequency

of corporal punishments. Rumours were busy connecting the names of

prominent politicians with the outbreak, but so far as could be made

out then or subsequently there was no foundation for these suspicions.

The mutiny seems to have been the spontaneous act of the crews, who,

it was remarked, had just arrived from Lisbon, lately the scene of a

revolution, and might have there caught the infection of rebellion. In

demanding the redress of their grievances, which was, of course, to be

accompanied by an amnesty for themselves, they had threatened to lay

the city in ashes, enforcing the threat by firing some shots into it

(not, however, from the heavy guns). One shot killed two children, and

several other persons were wounded.

The aspect of the city was rather less affected than might have been

expected. Some troops were moving about, here cavalry, there infantry.

Few carriages or motor cars and few women were to be seen. Business was

slack, and groups of men stood talking at street corners, evidently

imparting to one another those tales and suspicions and guesses at

unseen causes with which the air was thick. All water traffic from the

opposite side of the bay had been stopped by the mutineers, who had

also compelled the submission of one of the forts at the entrance.

Strolling along to the great Botafogo Esplanade under the palms, I

found a battery of field artillery, their guns pointed at the two

battleships, the _Minas_ and the _São Paulo_, against which they would,

of course, have been as useless as paper pellets. There the majestic

yellow grey monsters lay, fresh from Messrs. Armstrong's yard at

Newcastle, flying the ensign of Brazil, but also flying at the fore

the red flag of rebellion. So the day wore on, terror abating, but the

sense of helplessness increasing. We were lunching at the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs--it was a small party, for considerations of safety

had kept away the ladies who had been invited--when suddenly the heavy

boom of the guns was heard, and continued at intervals all through the

repast. When again in the streets, I found that the two Dreadnoughts

were shelling some torpedo-boats, manned by crews still loyal, which

had approached them. The practice was bad, and none of the boats was

hit, but they prudently scurried off up the bay into shallow water

where the ironclads could not follow.

So the hours passed and everybody was still asking, "What is to be

done?" "The mutineers," so men said, "can't be starved out, because

they have threatened to destroy the city if food is refused them, and

the city is at their mercy. By this threat they have forced us to give

them water. We cannot blow up the ships with torpedoes, first because

they have stretched torpedo nets round the hulls, and secondly because

it would be a serious thing to destroy property for which we have paid

no small part of our annual revenue. Doesn't it look as if we should

have to submit to the mutineers? What else can we do?" Later on the

firing recommenced and I mounted to the third story of the British

Consulate to see what was happening. The ships were shelling the naval

barracks on the Isla das Cobras in the harbour, and the island was

replying, and we were near enough to see the red flash from the iron

lips just before the roar was heard. Lying out in the bay was the

British liner by which we were to sail for Liverpool. The lighters

that were carrying coal to her had been commandeered by the mutineers,

but she had just enough in her bunkers to get to Bahia. The immediate

difficulty was for the passengers to reach her across the line of

fire. At last, however, a boat was sent out from shore bearing a flag

of truce, and the _São Paulo_ consented to cease firing and let the

passengers get on board the British vessel. They were accordingly

embarked in a launch which, flying the Consulate flag, crossed

unharmed the danger zone. It was the only chance, but a sense of relief

was visible in every face when we stepped on board, for if a negro

gunner had been smitten by the desire to let fly once more at the Isla

das Cobras, his ill-aimed shot might very well have sent the launch

to the bottom. As we steamed slowly out to the ocean the magnificent

_São Paulo_ ran close alongside us, and we could see her decks crowded

with negroes and the red flag still flying. "A study in black and red,"

someone observed. Outside the entrance were lying the _Minas Geraes_

and the _Bahia_, partly to be out of harm's way from torpedoes, partly

to guard the mouth of the bay. In the sober light of a grey sunset, the

clouds hanging heavy on the Corcovado, but the lofty watch-tower of

the Pan d'Azucar still visible through the gathering shades, we turned

northward, and bade farewell to Rio. Two hours later, looking back

through a moonless night, we could still see the flash, from beneath

the horizon, of the searchlights which the _Minas Geraes_ was casting

on the sea all round her to guard against the stealthy approach of a

loyal torpedo-boat.

A few days later, at Pernambuco, we heard that peace had been restored.

The Chambers had voted an amnesty with eloquent speeches about the

beauty of forgiveness, and had promised to redress the grievances of

the mutineers. Another mutiny broke out afterwards, which, after many

lives had been lost, was severely suppressed, but these later events

happened when we were far away, nearing the coast of Europe, and of

them I have nothing to tell.

The coast for some way north from Rio continues high, but the

steamers keep too far out to permit its beauties to be seen. Before

one approaches Bahia, the mountains have receded, and at that city,

though picturesque heights are still visible, they lie further back,

and scarcely figure in the landscape. Still further north, towards

Pernambuco, and most of the way northwestward to Pará, the coast is

much lower. The bay of Bahia is singularly beautiful in its vast sweep,

as well as in the verdure that fringes its inlets, and the glimpses

of distant sunlit hills. Nor is the city, long the capital of Brazil,

wanting in interest; for, though none of the buildings have much

architectural merit, there is a quaint, old-fashioned look about the

streets and squares, with many a house that has stood unchanged since

the eighteenth century. The upper city runs along the edge of a steep

bluff, sixty or eighty feet above the lower town, which is a single

line of street, even more dirty than it is picturesque, occupying the

narrow strip between the harbour and the cliff. Here, far more than

in Parisianized Rio, one finds the familiar features of a Portuguese

town reproduced, irregular and narrow streets, houses, often high,

roofed with red tiles, and coloured with all sorts of washes, pink,

green, blue, and yellow. Sometimes the whole front or side of a house

is covered with blue or yellowish brown tiles, a characteristic of

Portuguese cities--it is frequent in Oporto and Braga--which has come

down from Moorish times. But a still greater contrast between this and

southern Brazil is found in the population. In São Paulo there are few

negroes, in Rio not very many, but here in Bahia all the town seems

black. One might be in Africa or the West Indies. It is the same in

Pernambuco and indeed all the way to the mouth of the Amazon.

Finding this to be a region filled with coloured people as São Paulo

was with white people, and knowing that a thousand miles further west

one would come into a region entirely Indian, one began to realize

what a vast country Brazil is, big enough to be carved up into sixteen

countries each as large as France. Were there natural boundaries,

_i.e._ such physical features as mountain ranges or deserts, to divide

this immense region into sections, the settled parts of Brazil might

before now have split apart into different political communities. As

it is, however, there are no such natural dividing lines, and if the

Republic should ever break in pieces it will be differences in the

character of the population or some conflict of material interests that

will bring this about.

How has it happened that so huge a country has fallen to the lot of a

people so much too small for it, since one can hardly reckon the true

Brazilian white nation at more than seven millions?

What did happen was that the French, English, and Dutch, having their

hands full in Europe, did not pursue their attempts to occupy the

country with sufficient persistence and with adequate forces, and so

lost their hold on the parts they had seized. Thus it became possible

for a handful of Portuguese on the Atlantic coast to send out small

colonizing parties into their unoccupied Hinterland, and as there were

no civilized inhabitants to resist them, to go on acquiring a title

to it without opposition until they met the outposts of the Spanish

government who had advanced from the Pacific across the Andes just as

the Portuguese had advanced from the Atlantic. Neither Portuguese nor

Spaniards had been numerous enough to colonize this interior region

of the continent, so it remains (save for a few trading posts on the

rivers) an empty wilderness.

Nevertheless, though Brazil is physically all one country, it contains

regions differing in climate, in economic resources, and in population.

I will try in a few sentences to indicate the character of each.

The most northerly part along the frontiers of Guiana and also along

a good deal of the coast between the mouth of the Amazon and Cape St.

Roque is the least valuable, for large tracts are stony and protracted

droughts are not uncommon. The extreme north has been hardly at all

settled.

The east central part, consisting of the mountain ridges and

table-lands referred to on page 368, together with slopes which descend

on all sides from these highlands, is a region of great natural

resources where all tropical crops and fruits can be produced. Most of

it is healthy, much of it not too hot for white men to work and thrive,

and the magnificent forests, no less than the mines, will make the

mountains for many years to come no less a source of wealth than are

the more level tracts. Its weak point is the want of white labour and

the inefficiency of black labour.

This tropical region passes imperceptibly into the temperate country

which occupies the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catharina, and

Rio Grande, a section of the country no less fertile than the last

and better fitted for European constitutions. Here all sub-tropical

products can be raised; here also are forests; and here, where the land

has not yet been brought under tillage, there is abundant and excellent

pasture for all sorts of live stock. As the east central region is the

land of cotton and sugar, so this southern region is the land of coffee

and cattle,--coffee in its northerly parts, cattle and the cereals in

its southern.

There remain the vast spaces of the west and northwest, still so

imperfectly explored that it is hard to estimate their economic

value. To the Amazonian forests, the Selvas, I shall return in

another chapter.[97] They are the land of another great Brazilian

staple--rubber. Most parts of the region where Brazil adjoins Bolivia,

a vast level or slightly undulating country, partly grassy, partly

covered with wood or scrub, is believed to be available either for

cultivation or for ranching. At present access is difficult, and

markets are far away, but when the districts of Brazil, Uruguay, and

Argentina that lie between this region and the coast have been more

fully settled, its turn will come.

Taking Brazil as a whole, no great country in the world owned by a

European race possesses so large a proportion of land available for the

support of human life and productive industry. In the United States

there are deserts, and of the gigantic Russian Empire much is desert,

and much is frozen waste. But on the Portuguese of Brazil nature has

bestowed nothing for which man cannot find a use. Such a possession as

this was far more than enough to compensate the little kingdom for the

loss of the empire which it began in the sixteenth century to build up

in India, before the evil days came after the death of King Sebastian.

The material prosperity of a country, however, depends less on its

natural resources than on the quality of the labour applied to its

development and on the intelligence that directs the labour. In these

respects Brazil has been less fortunate. When the Portuguese first

settled the coast lands, they forced the Indian aborigines to work for

them, and in many places destroyed by their severities the bulk of the

native population. Negroes began to be imported about A.D. 1600, but

not in great numbers until the discovery of diamond and other mines

in the inland country created a sudden demand for labour. After that,

there came a large importation of slaves, for agricultural as well

as for mining purposes, from all the Portuguese dominions of Africa,

and from the Congo regions; and this went on, though latterly much

reduced, down to our own time. Between 1825 and 1850 it is said that

1,250,000 slaves were landed, and cargoes came in even later. Thus the

working population of the tropical region, including the coast towns,

became largely, and in the north, predominantly negro. Slavery was

abolished by successive stages, the last of which was reached in 1888.

For a time the plantation culture was disorganized, but most of the

freedmen ultimately returned to work. It is by their labour that sugar

and cotton are raised to-day, though they take life very easily, and

often content themselves with just so much exertion on just so many

days a week as is needed to provide them with food and the other scanty

necessaries of their life. Here, as elsewhere, the race is lighthearted

and thoughtless, caring little for the future, loving amusement in

its most childish forms. It is kindly and submissive, but dangerously

excitable, and quickly demoralized by drink. The planters find it hard

to count on their work people, who stay away if they feel more than

usually lazy, and will, if displeased, transfer themselves to another

planter, who, in the general scarcity of labour, is glad to have them.

Many children are born to them, but many die, especially in infancy,

so that, taking the country as a whole, they do not seem to increase

faster than the other sections of the population.

Such are the cotton and sugar regions: now let us turn to those

southerly states of the republic, whose staples are coffee and cattle

and cereals. In them, and especially in São Paulo and Rio Grande,

the conditions are altogether different. The number of negroes was

never large there, and it does not grow. Owing to the elevation of

the ground and to the less powerful sun, the heat is not excessive

in either state, and European immigrants can work and thrive and be

happy. So Europeans have flocked hither. Between 1843 and 1859 about

twenty thousand came from Germany to Rio Grande do Sul, and there

are now, it is said, about two hundred thousand, forming a compact

community which preserves its national habits and manages its own

affairs with little interference by the central government. It is, in

fact, disposed to resent any such interference and to "run things" in

its own solid German way. Even larger is the number of Italians who

in more recent years have entered these southern states. The labour

on the great coffee estates of São Paulo is almost entirely Italian;

and in Rio Grande they have become well-to-do peasant proprietors,

living in less comfort than their German neighbours, but working just

as steadily. This better quality of population has largely gone to

making the southern states the most progressive part of Brazil. Should

the Italians and the native Brazilians of the south, who have far

less negro blood than those of the middle states, continue to spread

themselves out as settlers over the still thinly peopled southwestern

districts, they will probably give prosperity to that region also.

Cattle ranching is in the south carried on by Gauchos much like those

of Uruguay or Argentina. They are said to have communicated their love

of horses to the Germans and Italians, so that on holidays even the

women of those races appear on horseback in a way that would startle

their peasant cousins left at home in Swabia or Lombardy.

The foreign element in Brazil is more important by its energy and

industry than by its numbers, for it probably little exceeds a million

all told, and the total population of the republic may approach

nineteen or twenty millions. In 1910 about 88,000 immigrants entered,

most of them Italians, and the rest Portuguese, Spaniards, and Syrians,

these last mostly travelling peddlers, or small dealers who establish

themselves in the towns. The afflux of Syrians that has found its way

to South America and the West Indies during the last few years is a new

and curious feature in the currents of ethnic movement that mark our

time.

But what of the Brazilian people itself? The influences that tend to

make it vary from its original type are counterworked by the steady

immigration from Portugal, and from Spain also, for though any sort of

Spaniard (except a Gallego) differs materially from a Portuguese, the

two races differ much less from one another than either does from any

other European stock. The Brazilian is primarily a Portuguese in the

outlines of his mind and character. He has, however, been modified by

intermixture with two other races. The first of these is the native

Indian. The settlers both in São Paulo and along the northeastern

coast, while they killed most of the Indian men either in fight or by

working them to death as slaves, intermarried freely with Indian women.

The offspring were called Mamelucos, an Eastern term which it is odd

to find here, and which is now beginning to pass out of use. In the

south this mixed race as well as the pure Indian race has been now

absorbed into the rest of the population.[98] You would as soon expect

to see a Pawnee in Philadelphia as an Indian in Santos. In the north

the half-breed is generally called a _Caboclo_, a name originally given

to the tame native Indian, as opposed to the wild _Indio bravo_; and

in that region, a large part of the agricultural population is of this

mixed stock.

The second modifying influence is that of the imported Africans. When

the first slave ships disgorged their cargoes on the Atlantic coast,

the aborigines of those districts had already been either killed off

or merged in the Portuguese population, so that the mingling of Indian

and negro blood which is supposed to produce an especially undesirable

class of citizens was comparatively small. The intermarriage of blacks

and whites has, however, gone on apace, and the negroes constitute a

large, the mulattoes and quadroons a still larger, percentage of the

population. Some observers hold that the coloured people, taken all

together, equal or outnumber the whites. The intermixture continues,

for here, as in Portuguese East Africa, no sentiment of race repulsion

opposes it.[99] Any figures that might be given would be quite

conjectural; for the line between the mixed black and white and the

white cannot be drawn with any approach to accuracy. Even in the United

States, where conditions permit more careful discrimination, no one

can tell what is the percentage of mulattoes to the total coloured

population, nor how many quadroons and octoroons there are to be found

among those classed as whites, for many people who have some negro

blood succeed in concealing its presence, while others are classed as

coloured who in Europe would pass as white. Much more difficult is it

to tell in Brazil who is to be deemed a person of colour.

How far the differences between the Brazilian and the Portuguese of

to-day are due to racial admixture, and how far to the conditions of

colonial life and a new physical environment, is a matter on which

one might speculate for ever and come no nearer to a conclusion. The

descendants of Englishmen who were living in Massachusetts and Virginia

in 1840 before immigration from Continental Europe had begun to affect

the English stock shewed already marked differences from the Englishmen

of old England, and it is impossible to tell how far the changes that

have passed on the people of the United States since then are due to

the influx of new immigrants from Europe, how far to other causes.

The Brazilian is still more of a Portuguese than he is of any other

type. His ideas and tastes, his ways of life, his alternations of

listlessness and activity, his kindly good nature, his susceptibility

to emotions and to a rhetoric that can rouse emotion, belong to the

country whence he came.

Brazil was the latest country in the American continent to become a

republic. This befell in 1888. In 1807, when the armies of Napoleon

Bonaparte entered Portugal, the then reigning king, John, of the

house of Braganza, crossed the Atlantic and reigned at Rio till the

expulsion of the French enabled him to resume his European throne. In

1822 the people had become discontented under Portuguese misgovernment.

Republican ideas, stimulated by the destruction of Spanish power that

was proceeding on the Pacific coasts, were in the air, and the Regent,

Dom Pedro, son of King John, proclaimed the independence of Brazil

which was, after some fighting, conceded by the mother country in

1825. His action probably saved monarchical institutions, and when he

abdicated in 1831, disgusted with the difficulties that surrounded him,

and with the unpopularity to which his own faults had exposed him, he

was succeeded by his son, who ruled as the Emperor Pedro the Second.

This amiable and enlightened prince, a lover of natural science as well

as of art and letters, devoted himself chiefly to European travel and

to the economic and educational improvement of his country, interfering

very little with politics. A military conspiracy and the resentment

of the planters at the sudden abolition of slavery brought about the

revolution of 1888, in which a republic was proclaimed and the Emperor

shipped off to Europe. In 1891 a congress met and enacted a federal

constitution modelled on that of the United States. The immense size of

the country and its want of homogeneity suggested a federal system, the

basis for which already existed in the legislative assemblies of the

provinces. Since then Brazil has had its full share of armed risings

and civil wars.

At first the states were allowed the full exercise of the large

functions which the Constitution allotted to them, including the

raising of revenue by duties on exports and the maintenance of a

police force which in some states was undistinguishable from an army.

Presently attempts were made to draw the reins tighter, and these

attempts have continued till now. The national government has at its

disposal the important field of financial and tariff legislation, the

control of army and navy, and the opportunities of helping needy or

slothful states by grants of money or by the execution of public works.

Through the use of these powers it has latterly endeavoured to exert

over the states a greater control than some of them seem willing to

accept. Nor is this the only difficulty. While some of the states, and

especially the southern, have an intelligent and energetic population,

others remain far behind, their citizens too ignorant and lazy, or

too unstable and emotional, to be fit for self-government. Universal

suffrage in districts where the majority of the voters are illiterate

persons of colour suggests, if it does not justify, extra-legal methods

of handling elections. One illegality breeds another, and there is

perpetuated a distrust of authority and a resort to violence. As one of

the most recent and brilliant of European travelers[100] observes, in

a passage which conveys his admiration for the attractive qualities he

finds in the Brazilians, "The Constitution enjoys a chiefly theoretic

authority.... There is a lack of balance between the states which

have already a highly perfected civilization and the districts which

in theory are on a footing of equality, but whose black or Indian

population can only permit of a nominal democracy stained by those

irresponsible outbursts which characterize primitive humanity." That

the authority of a constitution should be "theoretic rather than

practical" must be expected where "a democracy is nominal"; for if

institutions the working of which requires intelligence and public

spirit are forced on Indians and negroes, their failure is inevitable.

In the Brazilian politics of to-day there are many factions, but no

organized parties nor any definite principles or policies advocated

by any group or groups of men. Federal issues are crossed and

warped by state issues, state issues confused by federal issues,

and both sets of issues turn rather on persons than on general

doctrines or specific practical proposals. One source of dissension

is, however, absent,--that struggle of the church and clericalism

against the principles of religious equality which has distracted the

Spanish-American republics. In Brazil the separation of church and

state is complete, and though the diplomatic corps enjoys the presence

of a papal Nuncio as one of its members, this adherence to tradition

has no present political significance. Here, moreover, as in Argentina

and Uruguay, the church and religion seem to have little influence

upon the thought or the conduct of laymen. The absence or the fluidity

of parties makes the executive stronger than the legislature both in

national and state politics. There are many men of talent, especially

oratorical talent, and many men of force, but not enough who shew

constructive power and the grasp of mind needed to handle the enormous

economic problems which a country so vast, so rich, and so various

presents.

Among the economic issues of to-day may be reckoned that of protection,

as against free trade. Brazilian policy is at present highly

protectionist, and does not hesitate, when some powerful interest asks

for further help, to double or more than double whatever protective

duty it finds existing. The chief social questions are those relating

to the extension of education and the enactment of better labour laws

for the benefit of children and the security of workpeople. The chief

constitutional question is the relations of the national and the state

governments. European critics complain that upon none of these does

any legislative group seem to put forward any definite and consistent

policy. Yet such critics must be reminded that the country has been

a republic only since 1891, and free from the taint of slavery only

since 1888, and that her peace has been since those years frequently

disturbed. It is too soon to be despondent.

Brazilian society seems to a passing observer to be in a state of

transition, and may not for some time to come succeed in reconciling

the contrasts between the old and the new, and between theory and

practice, which it now displays. The old system was aristocratic not

only because a number of respected families surrounding the imperial

court enjoyed a pre-eminence of rank, but also because a newer class

of rich men, chiefly landowners, had grown up. The aristocracy of rank

is now almost gone, but the aristocracy of wealth remains and is in

control of public affairs. In most parts of the country, it stands

far above the labouring population, with little of a middle class

between. Democratic principles have been proclaimed in the broadest

terms, but thinking men see, and even unthinking men cannot but dimly

feel, that no government, however good its intentions, can apply such

principles in a country where seven-eighths of the people are ignorant,

and half of them belong to backward races, unfit to exercise political

rights. The conditions here noted may be thought to resemble those of

the southern states in the North American Union. But there are two

conspicuous differences. In Brazil no social "colour line" is sharply

drawn, and the fusion of whites and blacks by intermarriage goes

steadily on. In Brazil the pure white element, though it preponderates

in the temperate districts of the south, is less than half of the

whole nation, whereas in the United States it is eight-ninths. Yet

in the southern United States nearly all the coloured population has

been disfranchised and all declarations of democratic principles

are understood to be subject to the now fundamental dogma that white

supremacy must be absolutely assured.

Though the financial stability of Brazil is said to be hardly equal to

that which Argentina was enjoying in 1910, and though the growth of

national and individual wealth has been less rapid, there is a sense

of abundance, and the upper classes live in an easy open-handed way.

Slaveholding produces extravagant habits, especially among plantation

owners, for what is the use of looking after the details of expenditure

when one has thriftless labourers, whose carelessness infects all who

are set over them? Like their Portuguese ancestors, the Brazilians are

genial and hospitable, and they have the example and the excuse of a

bounteous Nature around them. They seem less addicted to horse-racing

and betting than are the Argentines and Chileans, but the gambling

instinct finds plenty of opportunities in the fluctuations of exchange,

as well as in the rapid changes of the produce markets.

The Brazilian is primarily a man of the country, not of the city.

Rio, large as it is, is a less potent factor than Buenos Aires is in

Argentina, or Santiago in Chile. The landowner loves his rural life,

as did the Virginian planter in North America before the Civil War,

and lives on the _fazenda_ in a sort of semi-feudal patriarchal way,

often with grown-up sons and daughters around him. Estates (except in

the extreme south) are extensive; near neighbours are few; families are

often large; the plantation is a sort of little principality, and its

owner with his fellow-proprietors is allowed, despite all democratic

theory, to direct the politics of the district just as in England,

eighty years ago, the county families used to control local affairs and

guide the choice of representatives in Parliament.

I have observed that the Brazilian, though modified in some parts of

the country by Indian or negro blood, is primarily a Portuguese. Now

the Portuguese, a people attractive to those who live among them, have

also had a striking history. They are a spirited people, an adventurous

people, a poetical people. For more than a century, when they were

exploring the oceans and founding a dominion in India, they played a

great part in the world, and though they have never quite recovered the

position, wonderful for so small a country, which they then held, and

have produced no later poet equal to Camoens, men of practical force

and men of intellectual brilliance have not been wanting. Neither are

they wanting in Brazil. A love of polite letters is common among the

upper classes, and the power of writing good verse is not rare. The

language has retained those qualities which it shewed in the Lusiads,

and the possession of that great poem has helped to maintain the taste

and talent of the nation. There are admirable speakers, subtle and

ingenious lawyers, astute politicians, administrators whose gifts are

approved by such feats as the extinction of yellow fever in Rio and

Santos. The late Baron do Rio Branco was a statesman who would have

been remarkable in any country. Yet it is strange to find that, both

here and in other parts of South America, men of undoubted talent are

often beguiled by phrases, and seem to prefer words to facts. Between

the national vanities and self-glorifying habits of different nations,

there is not much to choose, but in countries like England and the

United States, the rhetoric of after-dinner speeches is known clearly

and consciously by the more capable among the speakers, and almost as

distinctly by the bulk of the audience, to be mere rhetoric. They are

aware of their national faults and weaknesses and do not really suppose

themselves more gifted or more virtuous than other peoples.

In Latin America, where eloquence comes by nature and seems to become

a part of thought itself, the case is different. Exuberant imagination

takes its hopes or predictions for realities, and finds in the gilded

clouds of fancy a foundation on which to build practical policies.

Proud of what they call their Democratic Idealism, they assume as

already existing in their fellow-countrymen the virtues which the

citizens of a free country ought to possess. To keep these unrealized

ideals floating before one's eyes may be better than to have no

ideals at all, but for the purposes of actual politics, the result

is the same either way, for that which is secured for the principles

embodied in the laws is what M. Clémenceau happily calls "an authority

chiefly theoretic." Let us, nevertheless, remember that although the

habit of mistaking words for facts and aspirations for achievements

aggravates the difficulties of working constitutional government in

South American countries, these difficulties would in any case exist.

They inhere in the conditions of the countries. It is vain to expect

a constitution closely modelled on that of the United States to work

smoothly in Brazil, just as it is impossible to expect the British

Cabinet and Parliamentary system to work smoothly in those small

nations which have recently been copying it, without an incessant and

often ludicrous contrast between doctrine and practice. A nation is the

child of its own past, as Cervantes says that a man is the child of his

own works.

The Brazilians, who never forget that they were for a time, during the

French invasion of Portugal, their own mother country, and head of the

whole Portuguese people, cherish their national literary traditions

with more warmth than do the Spaniards of the New World, and produce

quite as much, in the way of poetry and _belles lettres_, as do the

writers of Portugal. They have a quick susceptibility to ideas, like

that of Frenchmen or Russians, but have not so far made any great

contributions to science, either in the fields of physical enquiry

or in those of economics, philology, or history. One can hardly be

surprised that learning and the abstract side of natural science

are undervalued in a country which has no university, nothing more

than faculties for teaching the practical subjects of law, medicine,

engineering, and agriculture. This deficiency of a taste for and

interest in branches of knowledge not directly practical is the more

noticeable, because the Brazilians do not strike one as a new people.

Less here than in Argentina or Uruguay, has one the feeling that the

nation is still in the first freshness of youth, eagerly setting itself

to explore and furnish its home and to develop resources the possession

of which it has just begun to realize. Business and sport are not such

absorbing topics of conversation here as they are in Argentina; there

is neither such a display of wealth nor such a passion for spending

it. Yet one doubts whether this freedom from the preoccupations of

industry and commerce, the latter mainly left to foreigners, enures

to the benefit of public life. Most of those who follow politics seem

absorbed in personal intrigues. Comparatively few shew themselves

sensible of the tremendous problems which the nation has to face, with

its scattered centres of population to draw together, its means of

communication to extend, its public credit to sustain, its revenues

to be scrupulously husbanded and applied to useful purposes, above

all, its mass of negro and Indian population to be educated and

civilized. Nowhere in the world is there a more urgent need for a wise

constructive statesmanship.

It is hard to convey the impression with which one sees the shores

of Brazil sink below the horizon after coasting along them for three

thousand miles from the Uruguayan border to Pernambuco, and coming to

know something of the boundless wealth which Nature has lavished upon

man in this vast land. Not even the great North American republic has a

territory at once so large and so productive. What will be its future?

Is the people worthy of such an inheritance?

The first thought that rises in the mind of those who are possessed, as

in this age we all more or less are, by the passion for the development

of natural resources, is a feeling of regret that a West European race,

powerful by its numbers and its skill, say the North American or German

or English, has not, to use the familiar phrase, "got the thing in

hand." The white part of the Brazilian nation--and it is only that part

that need be considered--seems altogether too small for the tasks which

the possession of this country imposes. "How men from the Mississippi

would make things hum along the Amazon and the Paraná!" says the

traveller from the United States. In thirty years, Brazil would have

fifty millions of inhabitants. Steamers would ply upon the rivers,

railways would thread the recesses of the forests, and this already

vast dominion would almost inevitably be enlarged at the expense of

weaker neighbours till it reached the foot of the Andes. Second or

third thoughts suggest a doubt whether such a consummation is really

in the interests of the world. May not territories be developed too

quickly? Might it not have been better for the United States if their

growth had been slower, if their public lands had not been so hastily

disposed of, if in their eagerness to obtain the labour they needed

they had not drawn in a multitude of ignorant immigrants from central

and southern Europe? With so long a life in prospect as men of science

grant to our planet, why should we seek to open all the mines and cut

down all the forests and leave nothing in the exploitation of natural

resources to succeeding generations? In the long run doubtless the

lands, like the tools, will go to those who can use them. But it may be

well to wait and see what new conditions another century brings about

for the world; and the Latin-American peoples may within that time grow

into something different from what they now appear to the critical eyes

of Europe and North America.