after going into raptures over the scene in the bay, express themselves
very differently respecting the experience on entering the city. That
same Mr. Curtis, for instance, goes on to say that “the streets are
narrow, damp, dirty, reeking with repulsive odors and filled with
vermin-covered beggars and wolfish-looking dogs.” But he was writing of
experiences encountered many years ago, before the reforms and
improvements were undertaken, which, when completed, will have cost some
sixty millions of dollars. It is still true, no doubt, that in the
commercial district several of the ugly old sections remain, where there
are narrow, tortuous streets and dingy warehouses, ship-chandleries,
saloons and stores that cater to the stevedore class of trade, such as
there are in all great shipping centers as old and as busy as Rio, and
of course there are the districts in which the lowest classes
foregather. But since he and Dr. Fletcher wrote their books, the old
passenger landing place called the Pharoux quay has been transformed
into a handsome square; adorned with gardens and a big bronze fountain;
hills have been leveled to permit extensions and relieve the congestion;
literally thousands of marshy, mosquito-breeding places have been filled
in and reclaimed; a fine drainage canal has been constructed, an
adequate sewerage system installed, and a system of masonry docks is
nearing completion that will rival the celebrated docks of Santos and
Buenos Aires; some of the streets have been broadened and more have been
repaved, and the sanitary conditions and healthfulness generally have
been so improved that yellow fever is a thing of the past.
Besides all this, many magnificent new government buildings have been
erected, notably the Congressional Palace on Tiradentes Square. The
estimated cost of this building alone was $15,000,000 and it is proudly
claimed to be one of the finest in South America; also the Palace of the
Supreme Court, of rose-tinted stone and marble, with bronze
ornamentations, and the Post Office and Mint, National Printing Office
and National Library, all of great architectural beauty, and the City
Hall and Municipal Theater. This last is an ornate, high-domed marble
and stone structure of Moorish design that cost $5,000,000 to build.
And, to facilitate traffic, a superb hundred-and-fifty-foot wide avenue,
the Avenida Central, has been constructed clear across the business
section of the city for a mile or more, opening a vista from bay to bay.
To do this more than six hundred houses had to be purchased and torn
down; they have been replaced by others of a pleasing general uniformity
and elegance of appearance, of which any city in Europe or America might
well be proud. The _Jornal do Commercio_ building, for example, looks
more like one of our fashionable metropolitan hotels or apartment
houses, than a business establishment. The sidewalks are paved with
mosaics and kept perfectly clean.
[Illustration: BAY AND CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO FROM SUMMIT OF CORCOVADO.]
Beginning at the southern end of this avenue and following the contour
of the shore past the elegant residence districts of Gloria and
Flamengo, they have constructed an esplanade a mile long, called the
Avenida Beira Mar, and, farther on, around the exquisite inlet of
Botafogo, where some of the handsomest of the residences are, have
converted the semicircular beach into a still lovelier avenue, adorned
with alternate rows of trees and arc lights like the other, and flower
beds and formal lawns. Unless it is the more comprehensive one from the
top of Corcovado, there is no more enchanting view than that of this
whole ensemble from the Morro da Viuva at the northern end of the
semicircle, especially looking straight across at the hills on the
opposite side, where the rose-tinted buildings of the Military School
nestle in the green depths of a rocky cleft, with the Sugar Loaf
towering behind.
And then, up near the business section again, there is the Paseio
Publico, with its park and lakes and broad waterside terrace overlooking
the whole southern part of the harbor, and the naval barracks and
fortifications on historic Villegagnon, quite close at this point. It
was here that the adventurer for whom it is named made the first attempt
at colonizing the neighborhood: with a party of Huguenots sent over by
Admiral Coligny to escape religious persecutions in France and to found
a place of refuge for those of the Protestant faith. The Paseio Publico
is regarded by many as the most charming of the parks, but there are
lots of these beautiful spots. One of them, the Botanical Garden, which
is larger and more complete than the one in Belém, is known the world
over from the thousands of pictures that have been published of its
magnificent avenue of royal palms. Few visit Rio without going there;
and now that a good cog-wheel railroad has been built from one of the
trolley lines up to the summit of Corcovado, the whole mountain side has
become a wildwood park. With reference to the view from the summit, I
cannot resist quoting from Arthur Ruhl, who describes it so
delightfully.
“The Corcovado is a rock jutting over the trees,” he says, “so sheer
that you look down on Rio and the blue harbor as from a balloon—down two
thousand feet of velvet green descents to the terra cotta roofs and
sun-washed walls and the wheel-spoke streets like lines on a map. Not
one of our smoke hives, but a city of villas and palms and showering
vines and flowers, meandering about over the foothills, immersed in the
blazing sun. The cool, laughing sea envelops it—blue, and bluer yet in
the sun; and, all about in it, islands—agate in turquoise—jut out as
though the gods had tossed a handful in the water. It is, as I heard an
American say of the backward look toward Rio as the train climbs to
Petropolis, as though one had been taken up into the mountains to see
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” Petropolis, though, is
not simply another viewpoint, but one of the loveliest of the suburban
mountain cities, where the late Emperor lived, surrounded by the
ambassadors and ministers of the foreign countries and the nobility and
aristocracy of the old régime. It is still the home of the diplomatic
corps, and the most fashionable of the suburbs.
Do not imagine for a moment, however, that the pleasures of a visit to
Rio are limited to such things. Like all cities of its respectable age
and size—for it has almost, if not quite, reached the million mark
now—it has its antiquities and places of historical interest, its
museums, art galleries, libraries, statues and churches (the paintings
and decorations in the beautiful Candelaria Church are the richest in
South America), and its theaters and amusement resorts of every
description; and, down town in that same commercial part that Mr. Curtis
scored so heavily, is the noisy, vivacious old Rua do Ouvidor, of all
things Rio de Janeiran the one that possesses the most individuality,
the place where everybody who is anybody is to be seen. It is only about
twenty feet wide—just think of it, the “Broadway” of a great city like
Rio!—so narrow and crowded that vehicles are not allowed to go through
at certain hours of the day, but most of the old somber Portuguese-style
buildings have been replaced by modern ones, and what it lacks in width
is compensated for by the attractiveness of the stores and cafés.
[Illustration: AVENUE OF ROYAL PALMS, RIO BOTANICAL GARDENS.]
[Illustration: AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.]
These cafés, principally devoted to the service of the _demi tasse_, are
everywhere in Brazil, but here particularly they are the rendezvous for
the official, military, professional and more prosperous commercial
classes, who drop in at all hours to talk things over to the music of
the orchestra—everything from business, religion and politics to the
idlest society gossip—only they sip coffee, for the most part, instead
of highballs and beer. And such coffee! A North American never realizes
what a perfectly delectable flavor coffee really is capable of, how
deliciously rich and sirupy it is when brewed by those who know how,
until he has drunk it in the Orient or down there in Brazil.
There was a time, and not so very long ago, when these crowds along the
Rua do Ouvidor were all of one sex. The ladies of the upper classes—when
they went shopping at all, instead of simply having samples sent to
their houses to choose from—remained in their carriages while the
shopkeepers brought out to them for their inspection the various
qualities of such articles as were desired; but this old world idea of
seclusion, like many others at the capital, has given way to more
advanced ones now. Brazilian metropolitan womanhood is beginning to
awaken and follow the general trend toward emancipation. In these days
ladies not only appear on the streets and go from shop to shop on foot,
as do the ladies of our cities, but drop in at certain unexceptionable
cafés for luncheon, or perhaps at a matinée or some moving picture show,
unattended by their husbands or fathers or brothers. The Avenida,
Saturday afternoons when the weather is pleasant, reminds one of a
Parisian boulevard, so densely is it thronged with smartly gotten up
promenaders and so well patronized are the little sidewalk tables under
the awnings in front of the cafés. Needless to say, on these occasions
the ladies do graciously suffer the attendance of their admirers or the
male members of their families.
“‘Superb’ is the word that best fits the beautiful Brazilian woman,” no
less an authority than Burton Holmes enthusiastically declares.
“‘Striking’ is the word that best describes her dress.” Then, referring
to their appearance at the opera: “The belles of Rio seem to have taken
the styles of Paris and given to them a strange, exotic something that
makes the toilettes seen at the Municipal Theater far more striking and
effective than those at the Paris opera,” he goes on. “Mere man cannot
say in what the difference lies, but the fact remains that while the
gowns may have been made, or at least designed, in Paris, they are not
Parisian; they are instead pronouncedly Brazilian. The men, too, deserve
a word of mention, for they are very well-dressed men, much better
dressed than the men of Paris or of Lisbon—all of course in evening
dress, all looking as if they were accustomed to wearing it. The women
in the boxes retain their hats. The men might as well retain theirs, for
they are quite invisible behind the massed millinery of their fair
companions.”
Rio, of course, has all the up-to-date public utilities—electric
street-car lines, lights, telephones, taxicabs and the rest; but, as
Arthur Ruhl so aptly puts it, “Before the things seen and heard and
vaguely felt,” in this city of such strange, peculiar charm, “the
endless procession of vague, unrelated things that baffle and
allure—semi-antique humans living languidly in the midst of a
sun-drenched nature, which, by its very luxuriance, might seem to
have overpowered them—Latin sensibility tinged with African
superstition—negro coachmen in top-boots, such as Puss-in-Boots
might have worn—dusky, velvet-eyed _donzellas_—palms, blazing walls
and indigo sea—one loses interest in railroads and power plants and
the things we do better at home. Brazilians must interest themselves
in such things, for therein lies their salvation. If I seem to
neglect them, it is because it seems absurd to visit a conservatory
full of orchids and spend one’s time seeing how the steam-pipes are
put in. By the same token,” he adds—
“There is a certain mellowed dignity in the Brazilian scene—the
natural inheritance of the empire, and doubtless, also, a
reaction of race and climate—lacking in the more energetic
Argentina. It was only in 1889 that good Dom Pedro—that kindly,
cultured, old-school gentleman—was dethroned and shipped off to
Portugal. It is only since 1887 that the negroes ceased to be
slaves. Brazil’s foremost statesman, the big, able Minister of
Foreign Affairs, who, as he moved amongst his slender Caribbean
brethren at the 1906 conference, looked like the senior partner
of some old firm of Wall Street bankers, is still called ‘Baron’
Rio Branco. You can still see in Petropolis the house of the
Princess Regent and her husband, the Conde d’Eu, overgrown
somewhat with vegetation and buried in somber shades. Rio’s
great public library was started by King João VI himself when
the Portuguese court was transferred to Brazil in 1808.
“There is still a suggestion of the old world and grand manner.
They have their Academy of Forty Immortals; their politicians
are often pleased to practice the politer arts. Senhor Joahim
Nabuco, who presided at the conference, has written his
‘_Pensées_.’ These littérateurs may be, as Senhor Bomfim
suggests in ‘_A America Latina_,’ ‘inveterate rhetoricians whose
abundant works are taken as a proof of genius.’ Yet at least
they have a certain way with them. Pompous, grave, they go
through the solemn motions. In spite of the vast majority who
neither read nor write, Brazilians of the upper class are
probably more ‘cultured,’ in the narrow literary sense of the
word, than our average man of the same class at home. They speak
and write French as a matter of course in addition to their own
language, and most of them make fair headway with English. They
enjoy and encourage music and painting and poetry. Opera not
only comes to Rio each winter as it does to Buenos Aires, but
they have their National Institute of Music and their native
composers, one of whom especially, the late Carlos Gomez, has
heard his operas successfully produced in Europe. They have
their National Academy of Fine Arts and a gallery which, I am
sure, is visited and appreciated more than the really excellent
one tucked away upstairs in Buenos Aires’ Calle Florida.”
III
As already said, from Rio one may go to São Paulo, the second
largest—and, with the exception of Rio, the most important—city in the
country, by railroad, and almost as comfortably, too, as one may travel
from New York to Chicago. The city of São Paulo is the capital of the
State of that name, the great land of coffee, the land in fact that
produces more than half of all the coffee grown in Brazil, and Brazil as
a whole produces more than three-fourths of all that the world consumes.
The city has a population of about 350,000, and is located in the
mountains, about forty miles back from the coast and three thousand feet
above the level of the sea. It is connected by railroad with Santos, its
seaport, where the best docks in the country are now. These two cities,
though founded in early colonial times, are not quite as interestingly
characteristic as Rio and the others that have been mentioned, for they
are far enough south to be in the temperate zone, and have, therefore,
attracted a very much larger foreign element, particularly German,
Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. There are not so many negroes and mixed
breeds among the laboring classes, and their institutions, business
methods and social life more nearly resemble our own; and, as a
consequence, they have certainly not been behind the rest of Brazil in
development. As in Rio, enormous sums have recently been spent for
sanitation, public buildings, and improvements.
São Paulo has thus been transformed into one of the most healthful
cities in the world, and one of the handsomest. Its climate, uniformly
mild like that of southern Europe, has never left anything to be
desired—except, perhaps, snow and ice, if there are among the residents
there any homesick northerners who prefer the sharper seasonal contrasts
to which they are accustomed. The site is too near the tropics and the
mountains are not high enough for freezing cold, yet so high that the
air has a bracing, invigorating quality. As Senator Root declared when
he was visiting the country: “There is something in the air of São Paulo
that makes strong and vigorous men.” Their strength and vigor are not
attributable, however, to the climate alone. It is an inheritance. The
early Paulistas were of the sturdiest type, men who were compelled to
maintain themselves and extend and defend their possessions by fighting
and the hardest kind of work—an instance, they were, of the survival of
the fittest. It is small wonder that their descendants, with their rich
heritage of health and vitality and traditions, and their enormously
productive lands, should be distinguished for their enterprise as well
as for their wealth and social and intellectual culture. In political
and educational progress they have always been prominent.
A splendid monument to their patriotism and enterprise is Ypiranga, a
great building of classic design, erected on the site of the
proclamation of independence on a hill overlooking the city, and
intended both to commemorate the event and to be used as an institution
of learning. Among other interesting things, it contains a remarkable
museum. They have a polytechnic school in the city that is the pride of
the whole country, and the graduates of which are in demand everywhere
because of the particularly efficient system of training; an institution
known as the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts, devoted to the practical
instruction of the artisan classes, which graduates skilled workmen by
the hundreds every year; and an excellently equipped normal school that
occupies a whole square, facing the Praca de Republica—these in addition
to primary institutions and conventional colleges and law and medical
schools, that are attended by students from all over Brazil.
There is even a well-patronized non-sectarian North American
institution, known as the Mackenzie College, which has been in existence
for thirty-five years or more, and, of all surprising things—and this is
only one of many indications of the liberal catholicism of their views
respecting other religious beliefs, notwithstanding the fact that, as
everywhere else in South America, Roman Catholicism is the religion of
the state—an Episcopal seminary, conspicuously located in a beautiful
building opposite the Jardim Publico. By mentioning particularly these
institutions, I do not mean to imply that there are not excellent
educational facilities elsewhere in Brazil—especially, of course, in
Rio—but the people of São Paulo seem to devote more attention to
education than in the other parts of the country and the percentage of
illiteracy there, among the people as a whole, appears to be much
smaller.
The Governor’s Palace and the principal office buildings of the
administration are located around two large squares, one called the
Largo de Palacio, the other the Praca Municipal, in the heart of the
city. Several of them are spacious, imposing-looking buildings of
stone and marble that compare favorably with those of the national
government at Rio; all are in keeping with the importance of the city
and State—particularly their superb big theater, which is another of
those surprisingly costly and attractive places of amusement
maintained by the municipality that one sees so many of in South
America. The streets in the Triangle, as the commercial district is
called, are crowded and busy. There is an air of briskness about them
that is refreshing—although many of the busiest are narrow and
unattractive in appearance, this being the old part of the town.
Even the Rua São Bento, the principal shopping street, is not much wider
than the Rua do Ouvidor in Rio; but from this district a viaduct eight
hundred feet long and fifty wide leads to the new parts, where there are
broad, handsomely built-up avenues and shaded promenades, detached
houses of modern type, surrounded by gardens, and an atmosphere of ease
as well as luxury, as in the less bustling cities to the north. The
Avenida Paulista is charming. There are few handsomer thoroughfares in
America, either North or South, than this—and it is the common boast
that along the Rua des Palmeiras, their most fashionable residence
street, and in certain of the suburbs, the palatial homes of their
millionaires are unrivaled in Brazil.
The great coffee port of Santos, once numbered among the dread homes of
Yellow Jack, but now as healthful as any port in the tropics, is only
sixty or seventy miles away by railroad—an excellently equipped road
that runs down the slope from the mountain range to the coast over a
route strikingly rich in scenic effects and grand views. The city, which
has a population of about sixty thousand, is situated on the western
shore of a landlocked bay connected with the ocean by a narrow but deep
riverlike channel, ten miles long and flanked, like the city itself, by
picturesque hills. The streets are well paved and clean, the residence
section and suburbs attractive, and a narrow-gauge railroad affords an
opportunity for an enjoyable trip to a seaside resort near by, where
there are good surf-bathing and plenty of places of amusement.
It is said that more than 10,000,000 bags of coffee, each weighing 132
pounds, are shipped from this port every year. The extensive system of
masonry docks and cranes is famous for its efficiency and is the best in
South America next to that in Buenos Aires. The big steamers and sailing
vessels lying broadside to these docks and anchored in the broad harbor,
the custom house and warehouses facing the quay, the groups of dealers
and agents standing bargaining out in front, the sailors scurrying
about, the heavy teams heaped up with sacks of coffee, the long lines of
negro stevedores, each with a bag or two balanced on his head, carrying
them aboard the ships, all working in the blazing sun in this labyrinth
of white-walled streets, with their background of green hills and blue
water, make up a scene that is both lively and bizarre.
The custom of coffee drinking is relatively of rather recent development
among peoples of Europe and their descendants in America. For some
reason, for a long time after it made its way west from Arabia and
Turkey, it was under the ban of the church. Maybe this was because of
its Mohammedan origin. It was not until 1652 that the first house that
made a specialty of serving coffee was opened in London, and about the
same time it was introduced in France. From then on it has spread until
the amount now consumed the world over is simply enormous, especially in
the United States, where we take somewhere near half of all that is
grown. At first it came only from northern Africa, Arabia, and Turkey;
then the Dutch began experimenting and succeeded in cultivating it in
Java, and the French in the West Indies. For a while these were the
principal sources of supply. The story goes that in 1760 a Portuguese,
João Alberto Castello Branco, planted a bush in Rio, and from that small
start, thanks to her peculiarly favorable soil and climate, Brazil soon
outstripped the others and took the lead. And it is in these uplands of
the State of São Paulo that more than half of all of this enormous
amount of coffee that is consumed in the world to-day is produced. There
are between fifteen and twenty thousand cafezals, or plantations,
employing hundreds of thousands of laborers, and some of the plantations
are so vast that they grow millions of trees. Here it is that most of
the immigrants flock. There is a million of Italians alone.
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION, BRAZIL.]