WANDERING IN MINAS GERAES
On December 13th our alarm-clock having gone astray and being evidently
unreplaceable in Brazil, where time means so little, I sat up all night
in order to rout “Tut” out at four and send him off to the station,
following him next day up on the cool and comfortable plateau to the
second town of Minas Geraes. Juiz de Fora lies in a deep lap of wooded
hills, with a conspicuous monument and statue of “Christo Redemptor” on
a little parked hilltop high above yet close to the city, and revealing
its site from afar off. Fir trees, masses of roses of all colors, and
other flora of the temperate zone add to stretches of densely green
grass, so unlike the gravel or paved squares almost universal in South
America, in making the town a pleasant place of sojourn. The country
round about is very rolling and without a suggestion of the tropics, but
its coffee is unfortunately small, poor, and ill-tended, grown
completely over in places with weeds and creepers; and as the town
depends almost entirely on this product, it had a squeeze-penny mood
that was not natural to Brazil. Like many another Brazilian town, its
name is of simple origin. A _juiz de fora_, or “outside judge,” went
about the country on a regular circuit in colonial days, holding court
in various places, of which the present town was the most distant, not
from Rio, which had no official standing in the olden times, but from
the ancient capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto.
It was toward Ouro Preto that I continued a day or two later, pausing in
one town to make a contract with the local saloon-keeper, in another to
find a cinema about the size of a box-car tight closed and the owner off
traveling; in a third that turned out to be a mud village without
electricity, even had I been willing to risk dragging our outfit through
the atrocious streets to its toy theater. It was in the last that I
boarded the northbound train an hour before it arrived, which is not
what the Chileans call a “German tale,” but an everyday fact. For there
the government railway, which comes that far with a gauge even wider
than our own, suddenly changes to a meter in width, and I had already
grown weary of sitting in the train I was waiting for when it rolled in
and, transferring its contents to its narrower self, rambled on across
the cool plateau.
Besides our cloth-mounted three-sheets, I had had printed several
thousand posters and window-cards, and the towns of Brazil blossomed
with Edison behind me. Then there were great bundles of _avulsos_, or
handbills, of many colors, to be strewn among the eager populace when
the show actually arrived. Except for the printer’s errors, which were
legion, these new masterly appeals were all my own handiwork, as were
the articles on the life of Edison which sprang up in the newspapers
along my route, for I had at last almost tamed the mis-jointed
Portuguese language. By the time our tour was finished Brazil would
certainly have known the story of Edison far better than he knows it
himself, had he not already been the best-known American in South
America—with the possible exception of Franklin, whom thousands took to
be his contemporary, often asking if the two great inventors sometimes
worked together and were on good terms socially, or whether they raged
with jealousy over each other’s achievements.
There were many tunnels on the way to Ouro Preto, and much winding among
deep-green hills, the soil still reddish, but showing little
cultivation. All this region is at least 3000 feet above sea-level,
where corn feels more at home than bananas or even coffee. Herds of
cream-colored cattle of part zebu ancestry roamed the broken, grassy
countryside. It was a dull, showery day, and the wet green trees clung
to the hillsides like the plumage of birds, while everywhere the palms
stood with disheveled hair. We made several stops on the branch line
eastward from Burnier, just why I do not know, and at length halted at
an isolated building with the information that we had reached Ouro
Preto.
On the train I had chanced to mention my business to one of several
local celebrities in heavy overcoats, who quickly shouted the
information to all within hearing, so that when I disembarked the negro
hotel runners were already calling me “Doctor Franck.” One of them piled
my baggage on his head and we set out on foot into the night, for Ouro
Preto, I quickly discovered, is so steep that vehicles have never become
acclimated there. As we panted upward past great sheer-cut bluffs,
scattered lights gradually disclosed the town, piled and tumbled far
above and below us, the round cobblestones of its precipitous streets
worn so icy smooth by many generations of bare and shod feet that my own
showed a continuous desire to lag behind me. In a hotel as old as Vasco
da Gama, and about as dilapidated, I was shown with ceremonial courtesy
into an enormous front room with a “matrimonial” bed wider than the
street outside, the springs of which I quickly discovered to be solid
planks. Recalling my courteous colored companion, I gave him five
minutes in which to find me a real bed. We wandered much longer than
that through a labyrinth of rooms and anterooms—the latter all with
narrow bedsteads, suggesting the old slave days when each traveler
brought with him a servant to sleep outside his door—before we found a
_cama de arame_, or “bed of wire,” in another vast chamber, with a
window looking out across what seemed to be a bottomless gorge to
patches of small, window-shaped lights climbing high into the sky.
I went out for a stroll, climbing cobbled streets so sheer that a
foot-slip would have landed me in quite another part of town, passing
buildings so old and quaint and medieval that in spite of the modern
lights Edison has bequeathed the place I expected some old Portuguese
viceroy in his cloak and sword and plumed hat to step out of any dark
passageway followed by his slaves and retainers and preceded by his
link-boys. I had all but forgotten the “feel” of old South American
mountain towns, with their something peculiarly their own, and could
easily have fancied myself back in the Andes again. Indeed, I was only
beginning to realize the charm of those old Andean pueblos, barely
guessed when one is physically lost in their squalor, yet fascinating
from a distance of time and space, every twist and turn and descent and
rise of their streets a lurking mystery, like a winding mountain road,
cool and silent—especially silent, in the absence of all wheeled
traffic.
Ouro Preto means “black gold.” The hills and young mountains lying in
tumbled heaps about the town are honeycombed with abandoned mines, as
the town itself is said to be with secret subterranean passageways. Not
even Ayacucho in the Andes is so overrun with churches. Only an accurate
man could throw a stone without hitting one, most of them of light
colored rock, beautified with age, bulking far above the few little old
houses apportioned to each, both by their size and by their places of
vantage on some eminence or mountain nose. Evidently whenever they
killed a slave or committed some particularly dastardly crime the old
Portuguese adventurers salved their consciences or quieted their
superstitions by building a church. Between them the little old houses
straggle in double rows far up every steep valley that has room for
them, here connected by very old stone bridges over narrow, yet deep,
gorge streams, with time-crumbled stone benches along them, there
refusing to follow when the cobbled street suddenly lets go and falls
headlong with many a racking twist into another abyss.
In general, the old capital of the mining province is built along both
sides of a small swift stream, which spills down through town with a
musical sound, picking up some of its garbage on the way. Old colonial
ruins, built in the leisurely, plentiful, massive fashion of long ago,
still bear coats-of-arms and cut-stone Portuguese emblems, some
half-hidden behind masses of white roses or climbing flowers. Old
fountains of variegated colors, very broken, much weather- and
time-faded, still have tiny streams trickling forth from the stone
mouths of human heads or strange creatures unknown to natural history;
scores of quaint old balconies, mysterious corners, and queer porticos
jut out over streets or abysses. There was evidently no building plan
except that imposed by nature. Each householder built on his few feet of
space at any height and slope he chose, so that although the buildings
nearly all cling close together for mutual support, they present most
fantastic combinations, each with its red-tile roof faded from bright to
drab according to its age and situation.
In the main praça up at the top of the town, which is rectangular and
square-cobbled and singularly quiet, is a statue of “Tiradentes” high up
on a slim granite pedestal, his hair wild, his shirt open, his wrists
weighted down with chains. This nickname of “Pull Teeth” was given a
sergeant who, way back in 1792, started the first revolution for
Brazilian independence, but who was captured, executed, and his head
hung up in an iron cage in this same praça. There is a School of Mines,
the principal if not the only one in Brazil, in an old viceregal palace
that was later the seat of the state government until that honor was
taken away from Ouro Preto. The Indians of Minas could not or would not
be enslaved, and the workmen required in the mines were brought from
Africa early and often. I do not recall a mountain town anywhere with so
large a percentage of African blood, though it is not now, of course,
pure African, for the old Portuguese settlers were not slow to dilute it
with their own, and with the exception of a very few of the proud old
families of Minas, who have overridden their environment and kept their
veins free from the taint of slaves, there are not many of full white
race. In the morning the inhabitants straggle home from the outdoor
butcher-shop, carrying strips of raw meat by a grass string run through
them; in the later afternoon the frequent clash of jogging horse-shoes
on the irregular cobblestones calls attention to some young blood come
prancing by the window of his desire, peering out from her window-ledge
over the otherwise silent and almost deserted street.
As to my own job, I did not even have to go out to look for contracts,
for as I sat reading the newspapers and recovering from a Brazilian
lunch, there came slinking in upon me the local pharmacist and owner of
the “Cinema Brazil.” He had heard that I had come, and why, and as he
was eager to outdo his one rival in town, he—ah—er—he, too, had come. If
we played in Ouro Preto it meant four important days—Christmas, followed
by a Saturday and Sunday, and a Monday also, for the trains did not run
on that day. The only entertainment in town, my visitor rambled on, in
his eagerness to attract us, was that provided by two old Italian “women
of the life,” who offered a song and dance nightly at the other cinema.
At a town eight kilometers away there were many “Englishmen” employed in
the gold mines, who would be delighted to come in and see their
fellow-countryman Edison—what, he was not coming himself?—well then, his
invention. No doubt _Senhor Edisón_ did not think poor old Ouro Preto
worth visiting, now that it was no longer the capital, but it had many
wonders even for a great inventor, if one really knew where to look for
them. By this time I had handed him our printed contract, through which
he carefully spelled his way, while I read several columns of newspaper.
Then he brought me back to Brazil with, “Ah yes, very good,
only—er—sixty per cent. is a very large percentage and——” At which point
I broke in with “Why, I ought to charge you eighty per cent. for being
way off here on a branch line, in a town without even wheeled vehicles!”
Whereupon he shuddered and begged me to figure to myself that he had not
said a word and, reaching for the contract, he signed it on the dotted
line.
Rain was pouring and the night was still black when I followed my
baggage down the steep cobbled road to the station. There I discovered,
in a sudden flash of genius, why all Brazilian trains start at daylight
and stop at dark; it is not because they are afraid to go home in the
dark, but so that the languid employees will not have to light the
car-lamps. Even the government night expresses rarely have more than a
firefly of a gas-lamp or a couple of flickering oil-wicks in the end of
each coach. Brazilians are not a nation of readers, and do not demand
decent lights, though there is nothing to prove they would get them if
they did. The print-loving stranger is often warned that it is dangerous
to the health to read during, or just before, or until long after meals,
which may be true, but the Brazilians themselves are living proof that
it is still worse never to read at all. In most stations there are
waiting-rooms only for women, and not a spot for the mere male to sit on
unless he boards the train itself, which is also the favorite
lounging-place of scores of the local population who have no intention
of traveling on it. Here an affectionate crowd was embracing and
fondling one another after the Brazilian fashion and gradually filling a
tightly closed car in which it was not easy to breathe. It is really
foolish, too, to ride first-class on the trains of the interior, for it
means little more than paying double price, when the single is bad
enough, for the privilege of sitting in a cane seat at one end of a car,
instead of in a wooden one at the other. However, a few kind words may
unhesitatingly be said for the railways of Brazil. One may leave all he
possesses in a train seat and not only will no one touch it, but his
fellow-travelers will stand for hours rather than disturb the smallest
parcel left to hold a place. Nor is the baggage-smasher indigenous to
Brazil. Several pieces of our outfit were delicate, yet during a year’s
travel by every known means of conveyance except aëroplane through
nearly every state of Brazil, it was never seriously injured—though on
its return to my beloved native land it was badly damaged between New
York and the Edison factory, an hour away.
[Illustration: Diamantina spills down into the stream in which are found
some of its gold and diamonds]
[Illustration: A hydraulic diamond-cutting establishment of Diamantina]
[Illustration: In the diamond field of Brazil]
[Illustration: Diamond diggers do not resemble those who wear them]
Beyond the old town of Sabará, where the first of the gold that was to
make Minas Geraes famous and Portugal wealthy was discovered in 1698, we
turned westward and a few moments later sighted through bedraggled
palm-trees the glaring new town of Bello Horizonte. No doubt it was to
escape the labor of propelling themselves about the precipitous streets
of Ouro Preto that led the calfless legislators of Minas Geraes to
dethrone the time-honored old capital at the beginning of the present
century and move the government to a hitherto uninhabited spot, justly
called “Beautiful Horizon.” The site chosen on which to build to order
this new capital is a broad shallow lap of rolling country, a bare,
treeless landscape which abets the light-colored new buildings in
producing a constant uncomfortable glare. It is strange that they did
not choose a place with water, a lake or at least a river, which may be
found even in the lofty State of Minas. As it is, there is only an
insignificant creek creeping through town and an artificial pond in the
center of an unfinished park in which the water is so red that even the
swans paddling disconsolately about in it have a reddish hue. The
designers have all the details of a complete city in mind; the
difficulty is to carry out their well laid plans and produce one. For
Bello Horizonte is visible proof that it takes more than houses,
streets, and inhabitants to make a city. Its public buildings are large
and plentiful. Whitewashed houses with bright new red-tile roofs lie
scattered far and wide over the rolling landscape. Wide park streets
with electric tramways stretch out in every direction in a wheel-shaped
system evidently copied from Washington. But the broad avenues are still
unpaved, unpacked stretches of red mud, resembling newly plowed potato
patches, and one soon recognizes that they run nowhere, that they are an
exotic, forced growth which men are still chopping farther back into the
red flesh of the virgin, scrub-grown hills. A few have stretches of
broad cement sidewalks lined with trees, but they are trees still in
their swaddling clothes of protecting frames, or at best are half-grown
and unfamiliar with their duty of giving shade and beauty and
restfulness. Such grass as exists grows in scattered tufts over bare
earth, in no way resembling sod. Though the houses are new, many of them
are set in the beginnings of walled bush and flower gardens, with steep
outside stairways leading to the real residence in the second story and
having fanciful paintings of such scenes as Rio’s Beira Mar on the walls
under the porches. They have an alien, unsatisfying appearance which
suggests that it is better to let even towns grow up of themselves than
to force them by hothouse methods. There are, of course, some advantages
in a city, especially in a capital, built to order, but though
modernity’s gain over medievalism is in some ways shown, Bello Horizonte
lacks not only the charm of old Ouro Preto but even the air and spirit
of a city. The whole place feels like a house one has moved into while
it is still building over his head.
While they were about it, one wonders they did not build in stone,
instead of adobe bricks and plaster. The impression that everything is
built only for a temporary halt, by people who, like Arabian nomads,
expect to move on again to-morrow, pervades all modern America, in sharp
contrast to Europe and the ancient American Indian civilizations. But at
least there are as yet no slums, unless one counts as such the large
clusters of small new houses that were almost huts scattered through the
several shallow valleys spreading out from the town. It is curious how a
city draws houses about it like a magnet even when there seems to be
nothing for the inhabitants to do but take in one another’s washing—or
do one another’s governing. Though it offers free sites to any industry
that will establish itself there, only the scream of a single small
weaving mill is heard in Bello Horizonte. The city produces nothing
except government for the state, and the man who comes into personal
contact with that soon realizes that it “costs expensive” and is none
too good governing at that. More fuss is made over the state president
than over our own national executive. Negro soldiers in khaki and bright
red caps guard his “palace” and great high-walled garden, parading back
and forth day and night before all government buildings with fixed
bayonets, not because there is any real danger—except to the unwary
pedestrian who might run into the pointed blade of some sleepy guard—but
because all Latin-America loves to make a show of deadly weapons even in
time of peace. The population had the bland, sophisticated air of people
already trained to city life elsewhere, like transplanted flora from
other gardens of varied kind and situation. Strangers attract far less
attention than in even larger interior towns, because here all are more
or less strangers and the inhabitants have not lived long enough
together to form that sort of closed corporation of old established
towns, which not only makes a new and unfamiliar face an object of
curiosity, but arouses a kind of distrust and annoyance among the native
inhabitants.
The show reached Bello Horizonte before me and had done a good Saturday
and Sunday business, but “Tut” reported that all records for “deadheads”
were being broken. The manager was a bullet-headed mulatto—whose name,
by the way, was Americo Vespuccio—and who did not have the moral courage
needed to cope with the swarms of official beggars which infest a state
capital. When the doors opened on Monday night I was lolling incognito
nearby. The ticket-taker was a mulatto girl of about fourteen who thrust
out her hand whenever anyone walked in, taking the ticket if there
happened to be one to take, but paying no attention to the fact that as
often as not there was none. Not only were there many people with
monthly passes and permanent free tickets, but the negro management,
being afraid of anyone with authority, real or pretended, had given
everyone capable of manufacturing a shadow of excuse the conviction that
he had the right to enter without payment. In the first few minutes I
saw seventy persons enter without tickets, exclusive of the house
employees and men in uniform. Then I burst into the manager’s office and
informed him that he was going to pay us our percentage for every person
who had not, and did not thereafter, pay an admission fee. He turned an
ashy gray and begged me to take full charge at the door. I discharged
the mulatto girl on the spot, made a ticket-box of my hand-grip by
cutting a slot in it—hitherto ticket-takers had stuffed the tickets into
their pockets or any other convenient receptacle—and proceeded to shock
the good people of “Beautiful Horizon.”
An elaborately dressed man in a frock coat, accompanied by two women
glittering with diamonds, pushed haughtily past.
“Your ticket, senhor?” I smiled, in my most ceremonial Portuguese.
“I never pay admission,” the man replied haughtily.
“And why don’t you?” I retorted, which wholly unprecedented question so
dazed him that without a word he went back to the wicket and bought
three tickets. The same incident was repeated dozens of times that
evening.
Another favorite trick was for a man to enter with one or two women and
purchase tickets only for them.
“Where is yours, senhor?”
“_Eu volto_” (I am coming back) was the unvarying reply, by which the
speaker meant to imply that he was merely going to escort the ladies to
their seats and come right out again, but in almost every case he
remained an hour or more until the “Kinetophone” number had been run and
came slinking out with the air of having kept eyes and ears tight closed
during the performance.
No doubt many of the well-dressed, haughty individuals I sent to the
box-office were state senators and the like, but what of it? We were
paying heavily to support them, paying every time we moved from one town
to another, every time we gave a performance, every time we left or
entered a state, in addition to what we had paid to enter the country,
every time we drew a check, or put up a poster, or inserted an
advertisement, and even in my most charitable mood I could not see why
we should give free entertainment to any government official who was not
there in line of duty.
During the second section a chinless, pomaded popinjay in full evening
dress, with an own-the-earth air, pushed scornfully past when I asked
for his ticket. I stepped in his way, repeated my question, and finally
laid a hand lightly on his arm, whereupon the manager, frightened to a
kind of grayish pink, came running forward to assure me “It’s all
right.”
“But who is he?” I insisted.
“I’ll tell you later,” whispered the trembling mulatto.
The chinless individual, who turned out to be the _delegado_,
corresponding to our chief of police, remained only a few minutes, all
the while plainly boiling with rage. As he came out he stopped before
me—the rush having ceased I was seated—and in a voice and manner that no
doubt scared ordinary people to death, he growled:
“Before you ever grasp anyone by the arm again you want to know who he
IS!”
“Senhor,” I replied, without rising, which is a shocking insult even to
the most petty Brazilian official, “I want to know who everyone is, and
any man who is a cavalheiro will tell who he is under such circumstances
in any civilized country, and until I know who he is I’ll catch him by
the arm or by any other part of the anatomy that is handy.”
He went out, fuming at the nostrils, leaving me wondering if he would
send a subordinate to place me under arrest, but abuse of authority had
become so rampant that I would have been willing to explore the interior
of a Brazilian prison to bring the matter to a head. When the
performance was ended I cornered the manager in his office and forced
him to pay us our share for every “deadhead” I had counted, and though
he and his equally dusky assistant hastened to assure me that my demands
were wholly justified and that they did not stop officials and ladies
“because they did not have the courage of Americans,” there was
something in their manner that told me they would have taken supreme
delight in knifing me in the back. That evening I turned my papers,
valuables, and revolver over to “Tut,” in order to be prepared for the
probable next move of the _delegado_. But he must have suffered a change
of heart, for thereafter even soldiers and policemen in uniform had
orders to pay admission unless they were on duty and wearing their
sidearms to prove it. Thenceforward every resident of Bello Horizonte
who entered the “Cinema Commercio” either handed in a ticket or gave
proof of his right to free admission, whether he was president, senator
or state dog-catcher. When we had broken all records for the time and
place, I ran the second section of the show myself, just to keep in
practice against the day when I must become a motion picture operator,
and went to bed leaving orders to be called at dawn. By this time “Tut”
spoke considerable Portuguese—though, having learned it mainly from
Carlos, he had many of the errors of grammar and pronunciation of
Brazil’s laboring class—so that I left on my next advance trip with less
misgiving.
Nowadays you can go to famous old Diamantina by rail. The world is
building so many railways that there will soon be no place left for
those who prefer travel to train-riding. I had little hope that the
diamond town would prove worth the time and expense necessary to bring
the Kinetophone to it, but I had a personal desire to see it, and also,
though I could not get exact information on the subject, the map
suggested that I might be able to cross on muleback from Diamantina to
Victoria and thereby save myself a long and roundabout trip.
The rain had let up at last, though sullenly, like a despot forced out
of power. All that day there came the frequent cry of “_chiero de panno
queimado!_” (smell of burned cloth), whereupon everyone jumped up and
shook himself—everyone, that is, except the advance-agent of the
Kinetophone, who had ridden behind Brazilian wood-burners often enough
to know how to dress for the occasion. Our “express” not only stopped
but was sidetracked at every station, and every time it gave a sign of
coming to a halt the passengers sprang up as one man, crying “_A tomar
café!_” and poured out upon the platform, to return growling if even a
dog-kennel of a station miles from nowhere was not prepared to serve
them their incessant beverage. “Tut” used to say that the Brazilians
drank so much coffee that their minds went to dregs. It is a curious
paradox, too, that the Brazilian, often an unprincipled rogue in
business, never dreams of cheating the coffee-man out of his _tostão_,
even if he has to exert himself to hunt him up and pay it before
scrambling aboard again as the warning-bell rings.
Beyond Sete Lagoas the country began to flatten out, with patches of
corn in new clearings, then more and more heavy brush and only the
red-earth railway cutting and a wire fence on either side. Curvello, the
largest town of the day, was almost a city, but so largely made up of
negro huts that it probably would not have paid us to make it a
professional visit. The traveler never ceases to wonder how all Brazil
came to swarm so with negroes; all the ships of Christendom could not
have brought so many from Africa, and the original slaves must have
multiplied like guinea-pigs. In the afternoon I got reckless and bought
an apple, which only cost me a milreis—but then, it was a very small
apple. Far up here in the interior prices seemed to be easing off a bit,
but this was largely offset by the lack of small change. In contrast to
Rio, there was almost no silver or nickel, which made an excellent
excuse for plundering the traveler of a few _tostões_ every time he
approached a ticket-window, and forcing him to accept dirty old bills
often patched together out of six or seven pieces that were completely
illegible.
It would have been sunset, had there been one, by the time we pulled
into Curralinho, whence a branch line carries a two-car train three
times a week to Diamantina. I believe I was the only first-class
traveler with a ticket next day, one having a kilometer-book and the
rest government passes or uniforms. There was not a woman on board,
though one man with a government pass had with him a boy of seven who,
the conductor weakly declared, should pay half fare; but he did not
insist and let the matter slide in the customary Brazilian way. No
wonder the Belgian syndicate which built this line and another starting
toward Diamantina from Victoria hovers on the verge of bankruptcy,
though my own ticket cost 14$800, plus 1$600 for the federal government
and 1$600 for the State of Minas, or $5.80 for ninety-five miles of
uncomfortable travel.
Except in spots the country was almost _sertão_, a bushy wilderness with
here and there long piles of wood for the engines. We crossed the Rio
das Velhas, flowing northward and inland, carrying red earth in solution
and pieces it had torn away from the forests through which it had
commandeered passage. There were some cattle and here and there a patch
of bananas in a hollow with a hut or two, but the rest was a desolation
of black rock, which proved to be white inside where the railroad
builders had broken into it. Rare patches of corn were the only visible
cultivation; between scattered collections of miserable adobe huts there
appeared to be no travel; the listless part-negroes lolling their lives
contentedly away in their kennels seemed to raise nothing but children
and, not being cannibals, it was a mystery what they lived on. Slowly
and painfully we climbed to the top of a great ridge, a wild country of
barren rocks heaped up into hills that were almost mountains, drear and
treeless as the landscape of Cerro de Pasco. No wonder the men who
wandered up here seeking their fortunes thought the bright pebbles they
picked up worth keeping, if only to break the melancholy monotony.
Beyond a miserable collection of huts where those of robust nerves ate
“breakfast,” we passed the highest railway point in Brazil, 4,600 feet
above sea-level, whence vast reaches of dreary country, broken as a
frozen sea, spread to the horizon in all directions. The last station
before Diamantina looked like a town in Judea, so ugly was the
desolation that surrounded it, and across this one gazed as vainly for
the city which the map proclaimed near at hand as one may stare for a
glimpse of La Paz from the plains of Bolivia high above it.
Ten years before, one traveled on muleback all the way from Sabará to
reach the heart of Brazil’s diamond-bearing territory, and only this
same year had the inaugural train reached Diamantina, amid hilarious
rejoicing of its population. In the few months that had passed since,
the inhabitants had not lost the sense of wonder which the tri-weekly
arrival of the puffing monster on wheels gave them, and though it was
Christmas Day, nearly the whole town had climbed to the station to greet
us. For climb they must. A youth of decided African lineage took my bag
and we stepped over the edge of the uninhabited plateau, to find a town
heaped up directly below us, all visible roads and trails pitching
swiftly down into it. The medieval streets were rough-paved in misshapen
cobbles, with a kind of sidewalk of naturally flat stones running down
the center. The town was labyrinthian, its narrow blocks of every
possible form between the narrower streets, built to fit the lay of the
land, spilling down on the farther side into a deep valley and backed on
all sides by a rough and savage landscape of blackish hue as far as the
eye could see. It was as picturesque as Ouro Preto, which it seemed to
equal in age, though it had been somewhat less elaborately built than
the old state capital, and its churches were fewer, smaller, and more
insignificant. The fact that here also there were no vehicles may be one
of the reasons why the population seemed so healthy and active—climbing
to the station alone proved that—in spite of their decidedly
preponderating negro blood.
The railroad had not yet brought them long enough into contact with the
outside world to spoil the simple people of Diamantina. They seemed to
live together like a great affectionate family, soft-mannered and little
given to quarreling, even the street boys treating one another like
French diplomats. No doubt it was their negro blood, perhaps also the
adventurous happy-go-lucky, take-a-chance character natural to a mining
community, that gave them their considerable gaiety. There was no
evidence of anything but kindliness and good-feeling among the barefoot
women who stopped to gossip with water-jars set jauntily on their
heads—real jars, too, for Diamantina is so far away from the world that
American oil tins have not yet come to usurp the place of picturesque
native pottery. As final high praise, my hotel host asserted that the
town is so different from the rest of Brazil that a man can occasionally
visit a family with unmarried daughters without bringing them into
disrepute among public gossips. It is, indeed, a Brazilian Utopia!
I was Diamantina’s star guest during my stay, having the main room in
the main hotel looking out on the main praça. The latter was small and
three-cornered, paved with cobbles back in the days of Shakespeare, and
had in its center a bust of a native of Diamantina who was Minister of
Viaçao when President Peçanha was coaxed into signing the decree giving
the Belgians the concession for their railroad. But then, Brazil is the
land of busts, and the man who does not succeed in getting at least one
of himself tucked away in some praça is not much of a buster. My huge
front room, next to the homelike hotel parlor with many chairs and a
cane divan all dressed up in lace coats, was fully twenty feet square,
its immense French windows reaching to a floor made of great hand-cut
planks fastened by handmade spikes with heads an inch square—or in
diameter, according as the blacksmith happened to shape them—and so
glass-smooth and warped and twisted that in places one had to brace
one’s legs to keep from sliding downhill along it. The house seemed
older than the surrounding hills, but there is so much of the new and
crude in Brazil that the old cannot but be greatly relished. As a matter
of fact Diamantina does not deserve a public hostelry, for nearly all
its visitors have the South American habit of stopping with friends or
relatives, and for all its electric lights and spring beds, and moderate
charges, the hotel had only a couple of paying guests.
The adventurous _bandeirantes_ of São Paulo first penetrated this region
looking for gold. A considerable amount of it was found in the muddy
stream at the foot of the present town, and early in the seventeenth
century the adventurers founded the village of Tijuca, which took its
name from a nearby swamp. In olden times gold dust and tiny nuggets were
used as money throughout the region, and there were scales in every
shop. Gold seems to be found almost anywhere in the region, and
placer-mining is the natural occupation of all its inhabitants. When
electric-light poles were put up by a syndicate at Boa Vista, in order
to give Diamantina as light by night what the company uses as power
during the day, the children carried off the earth dug up from the holes
to wash out the gold. After a heavy rain tiny particles of gold are
picked up in the gutters of Diamantina and along the edge of the little
stream below it. So here at last is a place where you can really pick up
gold in the streets, yet the people are poorer and more ragged than
those who live by planting beans.
It was while searching for gold that the miners of Tijuca came across
many bright, half-transparent pebbles that were plainly of no use to
them, but the largest of which they gave to their children or used as
counters in their own card games. There were a bushel or more of them in
such use in the village and its vicinity when a new priest arrived from
Portugal. In his first game of cards the pious padre noticed the
peculiar poker chips that everyone produced by the handful. He let the
information leak out that he thought them very pretty, and would be
pleased to have them as keepsakes. They were quite worthless, of course,
to his new parishioners, and if his innocent sacerdotal eye was caught
by their transparent brightness, they saw no reason why they should not
humor his whim, and at the same time gain in favor with the Church, by
giving him such of the worthless little baubles as he did not win at
cards. Thus he gathered together half a bushel or more of the pebbles,
and suddenly disappeared in the general direction of Amsterdam, dropping
a hint in Rio on the way.
Word soon reached the Portuguese crown of this new form of riches in its
overseas possessions. It turned out that the range of hills from well
south of the present town of Diamantina to far up in Bahia, a tract of
more than four hundred square leagues, was diamond-bearing land. Indeed,
if one may believe local conviction, the finest diamonds in existence
come from Minas Geraes, and the world’s most famous black diamonds from
Bahia State a bit farther north.
Diamonds were first discovered in India and for centuries came only from
there. When they were found in Brazil, thousands of the stones were sold
as Indian diamonds not only because buyers were prejudiced, but because
the Portuguese government had forbidden private mining on penalty of
death, and the contrabandists were forced to reach their market by way
of India. The village of Tijuca became a flourishing center, far as it
was from the outside world, and for all the stern government régime set
over the region. In 1734 Portugal sent out an “Intendente Geral dos
Diamantes,” with absolute power to enforce the government monopoly. His
palace still exists in a garden near the top of the town, with the
remains of an artificial lake on which he kept a sailboat to show the
people of what came gradually to be known as Diamantina how he had
crossed the sea. The crown forbade individual mining and gave the job to
contractors, who worked six hundred slaves and paid 220–240$ yearly per
slave for the privilege, yet who made fortunes even though all large
diamonds and twenty per cent. of all finds went to the crown. Population
multiplied and Diamantina became a center of riches and luxury. Contrary
to the case in the rest of Brazil, many broken noblemen and men of
education came here to mend their fortunes, and the colony, and
eventually all the province of Minas Geraes, became a focus of
“civilization,” as that word was understood in those days,—much powdered
hair, knee-breeches, beauty patches, minuets—and swarms of miserable
slaves. It may be that the courtesy of the poor Africanized inhabitants
of to-day is but a hold-over from those times of elaborate etiquette.
Amazing tales are still told in Diamantina of its golden days. It was
evidently the custom of the government viceroys to imprison the
contractors as soon as they got rich and “roll” them penniless. One
official is reputed to have made every guest a present of a cluster of
diamonds. The _Grupo Escolar_, or school building, across the street
from my hotel was once the residence of a great diamond buyer, and when
the building was made into a school some years ago a score or more of
skeletons were found tumbled together in the bottom of a secret shaft.
This revived the legend that the buyer had a chair set on a trapdoor,
and when a man came in with a large “parcel” of contraband diamonds he
was asked to sit down and make himself at home while the buyer looked
over the stones—and brought up at the bottom of the shaft.
In 1771 the famous Pombal sent out the “green book,” with fifty-four
despotic articles that nearly depopulated the district, but in 1800 the
régime softened, and finally, in 1832, the government monopoly was
abolished. Since then mining has been more or less intermittent.
Diamonds reached their highest price during the war with Paraguay, at
the end of which, in 1867, the stones were found in South Africa, a blow
from which the industry in Brazil has never recovered. For while it is
claimed in Diamantina that Brazilian diamonds average much higher than
those from the Cape, the African mines now produce at least eighty per
cent. of the world’s supply and with more modern methods and widespread
propaganda completely control the market. Abolition was the final straw,
and in five years exportations of diamonds from Diamantina dropped from
2,500 to 300 annually.
Unlike those of South Africa, the diamonds of Brazil are found on or
near the surface. In a few places quartz is broken open in the search,
but in general they are taken loose in the gravel of the alluvial
deposits by the simpler process of placer mining. The fact that enormous
tracts of territory were worked over by the Portuguese does not mean
that they took out fabulous amounts, according to modern local
authorities, because they had to feed their slaves anyway and it was to
their advantage to keep them working, even if the finds were few.
To-day, though there are some syndicates and large companies, most of
them are completely paralyzed and such work as is done is mainly by
individual natives. The company troubles seem to be due to lack of a
good mining law—natives may wash for diamonds anywhere, even on company
claims—the insecurity of titles, the prohibitive cost of transportation
for machinery, high tariffs, low rate of exchange, the constant war of
South Africans against South American diamonds, and finally the
“salting” of mines by fake promoters, coupled with carelessness of
foreign stockholders in sending out experts to examine the ground before
accepting even an honest promoter’s word for it. Thus fortunes have been
lost in the Brazilian diamond fields, notwithstanding the fact that
diamonds continue to be steadily picked up in them.
The largest diamond ever found in Brazil was the “Star of the South,”
found at Agua Suja (Dirty Water), on the line to Catalão. This weighed
about the same as the famous Kohinoor diamond,—300 carats. The stones
are usually found in the beds of rivers, larger near the source, and
smaller farther down, for they wear off in traveling, and in sand,
earth, and common gravel, usually with gold. Rough diamonds generally
have no brilliancy, looking merely like white, half-transparent pebbles,
though any child of Diamantina is said to be able to recognize one at a
glance. There is really nothing more prosaic than diamond gathering, and
the resemblance is slight between those who hunt for and those who wear
them. None of the improved methods of South Africa have been introduced
into Brazil, not even the hand screen or the “grease board,” and the
negroes still use the _batea_, or wooden bowl in the shape of a hand
basin, in washing for both diamonds and gold. When he has chosen his
spot beside some stream the negro sets up a _baca_, a kind of topless
soapbox with one end knocked out, about six inches above the surface of
the water and fills it with gravel. Then with the _batea_ he scoops up
water and throws it with a peculiar flip on the gravel, washing it from
side to side until the loose stuff runs off and leaves only the pebbles.
These are then spread out and gone over carefully by hand, the diamonds
being readily detected by the experienced eye, particularly since,
unlike the other stones, they cannot be wet and for that reason stand
out brilliantly from the rest. In fact, in Spanish and Portuguese they
are as often called _brillantes_ as _diamantes_. With the war and the
sudden drop in the diamond market that came with it the people of
Diamantina largely left off hunting for diamonds and began the more
paying occupations of planting corn and gathering firewood.
On the Sunday afternoon following Christmas, the rain having at last
ceased, I went out for a walk. An hour’s climb, in which I did not
suffer from heat, brought me to a cross on the culminating point of the
great mass of gray-black rock of ragged formation across the valley and
small stream in which many a diamond has been picked up and much gold
washed. Here is a full view of the town, stacked up on the green and
fertile side of the long valley and spilling like coagulated grease down
into it, scattered groups of eucalyptus trees and its general greenness
in great contrast to the rockiness of all the rest of the vast and
jagged encircling landscape. The gothic church of Coração de Jesus and
the tree-girdled seminary stand somewhat above the rest of the orderless
heap, and one realizes that the railroad does indeed come in at the top
of the town, for its station is so high that here it cannot be seen
above the edge of the plateau on which it sits. Diamantina is a great
trading post of the interior, and down in the center of town there is a
species of Arab khan, a roof on posts where shaggy sun-, rain-, and
road-marked muleteers with long, ugly _facas_ in their belts pile their
saddle-blankets and goods and cook over campfires. The old, old highway
unravels down across the broken rocky hills, descends into the valley,
stops a while at the khan, and having gathered its forces together once
more into a compact trail, marches across and out of the valley again
and away over the bleak horizon.
It was in the middle of this public trail that I came upon two negroes
in quest of gold washed down by the recent rains. While one dug up
wooden bowls of earth and gravel, the other stood knee-deep in a muddy,
dammed-up pool and, filling his _batea_ with the earth brought by the
other and letting water into it, whirled it about until the heavy matter
went to the bottom. Then he scraped off by hand the top layer,
continuing the process until within ten minutes he had left about a
quart of heavy black earth. This he dumped with more of the same in a
white sand-nest he had made on the bank of the little stream crossing
the trail. Like most of his fellow-townsmen he was talkative and ready
to explain his affairs to a stranger. He had washed for gold after a
rain ever since he was a boy, getting from two to four milreis worth
every time, and where there is gold there are sure to be diamonds,
especially the “chapeu de palha” (“straw hat”), which he explained to be
a very flat diamond making much show with little weight. Though both he
and his companion were shoeless and had been from infancy, ragged,
illiterate and half toothless, they were far from ignorant on some
points, especially of words used in the diamond industry, which they
spoke with a curious negro mispronunciation mixed with slang.
In riding about the vicinity on other days I came upon several gangs of
a score of negroes each, bare-legged and ragged, hoeing at an average
wage of eighty cents a day in banks of red earth through which a rainy
season stream had been turned. This they keep up as long as the rains
last, rarely seeing a diamond, which wash along through the artificial
gorge with the other gravel and come to rest on a sandy flat place
beyond. Then the men are set to “batting the _baca_,” until the sand is
washed away and the diamonds recovered by the same crude methods used in
the first days of the colony. One question almost sure to be asked by
the layman is how workmen are kept from stealing the diamonds. Theft, it
is explained, is by no means so easy to accomplish as would appear at
first glance. In the first place, it takes on the average a cartload of
sand and gravel to yield a one-quarter carat diamond. By the time the
negro has washed a load down to about two bushels an overseer has an eye
on him and watches him until the process is finished. It is rare for a
diamond to appear suddenly on the surface during the preliminary
washing, when the negro might snatch it, and even if he did he would
have a hard time selling it. If ever a native of Diamantina has stolen a
diamond, even as a boy, he is blackballed in the community for the rest
of his life. It is a long way to anywhere else, even since the advent of
the railroad, so that thieving of the town’s chief product is extremely
unusual. Men from far off up country come in with thousands of dollars’
worth of diamonds or black carbons on a pack mule, which lags far behind
with its negro driver. Everyone along the way knows what it carries, yet
for decades no driver has run away nor anyone “framed” a holdup.
In town, gold and precious stones are handled with a casual carelessness
only equalled by the Bank of England. A local jewelry shop, famous in
the trade the world over, looks like a miserable little tinker’s den,
where a dozen men and boys, all with more or less African blood, work at
dirty old worn and smoked benches. About them is a wilderness of junk
where cigarette butts, gold nuggets, old iron tools, gold wire, and
worthless odds and ends lie scattered and tumbled together with diamonds
of all sizes, cut and uncut, old tin tobacco-boxes containing fortunes
in diamonds and precious stones of several species wrapped in dirty bits
of paper. Gold coins of the former Empire as well as new British
sovereigns waiting to be melted up for local use can scarcely be
distinguished from the dusty rubbish on the tables; drawers filled with
the ragged money of to-day stand half-open; a tiny show-window—recently
put in as a concession to modern ideas—has a six-carat diamond stuck
against the glass with several smaller ones about it, day and night; a
can that originally held soap but now full of emeralds, amethysts,
topazes, and half a dozen other precious stones found in the region was
kicking about the floor. Yet there was no sign of lock or key, except
that used to fasten the outer door at night. The owner only came now and
then during the day, and amid this disordered jumble of wealth his dozen
workmen and boys toiled from seven in the morning until sometimes nine
at night at ludicrous wages without a loss ever having been reported.
Down in the valley near the town there is a native diamond-cutting
establishment, a capacious old barn of a building with the immense
rough-hewn beams of olden times and two long double rows of “wheels” run
by water-power on which the stones are “cut.” Strictly speaking, a
diamond is not “cut” at all; it is ground—_lapidar_ or “stoning” they
call it in Brazil. Disks of the best grade steel, about a foot in
diameter, move round and round at a moderate rate of speed. Rough
diamonds are first chipped off by hand to the general shape desired;
then they are set into a bed of lead and solder so that one facet may be
ground down, after which they are removed at a forge, resoldered, and
ground on another facet. The “wheels” must be polished down and filed in
slight ridges every two or three weeks, a task that takes about one day,
and they are rented at 12$ a month to the individual _lapidarios_, both
men and women, largely of negro blood, who work for themselves, either
“cutting” diamonds for others or speculating with such as they can buy
themselves. A day is the average time consumed here in “cutting” a
one-carat diamond, at a cost of about 7$, the chips and diamond dust
left over bringing the ordinary income up to 65$ a week.
Diamond buyers of all nationalities journey to Diamantina, and the town
expressed surprise and often incredulity to hear that I had not come to
purchase a few “parcels” for speculation. “Everyone” buys diamonds, yet
no one pays the state export tax on them, if one may believe local
opinion. This would have to be paid if the stones were sent out legally
by express, but when a buyer has collected a “parcel”—in Portuguese it
is _partida_—he finds some man bound for Rio and says to him, “If it
isn’t too much trouble just hand this little package to —— and Co.,”
thereby defrauding both the railroad and the politicians. The men who
deal in diamonds in the place of their origin no more wear them than do
the men who dig them. Old buyers who have handled the precious stones
all their lives are not only plainly dressed but have none of the
tendency toward personal adornment so widespread among Brazilians. Two
American diamond-men I met had huge blacksmith hands on which a ring
would have looked absurd, and the only diamonds one sees in Diamantina
are those offered for sale in “parcels” or show-windows, or those worn
by an occasional tenderfoot.
Newcomers have sometimes been deceived by this state of affairs. A few
years ago there arrived in Diamantina a German with a conviction of his
own wisdom and superiority over common mortals, who, with an air
implying that the thought had never occurred to anyone else, let it leak
out that he was buying diamonds. An old negro wandered up to the hotel
in an aged shirt and trousers, a ragged hat, and bare feet, and
shuffling in a halting, diffident way into the German’s room, told him
that he did not know what the two diamonds he carried wrapped in a scrap
of paper were worth, but that he would sell them cheap. The German paid
him about half the market price for them and asked him if he had any
more, adding with a wink that any transactions they might make would be
kept a secret. The poor old negro said he thought he could find a few
more about his hut or in the river or among his friends, and for a month
or six weeks he continued to slouch into the hotel, until he had sold
the wise German about a pint of diamonds for a mere song of fourteen or
fifteen _contos_, say $5,000. Then the Teuton, highly pleased with
himself, packed up and took the down train from Curvello, smuggling his
untold riches out of the state without paying the export duty—and
discovered when he reached Rio that every one of the fine diamonds the
poor ignorant old negro had sold him so cheaply were what are known in
the trade as “fourths,” or worse, full of knots and gnarls as a
century-old olive tree and worth at most some 50c a carat for cutting
glass. A bit later, the poor innocent old negro having occasion to go
down to the capital and talk with the senator whose political boss he
was in Diamantina, blew into Rio in the frock-coat and patent leathers
he wears when not doing business with gullible strangers, with a real
six-carat diamond dazzling from his little finger and two or three more
shouting from his shirt front and, meeting the worldly-wise German on
the Avenida, raised his fifty-dollar imported Panama hat with true
Brazilian courtesy, and invited him to come in and have a drink for old
times’ sake.
One evening my hospitable host of the hotel dragged me over to the
cinema he owned, where I found a crowded house come to see what to
Diamantina was a brand new romance of their own color, called “A Cabana
do Pae Thomaz,” in other words, “The Cabin of Uncle Tom.” It was all too
evident, however, that there was nothing to be gained by bringing our
show so far inland, for the negroes had little to spend and the railway
charges are naturally high to those who can find no excuse for not
paying them. Meanwhile I had opened negotiations for a journey on
horseback, or even on foot, across to the railhead of the line out of
Victoria, which would have brought me out well up the coast on my
journey north. A native _camarada_ familiar with the trail offered to
rent me a horse or a mule for the journey, with saddle and spurs, for 3$
a day. This seemed reasonable. It would make the trip across come to
about 20$? Yes, but it takes _two_ animals. Why’s that? You must have a
guide, or at least a man to bring back the horses. Ah, then that makes
6$ a day instead of 3$? Yes—ah—and then of course you must pay the man.
How much? Oh, 3$ a day, the same as the other animals. Ah, then that
makes 9$ a day, and seven days would be.... No, say ten days. But why
ten days? Because in this season that is the least you can depend on. In
other words the trip would cost me 90$, nine times ten? No, it would be
nine times twenty, or 180$. Eh, what twenty days? Why, the man and the
horses would have to come back, wouldn’t they? _Sacramento_, I suppose
so, unless I could chloroform them when I got there. So then 180$ would
cover _all_ the expenses? All, completely all—er—that is, of course, you
would have to feed the animals and the man on the trip, and it might be
much more than ten days, and—er.... And no doubt there would be a tip to
the man and the animals, and perhaps a third horse needed when he caught
sight of my valise, and of course the government officials here and
along the way would come in for their customary graft, and there would
be the stamp-tax on each horseshoe, unless they were mule-shoes, in
which case no doubt it would be doubled, and a tax on each bray the
“burros” might emit en route, and—whereupon I gave him a warm handshake
and bade him good night, saying I would think it over and wire him from
Bagdad in 1946, and thus eventually got him out of the room. In short, I
had come to understand at last why people travel by rail in Brazil, even
though their bones are racked on the warped and twisted roadbeds, their
movie-magnate garments turned into sieves by burning cinders from the
straining locomotives, and there is a tax on every corner of a railway
ticket.
All Diamantina was down—I mean up—to see us off, just as they are at the
same early hour three times a week. The distance-blue piles of earth lay
heaped up into considerable hills where a clearer atmosphere disclosed
wider horizons, hung on all sides with fantastic heaps of clouds, that
increased the sense of being on the top of the world. On the several
days’ trip southward I met a strange man, a _juiz de dereito_, or
district judge, from Serro back in the hills, who refused to ride on a
government pass or to accept one for his son, whom he was taking to the
medical school in Rio, declaring that there was “much abuse” in such
matters by government officials! At Burnier, where we changed to the
broad gauge, I got a berth to the capital. Though the car was the
familiar American Pullman, the slovenly government employees had
discarded most of the small conveniences. The aisle was as carpetless as
the floors of Brazil, the berth net had long since been turned into a
hammock for the brakeman’s baby, the mattress was thin and hard as a
Brazilian wooden bed, and the sleep I did not get as we creaked and
jounced through the endless low hills explained why sleeping cars and
night trains are not more popular in the mammoth republic of South
America.
When I returned from the washroom next morning, “Tut” stood dressing
beside the opposite berth. They had played in Palmyra the evening before
and managed to pack up in time to catch the night train. Carlos had had
his hat stolen in the preceding town and “Tut” had been bitten by a dog
while walking out to pay his respects to the English-speaking miners
near Ouro Preto; otherwise things had gone well—except for one other
personal mishap to “Tut.” While buying his ticket for the sleeper he
noted that the berths were divided into “_leitos inferiores_” and
“_leitos superiores_.” Now why should he take an inferior berth when he
had been working hard, and Linton paid the bill anyway? He took a _leito
superior_. Unfortunately, in the matter of berths, the Portuguese word
_superior_ means “upper”!
By seven the day was already brilliant and hot, for we were down off the
great plateau I was never to climb again, and the familiar suburbs of
Rio were rumbling past. I dropped off as we drew into the yards, knowing
from experience how long a process it is to get into the station, and
diving out through a hole in the railway wall, I hurried away up the Rua
Mattoso to the home of our theater contractor. He surprised me by saying
that times had grown so “brutally hard” in Rio, to say nothing of the
brutal heat of midsummer, that it would not be worth while to play there
at all, but that we could finish our sixteen days with him at his
theater in Nictheroy.
The ferry that carried us across the bay was crowded with newspaper men
and photographers, and the gunboat _Sergipe_ lay close off the state
capital with its guns trained on the public buildings. Inquiry disclosed
the fact that there was not a new mutiny, but that a revolution was
expected in Nictheroy during the day.
Nilo Peçanha, son of a former president of Brazil, had been elected
president of the State of Rio de Janeiro for the term to begin with the
new year; but, as so often happens in South America, the opposition
party still in power was determined to give the office to their own
defeated candidate. This was one Lieutenant Sodré, an army man of
similar caliber to the celebrated “Dudu” and having the same backing.
With the aid of the outgoing state president he had “acquired” arms and
ammunition from the federal stores in Nictheroy and was preparing to
take office by force, having picked up large numbers of _Carioca_ crooks
and gunmen and scattered them among the various cities of the state to
stifle opposition. Peçanha, on the other hand, had applied to the
Supreme Court for a habeas corpus, giving him the office that was being
stolen from him, and after considerable dodging and hesitation the
national president had decided to lend federal armed force to uphold the
Supreme Court decision in favor of Peçanha.
Mere orders from the federal government mean little in the life of a
Brazilian state, however, and Nictheroy was seething on the brink of
anarchy when we landed. Sodré, it seemed, had had himself sworn in as
president by the state assembly early that morning and had sent word to
that effect to the president of Brazil. He could not gain admission to
the state presidential palace, but with the support of the state police
and the outgoing authorities he did take over the presidential offices.
Then suddenly, some three hours later, a cry of “Viva Peçanha!” had
resounded through the police barracks, the policemen had taken it up
and, headed by two sergeants, threatened to kill the officers unless
they joined in also, and the entire state police force on which the
rebel had depended swung over to the other side, looted the stolen
ammunition, and took to rushing about town shouting and firing in the
air.
This was the condition in which we found the state capital. The firemen
had joined the police, and auto-trucks crammed full of excited shouting
negroes and half-negroes in uniform were rushing about town at top
speed, all but overturning at every corner. The lower classes, having
likewise filled themselves with cheap _cachaza_, had joined the general
uproar of noise, irresponsibility, and probable violence, and the
streets were swarming with _populares_ shouting “Viva Peçanha!” “Viva o
Salvador do Povo!” and similar nonsense in maudlin drunken voices, while
Sodré sent hurriedly to the national president demanding “guarantees”
for his personal safety.
Residence in South America, however, teaches one that revolutions are by
no means so dangerous on the spot as they are in the armchairs of those
who are reading about them afar off, and we serenely continued our
preparations for the evening performance. Desultory shooting, street
brawls, and the surging of masses of drunken _populares_ continued
throughout the day and for several days thereafter, while the shouting,
shooting truckloads of police and firemen continued dizzily to round
corners, each time more nearly resembling the drunken brute into which
the tropical languor of negro militarism is apt to degenerate in times
of crisis or popular excitement. But it was, on the whole, a
good-natured rather than a blood-thirsting brute, and though what Brazil
calls “persons of most responsibility” kept out of sight, we common
mortals, including not a few women, walked about town attending to our
business as usual. Once a ragged, drunken mulatto _popular_ came into
the _leitería_ in which I was quenching my thirst with a glass of
ice-cold milk, walked bellowing and reeling past me and two men at
another table up to a little messenger-boy of fourteen, and ordered him
to shout “Viva Peçanha!” The proprietor dared not protest, for the
police were all drunk and the _povo_ more than likely to take the
ragamuffin’s part; but when the latter finally staggered out again the
shopkeeper raised his hands to heaven and demanded to know why the
fellow had picked on the boy and not, for instance, pointing at me, on
“_o senhor_ over there.”
The “Cinema Eden” was right on the waterfront, though the only paradise
in sight was the view of Rio piled up into massive banks of white clouds
across the emerald bay and the marvelous sunset and steel-blue dusk
which spread over its unique, nature-made sky-line as we opened our
doors. The near-revolution was still surging through the streets, though
a few sober soldiers of the regiment of federal troops that had been
landed were riding about town in street-cars, with ball-loaded muskets
ready for action. Peçanha had been sworn in that afternoon, surrounded
by a swarm of other perspiring politicians in wintry frock-coats and
silk hats, but the national president had concluded to avoid any
responsibility in the matter by calling a special session of congress to
decide between the rival candidates, instead of carrying out the
decision of the Supreme Court—“which,” perorated Ruy Barboso, “is what
our constitution orders and what is practiced in the United States,” two
equally convincing final arguments. Though we were the only theater open
the house was not crowded. “Persons of most responsibility” preferred to
remain at home, and the _populares_ were plainly in most cases without
the price of admission, even had the revolution not promised a more
exciting show outside. I took charge of the door in person, not at all
certain but that the _povo_ might try to force itself in en masse. Once,
during our part of the program, a mighty explosion shook the town like
an earthquake and shooting sounded under our very windows; but as the
stampede for the door started I barricaded the immense exit and “Tut”
went on calmly running an amusing film known as “College Days,” and
before it was ended the volatile audience had quieted down again. The
explosion, it turned out, was of a great deposit of powder on one of the
many islands in the bay, nearly twenty miles away.
Our receipts for the first section were so poor that we cut out the
second and went home for a moonlight dip in the sea just outside our
waterfront rooms in the charming residential district of Nictheroy. But
it was the last day of the year, with a crushing heat after the splendid
air of the plateau, and the soft wind that was now sweeping across the
bay drew me back for a last glimpse of Rio in the throes of New Year’s
Eve. The city lay a vast irregular heap of lights, here in dense
clusters, there strung out along the invisible lower hills, all cut
sharp off at the bottom by the endless row of them along the Beira Mar.
The Avenida was densely crowded, and getting more so. Newspapers had
erected booths covered with artificial flowers and colored lights,
several police, fire department, and military bands were scattered along
the great white avenue, and a constant, unbroken procession of
automobiles crept up one side and down the other, pretty girls perched
on the backs of the seats and on the furled covers, all filled with the
“respectable families” whose plump and physically attractive ladies are
rarely seen in the streets after dark on any other day in the year. I
was caught where the confetti fell thickest, but there was little
rowdyism and no unpleasant din, though paper ribbons spun across the
lighted sea of faces and perfumed water was squirted into them in that
good-natured and outwardly courteous way with which the Latin-American
softens the perpetration of his most hilarious, carnival-time tricks.