BRAZIL
When, in the year 1502, the early Portuguese navigators entered the Bay
of Rio de Janeiro--it was the first of January, hence the name they
gave to what they believed to be the estuary of a great river--they
little dreamed of that superb city which, as the centuries rolled on,
should arise on the edge of the sparkling waters, with their background
of picturesque mountains, with a harbour perhaps the finest in the New
World.
But such is the capital of Brazil to-day, and the traveller approaching
Rio de Janeiro revels--if the weather be propitious--in the sunlit
sea, the emerald islets that stud its bosom, the palm-fringed shores
and colour of the vegetation upon the mountain slopes, fit setting for
the handsome buildings, esplanades and avenues which unfold to the
view. Here the beauty of the Tropics, shorn by modern science of much
of its lurking dangers, combines with the handiwork of man to form a
metropolis which South America may contemplate with pardonable pride
as an instance of its civilization. In this vast oval bay, which
stretches inland for twenty-five miles, the navies of the world might
lie at anchor, and indeed the flags of all maritime nations unfurl
their colours near the quays of this vast mercantile seaport below the
Equator.
It is a vast land which we thus approach. Brazil spreads like a giant
across its continent. Its arms are flung westwards over South America
for over two thousand miles to the base of the Andes, and from above
the Equator to beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, crowding its smaller
neighbours--if crowding be possible here--into the extremities of the
continent, an area in which the countries of Europe might be more than
contained, and which is larger than the vast Anglo-American Republic,
the United States.
Still almost unknown are great portions of this great territory, still
inhabited by tribes as savage as when first the white man set foot upon
it, or as when the faithless Orellana, Pizarro's lieutenant, abandoning
his companions in the heart of the dreadful forests of the Amazon,
floated down the mighty waters of that river from the source to the sea.
Brazil is, of course, not a Spanish American country, although it was
at one period under the dominion of Spain; and it stands apart from
the remainder of the great sisterhood of the Latin American Republics
by reason of its Portuguese origin and language, although the common
Iberian ancestry renders it similar thereto in other respects. It
differs, furthermore, in the constitution of its people, in that
the African negro race has been so considerably absorbed into the
twenty-two million souls which form the population of the Republic: an
admixture which is of considerable ethnological interest, and may have
some important bearing on the future relation of the white and coloured
races of the world.
[Illustration: THE BAY OF RIO DE JANEIRO.
Vol. II. To face p. 112.]
The magnificent but somewhat incoherent land as is Brazil to-day,
offered at the time of its discovery few attractions to the sovereigns
of a Mother Country into whose coffers the wealth of Africa and of
India flowed. Its poor and barbarous tribes had no stores of gold ready
to the hand of the _Conquistador_; there was no civilized empire with
a polity and architecture and organized social life, with armies to
protect it, such as Mexico and Peru offered, and consequently neither
glory nor riches urged the European discoverer or invader to tempt
its hinterland and people its valleys and seaboard. For thirty years
the Portuguese sovereigns paid little heed to this newly acquired
dominion, except that they fought off the encroaching Spaniard and the
adventurers of France, who would have entered or traded with it.
Twenty years before the Conquest of Mexico it was that the first
explorer sailed the Brazilian coast--and only eight years after
Columbus had sighted the American mainland--that the Spaniard, Vicente
Yañez Pinzon, a companion of Columbus, with whom sailed Amerigo
Vespucci--who gave his name to America--sighted the shore of what is
now Brazil, near Cape San Augustine, reconnoitring the mouth of the
Amazon and coasting along to the Orinoco. He took away some gems from
the Indians, some drugs and a load of dye-wood.
From this later commodity of the dye-wood, the great dominion of Brazil
took its name. "Brazil" was originally a legendary island in the
Atlantic, which long retained its imaginary position in the lore of
the forecastle and upon the ancient charts, and from this circumstance
the name came to be bestowed upon that enormous part of South America
which produced the red dye-woods similar to those which bore the name
of Brazil in the Middle Ages.
A few months after the keel of Pinzon had furrowed these unknown seas,
another explorer, Cabral, close upon Easter in 1499 (O.S.), following
the course of Vasco de Gama to the east, was drifted by an adverse gale
so far from his proper track that he reached this same coast, and,
anchoring in Porto Seguro, erected an altar there, celebrated Mass, set
up a stone cross and took possession of the country for the King of
Portugal. He, like Columbus, thought he had reached India, and sent a
vessel to Lisbon with the news.
Let us turn for a space to examine the great land thus brought to
knowledge by these early voyagers.
To-day, the traveller in Brazil will soon be impressed by the immensity
of its spaces, will remark how broad are these wide tablelands, how
interminable the _serras_ and mountain ranges, how boundless the
forests. The territory of this great land is fifteen times that of
France. It is larger than the United States (without Alaska); it is
over 2,600 miles long upon the Atlantic, and 2,700 miles wide from
its coast to where, across the heart of the continent, it touches the
frontier of Peru. Its boundaries touch those of every South American
nation except Chile. Persistent trespassers were the Portuguese in the
early Colonial period, and their land-hunger carried them beyond those
boundaries which the Pope, as we have seen in a former chapter, fixed
between Portugal and Spain.
What is the general nature of this great territory? Here is a coastline
with many sandy beaches, mangrove swamps and lagoons, with inland
channels following the coast for long distances, but giving place to
rolling, fertile coastal plains terminating in headlands overlooking
the Atlantic waves. The coast is indented with many land-locked bays,
forming large and easily accessible harbours, with others smaller and
difficult of approach.
Back from this characteristic littoral, from Cape San Roque--nearly the
easternmost point of South America, whose tropic headland here juts
out far towards Europe--and southward to Rio de la Plata extends a
vast tableland, covering half Brazil, and beyond this we reach immense
undulating plains of sandy soil, forming the great depression of South
America from the basin of the Amazon in the north to the basin of the
Paraná River in the south.
Thus do we remark a singular incoherence and lack of symmetry in
the physiography of Brazil, largely due to geological conditions.
Yet Brazil is a land which has been immune from violent geological
disturbances from an early time. Such oscillations as there have
been have not brought to being enormous mountain chains or intensive
foldings of the rocks, such as are so marked elsewhere in South
America. Flat bedding or low angles mark the geological horizons since
the Devonian Age, and since that age it would seem that none of Brazil
has been beneath the sea. There are eruptive rocks in the Devonian and
carboniferous beds, but since the Palæozoic epoch it does not appear
that there has been any volcanic activity. These devastating forces
of Nature seem to have had their vent on the western side of the
continent. The Palæozoic beds of the interior are of red sandstones,
and these have their place in marked degree in the economics and
appearance of the landscape.
The formation of the country has been interestingly described by a
well-informed recent writer, whom we may quote here.
* * * * *
"The high plains of the interior, which shed their waters both
north and south, have never been of economic importance; the
valley of the Amazon has been developed only of late years, and
its population is as yet small. It is therefore the tableland of
the Atlantic seaboard, from Uruguay to Ceará, that constitutes the
soil of historic Brazil. Through its length of 1,800 to 2,200 miles
this tableland presents the greatest variety of aspect, and has no
hydrographic unity. Its height is greater to the south, where it
reaches some 3,200 feet. This general slope from south to north is
revealed by the course of the San Francisco. In Brazil the name of
Borburema is employed to denote the northern portion of the plateau.
This old geographical term deserves preservation, as it represents
a region which has its own peculiar characteristics. The dry season
there is a long one, and the Borburema does little to feed the small
seaboard rivers which flow fan-wise into the Atlantic; for the
plateau in that region slopes gently to the sea.
"It is otherwise in southern Brazil. From the State of San Paolo
southwards the seaward face of the plateau is a huge bank, some 2,500
or 3,000 feet in height, which separates a narrow strip of coast from
the basin of the great rivers inland. This long bank or watershed
bears successively the titles of Serra do Mar and Serra Geral. From
San Paolo to the Rio Grande no river pierces its barrier; but the
streams which rise upon its landward side, almost within sight of
the sea, cross the whole width of the plateau before they join the
Paraná or the Uruguay. Thus the Serra do Mar is not really a mountain
range; though it has, from the sea, all the appearance of one, owing
to its denticulated ridge; but the traveller who reaches the crest
by crossing the inland plateau arrives at the highest point by the
ascent of imperceptible gradients, and only discovers the _serra_
when he breaks suddenly upon the sight of the ocean thousands of feet
below.
"Beyond the _serra_ is the territory of Minas; a confused mass of
mountainous groups, among which it is no easy matter to trace one's
way, either on the map or on the trail itself. An enormous backbone
of granite, the Mantiqueira, crosses the southern portion of Minas;
and the railway painfully ascends its grassy slopes. The Mantiqueira,
which receives on its southern flank the rains brought by the ocean
winds, is the highest point of the plateau, and the hydrographic
centre of Brazil. It gives birth to the Rio Grande, the principal arm
of the Paraná.
"As soon as we cross the southern frontier of the State of San
Paolo the plateau is transformed; there is no more granite, and the
landscape grows tamer. The primitive measures of gneiss and granite,
out of which the Serra do Mar is carved, are covered to the westward
by a bed of sedimentary rocks, of which the strata, dipping toward
the west, plunge one after the other under other more recent strata.
They consist exclusively of red and grey sandstone, and the sandy
soil which results from their decomposition covers the western
portions of the four southern States. The topography of the country
changes with the geologic structure. The outcrops of sandstone,
which one crosses in travelling westward, cut the tableland into
successive flats. Irregular ranges turn their abrupter slopes towards
the east, as the banks of the Meuse and Moselle in the basin of the
Seine; the rivers flow close underneath them, running through narrow
gorges. Even the least experienced eye could never mistake these
cliffs of sandstone for ridges of granite; these are not mountain
chains, not _serras_, but, according to the local term, _serrinhas_.
"In Santa Catharina and Rio Grande enormous eruptions of basaltic
rocks have covered a portion of the plateau. The basalt has even
reached the seaboard, and southward of the island on which Desterro
is built it overlies the granites of the Serra do Mar. The south
flank of the plateau, which overlooks the prairies of Rio Grande, is
also basaltic. The popular judgment has gone astray, having given the
same name--the Serra Geral--to the granitic chain and to the edge of
the basaltic overflow, as if one were a continuation of the other.
"If we except the prairies of Rio Grande, where the pampas of the
Argentine and of Uruguay commence, there is nothing in front of the
Serra do Mar but a narrow sandy waste. The rains which scar the
face of the _serra_, wearing it into ravines, do not irrigate it
sufficiently; and the rivers, of little volume, are spent in slowly
filling the marshes that border the coast; they are lost finally
among the granite islets, in the deep bays which the first explorers
insisted were great estuaries. From the Rio Grande to Espirito Santo
the Parahyba is the only river that has been able to deposit, at the
foot of the _serra_, and around its outlets, a solid and fertile
alluvial plain; it is there that the sugar-mills of Campos are
established.
"It is the vegetation above all that gives the various regions of
Brazil their peculiar character. It is a mistake to suppose that
Brazil is entirely covered with forests. The forests are concentrated
upon two regions: the basin of the Amazon and a long strip of
seaboard along the Atlantic coast between Espiritu Santo and Rio
Grande. The forests require abundant rains; and the Serra do Mar,
receiving the humidity of the ocean winds upon its dripping flanks,
incessantly hidden by mists, produces far to the south the conditions
which have made the Amazonian basin the home of the equatorial
forest. For a distance of 1,200 miles those who have landed at the
various practicable inlets have found everywhere on the slopes of
the _serra_ the same splendid and impenetrable forest. Even to-day
it is almost untouched. It encircles and embraces Rio; it seems to
refuse it room for growth, as in the tale of Daudet's, in which the
forest reconquered in a single springtide the land which the intrepid
colonists had stolen from it in order to found their settlement.
"Beyond the belt of swamps which extends along the coast, where
ill-nourished trees, overladen with parasites, struggle against
imperfect drainage and poverty of soil, at the very foot of the
_serra_, the true forest begins. The dome-like summits of the great
trees, ranged in ascending ranks upon the slope, completely screen
the soil they spring from, thus giving the peculiar illusion that
this wonderful vegetation rises, from a common level, to the extreme
height of the range. Here and there only emerges from the foliage the
smooth water-worn side of a granite bluff. The railway track runs
between walls of verdure; the underwoods, which elsewhere suffer from
the lack of light, grow eagerly along the sides of the trench-like
clearing. Lianas, ferns, bamboos, grow vigorously as high as the
tree-tops. One seems actually to see the brutal struggle of the
plants toward the sunlight and the air. Many travellers have spoken
of the sense of conflict and of violence produced by the virgin
forest. There is, indeed, along the clearings cut by man, and over
the trees which he fells but does not remove, a fierce battle between
species and species, individual and individual; a desperate struggle
for space and air. As always, it is man who introduces disorder into
the heart of Nature. Far from his track order reigns, established by
the victory of the strongest; and the forest which has never been
violated gives a profound impression of peace and calm.
"The _serra_ is the true home of the equatorial forest. But it
covers beyond the ridge the southern and western portions of the
State of Minas and the basins of the Rio Doce and the Parahyba.
The Martiqueira very nearly marks the limit of the forests; beyond
commences a dense growth of bush. I remember a long journey along
the northern slope of the range upon which is built the new capital
of the State of Minas, the city of Bello Horizonte. Towards the north
we could see vast stretches of uncovered land; the mountains were
partly clothed with narrow belts of forest, which climbed upward
through the valleys to the very sources of the streams; we passed
alternately through thickets of thorn and prairies where the soil
was studded with the nests of termites. The dense trees, deprived
of their leaves by months of drought, were beginning to revive, and
were decking themselves with flowers, of a startling wealth of colour
unknown to the forests of the humid regions. There it was that the
bush commenced. It stretched unbroken to the north--unbroken save for
the streams, which were full or empty according to the rain they had
received.
"In San Paolo also and Paraná the region of afforestation is not
limited by the ridge of the _serra_. Forests and prairies alternate
on the plateau. The fires which the Indians used to light in the
savannahs have destroyed the forest in places; yet man has played
but a little part in the present distribution of vegetation. The
forest has persisted wherever the natural conditions were favourable,
holding tenaciously to the humid slopes of the hills or to rich and
fertile soils. Certain soils, either by reason of their richness or
their moisture, particularly favour the forest, while on lighter
soils the trees can ill resist the drought. The diabasic soils of
San Paolo are always covered with a mantle of forest; so much so that
a map of the forests would be equivalent to a geological map.
"The forest of the plateau, intersected as it is by stretches of
prairie, is less dense and less exuberant than the forest the
_serra_; and as we approach the south the difference is yet more
evident. Towards the boundaries of San Paolo and Paraná the tropical
trees are replaced by resinous varieties. The immense pines of the
Paraná, with straight trunks and wide, flattened crests, whose shape
is rather reminiscent of that of a candelabrum with seven branches,
cover with their sombre grey the wooded portions of the plateau from
the Paranápanema to beyond the Uruguay. With their open foliage,
pervious to the light, these woods resemble the pinewoods of Europe.
"To find the tropical forest once more we must push as far as the
Serra Geral, whose southern slopes run down towards the prairies
of Rio Grande, as on the east they descend towards the sea. There,
on the basaltic flanks of the _serra_, is a last fragment of the
tropical woods. In magnificence it almost equals the forests of Rio
or of Santos. It is the equatorial forest that makes the continuity
of the _serra_, not its geological constitution. When the Brazilians
speak of the _serra_ they think of the forest rather than of the
mountains. Incautious cartographers, who have worked from second-hand
data, which they have not always interpreted correctly, have sown
the map of Rio Grande with a large number of imaginary ranges. One
seeks them in vain when traversing the country; but one finds, in
their place, the forests which the inhabitants call _serras_; the
term for mountain has become, by the latent logic of language, the
term for forest. Nothing could better emphasize the importance
of vegetation in the Brazilian landscape; it effaces all other
characteristics.
"Forest, bush and prairie change their aspect with the cycle of the
seasons. The whole interior of Brazil knows the alteration of two
well-defined seasons. The temperature is equal all the year through;
there is no hot season, no cold season, but a dry season and a
rainy season; this latter corresponds with the southern summer. At
the first rains, which fall in September or October, the wearied
vegetation abruptly awakens. Then comes the time of plenty, when
earth affords the herds of cattle an abundant pasturage. March brings
back the drought to the scorching soil. The region of rainy summers
includes all the State of San Paolo, extending sometimes as far as
Paraná. Further south the rhythm of vegetable life is no longer
swayed by the distribution of the rains, but by the variations of the
temperature, which grow always greater as one travels south. From
June to September frosts are frequent in Rio Grande. The cattle on
its pastures suffer from cold as much as from hunger. Spring returns,
and the grass grows as the sun regains its power. This is the only
portion of Brazil in which the words winter and summer are understood
as they are in Europe.
"But the _ocean_ side of the _serra_ knows no seasons; all the months
of the year are alike; all bring with them an almost equal rainfall.
There vegetation is truly evergreen, everlasting, unresting. The
ridge of the _serra_ divides two different countries. If it is true
that the division of the year into well-marked seasons, that powerful
aid to the agriculturist, is the privilege of the temperate regions,
then tropical Brazil is found only at the foot of the _serra_ and on
its slopes; the interior is another Brazil.
"Its advent into Brazilian history dates very far back. The first
colonists immediately climbed the _serra_, and so discovered the
vast territories which offered them a climate more favourable to
their efforts. The belt of seaboard was too narrow and too hot to
be the cradle of a nation. Colonization was effected otherwise than
in the United States. In North America the pioneers settled along
the seaboard, in a bracing, healthy climate, and there dwelt for
a long period without any thought of crossing to the west of the
mountains which limited their outlook. They prospered and multiplied
in their narrow domain, and, having formed a nation, only then began
to extend their territories toward the west. In Brazil, although the
administrative capital of the colony remained upon the coast, men
quickly began to penetrate the interior. To-day even to the seaward
of the plateau to which the immigrants made their way, and which
they have everywhere opened up for exploitation by labour, the soil
remains but sparsely populated. While the forests of the interior
gradually recede before the agriculturist, Brazil has kept the forest
of the littoral intact, and man has not disputed the claim of the
woods. They form, between the seaboard cities and the agricultural
regions of the plateau, an uninhabited frontier, a sumptuous but
deceptive frontage. Many travellers know nothing of the country but
the seaboard forest. It deceives them as to the nature of Brazil, and
as to its economic progress. The living members of Brazil are hidden
behind it as behind a screen.
"After the first astonishment has abated, and when one has travelled
far and for long periods, the eyes at last become tired; they
become inured to the opulent scenery, and even find the landscape
monotonous. The sombre green of forest or prairie everywhere hides
the rocks; the soil stripped bare by the roads, is of a dull,
uniform red; even the dust is red. Bright colours and broken lines
are equally rare. One travels continually among rounded hillocks
of green; the humid climate hides or softens the contour of hill
and valley alike. The memories of one's journey's blend and grow
confused; reminiscences of forests, skirted or traversed; clumps of
banana-palms near fordable streams; windings of the twisted trail in
the midst of undulating prairies."[23]
From mountain slopes and forest glades let us turn to glance into the
Brazilian home, at the Brazilian people.
In one sense, Brazil is an old country, as far as any American nation
may be termed so, and in its three hundred years of life since the
white man became established within its shores life has taken on a
settled form and engrafted itself upon its environment. It is a land
of marked social customs and distinctions. It has an aristocracy, a
culture refined and stable. Education, music, poetry, the arts, are
revered and enjoyed, and in this sense the traveller is transported
to the Old World. Yet Brazil is democratic in its ideas, as far as
democracy has been possible in the Latin American Republics--a matter
which is of circumscribed limits at present.
The foreigner, unless he specially lay himself out to know the folk of
the Latin American lands, cannot readily look into their homes. They
are a people, as elsewhere remarked, full of reserve, almost mediaeval
in their seclusion, sensitive, yet extremely hospitable and open-handed
whenever these barriers of reserve are penetrated. This is naturally
but the Iberian social character transplanted to America.
It is to be recollected, moreover, that Brazil was a slave-owning
land, with all in social life that that condition brings. Brazil was
always a viceregal or monarchical country too. The fall of slavery in
1888 in part brought about the fall of the empire. Thus we have here
everywhere--except in the southern States where recent immigration has
brought other thoughts and customs--a rigid ruling class and caste, the
privileges of an old society, such as does not exist in its neighbour
of Argentina, for example, and which is foreign to the United States.
Essentially an agricultural country, the land, moreover, belongs almost
in its entirety to this ruling class.
Yet this condition of land-owning seclusion and reserve is not
necessarily accepted as a final and irrevocable circumstance. "In
the cities, and especially Rio, where social life is more developed
and the national character tempered by contact with foreigners of
all nationalities, the country magnates, ignorant of the ephemeral
passage of the fashions, are the subject of ready ridicule. The country
magnate's name is never pronounced without exciting merriment."[24]
This is a curious circumstance, and shows how custom differs in varying
lands. In England, for example, the "country magnate" is generally a
personage upholding all that is best in the community.
In Brazil there is a marked taste for country life, such as is scarcely
yet developed in the Spanish American Republics. The elegant suburb
does not necessarily attract the newly rich Brazilian, who loves to
return to the _fazenda_, or country estate. It has been said, however,
that this is less the result of delight in rural amenities than in the
lust of power, for in the _fazenda_ he is absolute master, with a
power over his dependants stronger perhaps than in any other land.
[Illustration: PALM AVENUE, RIO DE JANEIRO.
Vol. II. To face p. 128.]
Says the writer before quoted: "One of the qualities of the
_fazendeiro_, one which I ought particularly to mention, is his
extreme hospitality. In cordiality, delicacy and unfailing tact the
hospitality of the Brazilian surpasses the imagination of the most
hospitable of Europeans. The _fazendeiro_ will make every possible
effort to render his house agreeable to you; if you wish to take the
air the best horse is at your service; or the safest, according to
your talents as a horseman; the eldest son of the house will be your
companion. After dinner the family will search among the gramophone
discs for the latest music, the latest French songs. In the morning,
upon your departure, your host, cutting short your thanks, will
assure you of the gratitude he owes you for your visit. I have
witnessed this scene a score of times, and each time--whether or
not I owed such fortune to my French nationality--I felt that I was
received as an old family friend.
"Such hospitality introduces one to the heart of many families.
These families, too, are large; ten children are considered in no
way extraordinary. Paternal authority is respected; the son, upon
his entrance, kisses his father's hand. The wife is occupied with
household cares; the husband's duty is to do the honours of the
house. A stranger rarely sees Brazilian women, except as the guest of
a Brazilian family. The women do not receive male callers; for them,
or so it seems to me, mundane life ceases upon marriage.[25] They
marry, I believe, very young, and are absolutely under the marital
thumb. Outside their family their independent life is extremely
limited. Admirable mothers, one knows them rather by their children
than personally; they seem to cherish their domestic obscurity. The
traveller who lands in the United States is immediately surrounded,
questioned, advised and chaperoned by the American woman; there is
nothing of this sort in Brazil.
"In addition to its social authority, this Brazilian aristocracy
enjoys political power as well. Brazil has, it is true, established
universal suffrage; but the sovereign people, before delegating
its sovereignty to its representatives, confides to the ruling
class the duty of supervising its electoral functions. The large
landed proprietors choose the candidates, and their instructions
are usually obeyed. They form the structure, the framework, of all
party politics; they are its strength, its very life; it is they
who govern and administer Brazil. And the administration is a great
power in Brazil. Its province is very wide, and much is expected
from it; whether the explanation is to be found in Latin atavism, or
in the material conditions of life in this limitless territory, or
in the fact that the individual is so powerless, and association
so difficult. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the
administration plays the same part in Brazil as in a European colony
like Algeria, or as in India.
"Between the members of the all-powerful administration who during
my travels granted me facilities, and their friends and relations,
whose hospitality I enjoyed in their _fazendas_, I was perhaps in
danger of becoming exclusively acquainted with the superior social
class of which a portion directs the agricultural exploitation of the
country while the remaining portion governs it. It would be a great
mistake to suppose that this class, by itself, is Brazil. I have done
my best to see beyond it, and to keep in mind the populace, which is
both more numerous and more diversified; a confused mass of people
upon whom, before all else, the whole future of Brazil depends. It
lives under a benign climate; or at least under a climate which makes
impossible what we call poverty in Europe. It is also a rural class;
all the agricultural labour of the country is performed by its hands.
"In Southern Brazil the population has been renewed, all through
the second half of the nineteenth century, by a stream of
European immigration. In San Paolo the Italians have provided the
long-established Paulista population with the labour necessary to
the extensive production of coffee. They live on the plantations, in
villages which are veritable cities of labourers. Nothing ties them
to the soil; they do not seem to feel the appetite for land; very
few buy real estate. They bind themselves only by yearly contracts;
they readily change their employers after each harvest. No more
nomadic people could be imagined; they change incessantly from
_fazenda_ to _fazenda_. Neither is there anything to retain them in
the State of San Paolo; and not the least danger of the coffee crisis
is the exodus which it is producing among the Italian colonists.
"Farther south, from Paraná to Rio Grande, immigration has
resulted in the settlement of a very different population: a small
peasant democracy, composed of Poles, Germans and Venetians. Being
proprietors, they are firmly rooted to the soil. Just as the influx
of Italians to San Paolo was not a spontaneous movement, but the work
of the Paulista administration, so the German and Polish colonization
of the south was evoked and subsidized by the Government of Brazil
and the interested provinces. The newcomers were sent into regions
hitherto unpopulated, where commercial communications could not be
established and economic vitality was unknown. There they lived
abandoned to themselves, without neighbours, without customers. The
political and artificial origin of these colonies condemned them to
isolation; isolation kept them faithful to their national customs
and languages, which they would soon have abandoned under other
circumstances."[26]
* * * * *
It is seen that the Brazilian has a strong leaning towards the
exercise of the intellectual gifts of mankind. They are philosophical.
The love of scientific and learned titles is strong. The doctorate--of
laws, literature, medicine, science--has been a coveted distinction,
indeed has been carried out to become a weakness or failing, a passion,
as among all Latin American communities. At one time the ambition of
every family capable of affording a superior education to its sons was
that the boy should be a priest. That passed, and then he was to be a
doctor, in one of the professions, and, moreover, to marry the daughter
of a neighbour who was also a member of the learned class. Nearly all
professions, it is to be recollected, in the Latin communities carry
the doctorate with them. Nearly all statesmen are doctors--when they
are not military men, and then the sword is apt to oust the diploma!
[Illustration: A COLONY, RIO GRANDE.
Vol. II. To face p. 132.]
Now Brazil--and the same has taken place in Chile--has abolished the
doctorate as being "undemocratic," has abolished the universities
and all their ceremonies and the cap and gown, regarding them as too
aristocratic-seeming, and, in their place, a simple certificate of
knowledge is given from the "professional school."
This may seem destructive, but perhaps there is a measure of wisdom
in it, for apart from a measure of danger in too marked social
distinctions, the system tended among the youth of the country towards
too great an aspiration for academic honours, and not enough towards
the more practical and productive walks of life.
The aristocratic society of Brazil naturally centred around the
monarch, for, as we have not forgotten, Brazil was the only
self-contained empire in the New World, except for Mexico's short-lived
monarchical regime. We may not here trespass much upon the field of
history, but we shall recollect that, in 1808, the fugitive Portuguese
Court, under the regent, Dom Joâo VI, sought Rio de Janeiro as his
refuge. This advent gave a stimulus to the growth of the capital,
which was opened to foreign commerce with the removal of industrial
restrictions, printing was introduced and medicine and literature
established. In 1822 Brazil declared its independence, with Dom Pedro I
as its emperor. The expulsion of royalty in 1889, by a military revolt,
was accomplished without bloodshed, but under subsequent presidents
revolution reared its head.
Brazil is a land that has depended largely for its prosperity upon the
system of what may be termed "monoculture," that is, the exploitation
of one principal crop or product. In earlier times this was sugar; more
recently it has been coffee. This policy, whilst it had advantages,
and, indeed, may have been inevitable, has also serious disadvantages.
Such products are bound for foreign markets and susceptible to the rise
and fall of exchange. The producers may be enriched or impoverished by
such fluctuations.
Moreover, "monoculture," as pointed out elsewhere, tends to the
sacrifice or neglect of other interests, those of smaller and more
varied industries, which go to make up the life of a nation, to
increase its happiness, prosperity, knowledge--indeed, to feed it and
supply it. There is a tendency to draw off labour under monocultural
systems from smaller occupations, from local food supply and
local industry, to herd labour into barracks or congested places,
to discourage individual initiative and peasant proprietorship,
concentrating industry into too few hands. This condition is of easy
growth in such countries as Spanish America, where raw materials,
rather than finished articles, are produced.
There are evidences, however, that Brazilian Governments are awakening
to these matters and encouraging the implantation of a wider variety of
industry. Along such paths undoubtedly lies greater national prosperity
and stability.
The high protective tariffs of the Latin American countries at the
same time tend to raise enormously the price of imported articles
and to foster the industries of the countries themselves. In Brazil
the national manufacturing industries have grown very considerable
under this system of economic fostering. None is more striking
than the cotton-weaving industry, and we are already in sight of
the time when the country will cease to import English or other
foreign cotton goods, except perhaps certain special kinds. This, of
course, is sound economics (however unpleasing it may be for British
manufacturers). Brewing and soap-making are other industries that
have similarly prospered in the Republic. But, so far, factories are
few, comparatively, though there is some useful decentralization of
manufacture. One finds tiny factories in small struggling villages
where their presence might have been unsuspected, industries brought
about by the immensity of distance, the high cost of carriage, which
soon exceeds the value of the finished product, and thus Nature has
here provided a sort of natural protective zone; factories being
established where customers exist, and for the purpose of serving them,
rather than for the object of sale beyond their borders. Each small
factory has its own circle of customers, under these circumstances, and
can rely upon its market close at hand. It enjoys a monopoly of its
peculiar region.
Apart from any defects to which such a system may give rise, this may
be regarded as a valuable condition, and, if preserved, may avoid
in Brazil the serious evils which in some European countries, such
as England, over-centralization of manufacture has given rise--a
philosophy to which, however, English people have not yet awakened.
Similar conditions exist as regards agriculture: the dispersal or
decentralization of industry is necessarily accompanied by the
dispersal or decentralization of agriculture. Food products are grown
where they are to be consumed. Each hamlet, and indeed each family,
has its own fields of maize, manioc and often sugar-cane. The village
is enabled not only to provide itself with employment and with
manufactured articles, but with foodstuffs, and, in the future, this
circumstance might give rise to an intensive general settlement and
contentment.
For trading conditions it may have its adverse side. But the question
is how far trading should be encouraged as against economic settlement.
* * * * *
"As a result of the difficulty of communications, and also, perhaps,
of the defective organization of trade, Brazil is far from forming
a national market. Her territory may be decomposed into a host
of little isolated markets, each independent of the other, each
sufficing to itself. If the prices vary, neither rise nor fall
affects the outer world. In Rio I find the sugar-planters in a state
of joyful excitement: in a few months the price of sugar has risen by
100 per cent. Two days later I land in Paraná; there, in the narrow
tropical belt of seaboard, are a few sugar-plantations, whose crop
is sold on the plateau; not in the shape of sugar, but as 'brandy,'
_aguardiente_, or, strictly speaking, rum. The local crop of cane is
abundant, the owners of the sugar-mills at the foot of the _serra_
are grumbling at having to sell their spirit at far below its usual
price.[27] Similarly the price of coffee will fall in San Paolo
and in Santos, until the Paulist coffee industry appears in actual
danger, and the State undertakes the perilous business of running
up the prices to save the planters. Yet in Ceará there are only a
few growers, who can barely supply the consumers of the State, who
are selling an inferior coffee at double the usual prices, and know
no other anxiety than the fear that the drought may threaten their
crops. Such contrasts are frequent. If such is the case with luxuries
like sugar and coffee, what of the heavier products, whose transport
is still more costly?
"The limitation of the markets renders the economic life of the
country unequal and ill-adjusted. It exposes it to continual partial
crises which naturally check its development. When production
exceeds consumption the local market cannot unload itself upon the
neighbouring markets, in which the producers would perhaps receive
better prices, since these, on account of the cost of transport,
are shut off, as it were, by water-tight compartments. Prices
accordingly fall, without any possible remedy; immediately production
is limited and becomes insufficient; then prices rise, and there
is no importations from without to limit their rise. Reawakened by
better prices, production is once more stimulated; and its very
improvement provokes a new crisis. I found the settlers of Paraná
accustomed and even resigned to the sudden leaps of the market, which
they had come to regard as a normal and inevitable state of affairs.
They live, therefore, always in a state of uncertainty, never able
to foresee what will be their resources for the coming year. The
spirit of saving has decayed among them. In the same way wholesale
trade used to suffer formerly from the extravagant variations of
exchange. The Brazilians have at last come to understand the dangers
of such conditions. There is only one remedy: to improve the means of
communication. The great question of Brazil is above all a question
of roads."[28]
* * * * *
In Brazil the question of means of transport is a serious one. The
magnificent network of railways (largely built by British capital)
serves only the more settled part of the country.
The great export trade of Brazil, with its staple products, furnishes a
stream of gold, which, more or less, becomes dispersed throughout the
country, and creates strong ties of union between the various States,
which otherwise might not exist in unison.
As to sugar, however, Brazil is in large degree its own customer. The
great export is coffee, as it was once sugar, and in part rubber. Meat
also finds its principal market at home. Brazil will soon supply its
own wants in flour, which now comes in part from Argentina.
The rise of the coffee-growing industry in Southern Brazil, in the rich
State of San Paolo, has in it the element of an economic romance.
The condition was the result of Nature's geological work here. It was
discovered about the year 1885 that Nature had disposed large areas of
what came to be called "red earth"--a certain diabasic soil of rich
decomposed lavas--in this part of Brazil, and that the coffee-shrub
flourished wonderfully upon them. A coffee-planting "fever" was the
result. Rich and poor flocked in to take up these lands and plant the
berry; other forms of agriculture were despised; all hunted for the
red-earth deposits, built their homes, set out rows of young shrubs.
The forests receded, cut down by the axe of the new settlers. Towns
sprang to being as if by magic, where people were drawn from the four
quarters of the globe, from every nation. _Fazendas_ rapidly spread,
railways were multiplied, coffee occupied all minds. They thought it
the one thing on earth. Coffee was their art, literature, religion.
Thus the great and to-day rich and handsome city of San Paolo grew up,
into which coffee pours, to have its final outlet for the market beyond
the sea, at Santos--once a dreadful and fever-stricken port, whose
very name was anathema to the traveller, now a fine and fairly healthy
seaport of vast importance.
[Illustration: A VIEW IN SAO PAULO.
Vol. II. To face p. 140.]
The life and circumstances of the immigrants or "colonists," as they
are termed, in these coffee-growing districts of Brazil is one of
peculiar interest for the student of race matters and human geography,
of great value in the science of colonization. Here is an account by a
careful observer:
"Each _fazenda_ constitutes a little isolated world, which is all
but self-sufficient, and from which the colonists rarely issue; the
life is laborious. The coffee is planted in long regular lines in the
red soil, abundantly watered by the rains, on which a constant
struggle must be maintained against the invasion of the noxious
weeds. The weeding of the plantation is really the chief labour of
the colonist. It is repeated six times a year. Directly after the
harvest, if you ride on horseback along the lines of shrubs, which
begin, as early as September, to show signs of their brilliant
flowering season, you will find the colonists, men and women, leaning
on their hoes, while the sun, already hot, is drying behind them the
heaps of weeds they have uprooted.
"Each family is given as many trees as it can look after; the number
varies with the size of the family. Large families will tend as many
as eight or ten thousand trees; while a single worker cannot manage
much more than two thousand.
"Like the vine, coffee requires a large number of labourers in
proportion to the area under cultivation; it supports a relatively
dense population. The two thousand trees which one colonist will
receive will not cover, as a matter of fact, more than five to
seven acres; yet the coffee supports other labourers who work on
the _fazenda_, in addition to the labourers proper, or colonists.
Pruning, for instance, which so far is not universally practised, is
never done by the colonists, but by gangs of practised workmen, who
travel about the State and hire themselves for the task. The colonist
is only a labourer; if he were allowed to prune the shrubs he would
kill them. Heaven knows, the pruners to whom the task is confided
ill-treat the trees sufficiently already! They use pruning-hook and
axe with a brutality that makes one shudder.
"When the coffee ripens, towards the end of June, the picking of
the crop commences. Sometimes, in a good year, the crop is not all
picked until November. The great advantage enjoyed by San Paolo, to
which it owes its rank as a coffee-producing country, is that the
whole crop arrives at maturity almost at the same moment. The crop
may thus be harvested in its entirety at one picking; the harvester
may pick all the berries upon each tree at once, instead of selecting
the ripe berries, and making two or three harvests, as is necessary
in Costa Rica or Guatemala. This entails a great reduction in the
cost of production and of labour. San Paolo owes this advantage to
the climate, which is not quite tropical, and to the sequence of
well-defined seasons and their effect upon the vegetation.
"At the time of picking the colonists are gathered into gangs.
They confine themselves to loading the berries on carts, which
other labourers drive to the _fazenda_; there the coffee is soaked,
husked, dried and selected, and then dispatched to Santos, the great
export market. All these operations the colonists perform under the
supervision of the manager of the _fazenda_. A bell announces the
hour for going to work; another the hour of rest; another the end
of the day; the labourers have no illusions of independence. In the
morning the gangs scatter through the plantation; in the evening they
gradually collect on the paths of the _fazenda_, and go home in
family groups, tired after the day's work, saving of words, saluting
one another by gestures. On Sunday work is interrupted; games are
arranged; parties are made up to play _mora_, or Italian card games,
with _denari_ and _bastoni_. Women hold interminable palavers.
Sometimes, on an indifferent nag, borrowed at second or third hand
from a neighbour, the colonist will ride as far as the nearest town,
to see his relations, exercise his tongue, and pit himself against
such hazards of fortune as the world outside the _fazenda_ may offer.
"What are the annual earnings of the agricultural worker? The
conditions vary in different localities, but we may estimate that
the colonist receives about 60 or 80 milreis--£4 to £5 7s. at the
present rate of exchange--per 1,000 stems of coffee. This is a
certain resource; a sort of fixed minimum wage. To this we must
add the price of several days' labour at about 2 milreis, or 2s.
8d. A still more irregular element in the profits of a colonist's
family is the amount it receives for the harvest. By consulting
the books of several _fazendas_ I was able to realize the extent
of this irregularity. Sometimes the wage paid for the harvest is
insignificant, while sometimes it is greater by itself than all the
other sources of income put together. It is calculated at so much per
measure of berries given in by the colonist. When the branches are
heavily laden, not only is the total quantity greater, but the labour
is performed more rapidly, and each day is more productive. Years
of good harvest are for the colonist, as for the planter, years of
plenty. With this important element essentially variable, how can we
estimate the annual earnings of the colonist?
"His expenses, again, cannot be estimated with any exactitude. An
economic family will reduce them to practically nothing, if it has
the good fortune to escape all sickness, and so dispense with the
doctor, the chemist and the priest.
"What really enables the colonists to make both ends meet is the
crops they have the right to raise on their own account, sometimes on
allotments reserved for the purpose set apart from the coffee, and
sometimes between the rows of the coffee-trees. They often think more
of the clauses in their contract which relate to these crops than to
those which determine their wages in currency. A planter told me that
he had learned that a party of colonists intended to leave him after
the harvest. We met some of them on the road, and I questioned them.
'Is it true that you are engaged to work on Senhor B----'s _fazenda_
for the coming year?'--'Yes.'--'What reason have you for changing
your _fazenda_? Will you be better paid there? Don't you get over £6
a thousand trees here?'--'Yes.'--'How much do they offer you over
there?'--'Only £4.'--'Then why do you go?'--'Because there we can
plant our maize among the coffee.'
"The culture of coffee is thus combined with that of alimentary
crops. Almost all the world over the important industrial crops have
to make room in the neighbourhood for food crops. Every agricultural
country is forced to produce, at any rate to some extent, its own
food, and to live upon itself if it wishes to live at all. In
Brazil the dispersion of food crops is extreme, on account of the
difficulties of transport; it is hardly less in San Paolo, in spite
of the development of the railway system. Each _fazenda_ is a little
food-producing centre, the chief crops being maize, manioc and black
beans, of which the national dish, the _feijoade_, is made.
"It even happens at times that the colonists produce more maize
than they consume. They can then sell a few sacks at the nearest
market, and add the price to their other resources. In this way crops
which are in theory destined solely for their nourishment take on a
different aspect from their point of view, yielding them, a revenue
which is not always to be despised.
"The colonists make their purchases in the nearest town, or, more
often, if the _fazenda_ is of any importance, there is a shop or
store--what the Brazilians call a _negocio_--in the neighbourhood
of the colonists' houses. Its inventory would defy enumeration; it
sells at the same time cotton prints and cooking-salt, agricultural
implements and petroleum. An examination of the stock will show
one just what the little economic unit called a _fazenda_ really
is. Although the colonists are to-day almost always free to make
their purchases where they please, the trade of shopkeeper on a
_fazenda_ is still extremely profitable. He enjoys a virtual
monopoly; the _fazendeiro_ sees that no competitor sets up shop in
the neighbourhood. The shop is the planter's property; he lets it,
and usually at a high rent, which represents not only the value of
the premises, but also the commercial privilege which goes with it.
It is a sort of indirect commercial tariff levied by the planter
on the colonists; a sign of the ever so slightly feudal quality of
the organization of property in San Paolo. The custom that used to
obtain, of the planter himself keeping shop for the profit, or rather
at the expense of his colonists, has generally disappeared.
"One of the most serious of the planter's anxieties is the
maintenance of the internal discipline of the _fazenda_. This is
a task demanding ability and energy. One must not be too ready to
accuse the planters of governing as absolute sovereigns. I myself
have never observed any abuse of power on their part, nor have I seen
unjustifiable fines imposed. The _fazendeiro_ has a double task to
perform. He employs his authority not only to ensure regularity in
the work accomplished, but also to maintain peace and order among
the heterogeneous population over which he rules. He plays the
part of a policeman. The public police service cannot ensure the
respect of civil law, of the person or of property. How could the
police intervene on the plantation, which is neither village nor
commune, but a private estate? It falls to the planter to see that
the rights of all are protected. Many colonists have a preference
for plantations on which the discipline is severe; they are sure of
finding justice then. The severity of the planter is not always to
the detriment of the colonist.
"Individually the colonists are often turbulent and sometimes
violent; collectively they have hitherto shown a remarkable docility.
On some _fazendas_, however, there have been labour troubles, and
actual strikes; but they have always been abortive. The strikes
have not lasted, and have never spread. One of the means by which
the planters maintain their authority and prevent the colonists
from becoming conscious of their strength is the prohibition of all
societies or associations. They have had little trouble in making
this prohibition respected. Among an uneducated group of labourers,
of various tongues and nationalities, the spirit of combination does
not exist. We have seen the development of working-men's societies,
of socialistic tendencies, in the cities of San Paolo, but nowhere
in the country. An incoherent immigrant population, but lightly
attached to the land, is not a favourable soil for the growth of a
party with a socialistic platform. One must not look for agricultural
trade unions in San Paolo. The contract between the planter and his
labourers is never a collective but always an individual contract.
"Accounts are settled every two months. It often happens, even
to-day, that the colonist is in the planter's debt. The planter
has kept up the custom of making advances, and every family newly
established in the country is, as a general rule, in debt. But the
advances are always small, the colonist possessing so little in the
way of securities; he has few animals and next to nothing in the way
of furniture. His indebtedness towards the planter is not enough, as
it used to be, to tie him down to the plantation; that many of them
continue to leave by stealth is due to their desire to save their
few personal possessions, which the planter might seize to cover his
advances. At the last payment of the year all the colonists are free;
their contract comes to an end after the harvest. Proletarians, whom
nothing binds to the soil on which they have dwelt for a year, they
do not resume their contracts if they have heard of more advantageous
conditions elsewhere, or if their adventurous temperament urges them
to try their luck farther on.
"The end of the harvest sees a general migration of the agricultural
labourers. The colonists are true nomads. All the planters live in
constant dread of seeing their hands leave them in September. Even
the most generous _fazendeiros_ experience the same difficulty.
According to the Director of Colonization, 40 per cent. to 60
per cent. of the colonists leave their _fazendas_ annually. It
is difficult to confirm this statement; but at least it is no
exaggeration to say that a third of the families employed on the
plantations leave their places from year to year. Towards September
one meets them on the roads, most often travelling afoot; the man
carrying a few household goods and the woman a newly born child,
like the city labourers at the end of the season. One can imagine
what a serious annoyance this instability of labour must be to the
coffee-planter. Long before the harvest the planter is planning
to fill up the gaps that will appear in the colony directly after
the harvest. He secretly sends out hired recruiting agents to the
neighbouring _fazendas_ or to the nearest town; he employs for this
purpose some of the shrewder colonists, to whom he pays a commission
for every family engaged. Finally, at the end of his resources, if
he no longer has any hope of finding workmen in the neighbourhood
who are experienced in plantation work, he decides to apply to
the colonization agent in San Paolo, and resigns himself to the
employment of an untrained staff, whom he will have to spend several
months in training.
"The instability of agricultural labour is the most striking
characteristic of rural life in the State of San Paolo. It is a
result of the unusual and even artificial nature of the hasty
development of coffee-planting."[29]
The colonists on the coffee-plantations are, in the main, Italians, of
whom there may be perhaps three-quarters of a million in San Paolo.
The settlers or immigrants in Brazil, however, are not all of the San
Paolo type, and in other parts of the Republic the condition of their
life differs altogether from those of the coffee-plantation labourers.
In Paraná, Rio Grande and elsewhere, very diverse pictures of colonial
life may be painted, more independent in their colours, with less of
the "rural proletariat." There are rural democracies of small holders
in some instances, and a wide variety of products are cultivated, or
small industries pursued.
In Paraná, the famous and valuable _maté_ is largely grown, and the
leaf of this small shrub--not unlike the ilex, or evergreen oak, is
exported far and wide to Argentina, and other lands of the Plate, and
to Chile, across the Cordillera. For Paraná, the _maté_ is what coffee
is for San Paolo.
[Illustration: COFFEE HARVEST, BRAZIL.
Vol. II. To face p. 150.]
* * * * *
"_Maté_ is not cultivated. It grows freely in the forest, and in
the forest its leaves are harvested. As soon as plucked the leaves
undergo a first preparation, which is designed principally to
diminish their weight before transport, but also to prevent their
fermenting or turning sour. They are dried at the fire, and are
then packed in sacks which are sent to Curitiba, where improved
mills reduce the leaves to powder, separate the various qualities,
and deliver the product ready for consumption. Some colonists, more
fortunate than others, found on their allotments large numbers of
_maté_-trees; this meant for them a small fortune acquired without
labour. The _maté_-leaf, or _the leaf_, as they call it in Paraná--a
light but precious merchandise--bears the cost of transport more
easily than maize; so that the owners of lots upon which _maté_ is
found are able to make a profit by the sale of their leaves. Such
good fortune is unhappily rare.
"The great _hervaïs_, as they call the forest cantons where _maté_
grows abundantly, are nearly all in the interior of the State; beyond
the colonies, on that portion of the plateau which approaches the
Paraná River; a country little known to geographers, but which,
thanks to _maté_, is not lacking in importance nor economic vitality.
At the season for plucking 'the leaf' it is intensely animated; a
veritable army goes into camp, and all the forest paths are busy.
From the eastern border the pack-mules carry their loads of leaves as
far as the roads which lead to Curitiba, capital of the trade; and to
the west the paths are no less busy. There are Paraguayans, coming to
take part in the harvest, and Paraguayan smugglers, who seek to cross
the river without being sighted by the Customs officials; for a large
portion of the harvest is destined for the border regions of Paraguay
and Misionès.
"In the _hervaïs_--whether public or private lands--the harvest is
farmed out to contractors, who undertake to organize it. They employ
a numerous staff. Each contractor constructs a hearth for drying the
leaves, and this hearth becomes the centre of the little ephemeral
world which lives for a few months in the heart of the forest,
leading an isolated and laborious existence. Four or five tons of
leaves are often prepared in a day. Some of the workers prune the
trees; the others dry the leaves. The gangs are recruited from all
over the State, and from the first day of harvest the Polish colonies
furnish a good number of recruits. The men alone leave the colony,
the women remaining to take care of the allotments. Some of the Poles
are simple workmen, while those with more initiative are themselves
contractors. All bring from the forests the money representing their
wages or their profits, and on this money the colonies have managed
to live."[30]
* * * * *
Here is a picture of the negroes on the sugar-producing lands and
elsewhere.
"A small proportion of the land belongs to negroes. Small ownership
among the negroes dates from before the abolition of slavery. The
masters who freed slaves often gave them, with their liberty, a
piece of land to ensure their subsistence. The negroes who have
inherited these small holdings are to-day the best element of the
black agricultural population. They form the majority of a class
of peasant proprietors, tilling their land with their own hands,
which also comprises mulattoes and even a few whites. This class is
unfortunately too restricted.
"Taking them all in all, the negroes in the sugar-producing regions
like Minas form a type of labourer of very indifferent economic
value. The very sun assures them of many alimentary products,
obtained without agricultural labour. Fish swarm in the marshes
of the coast. A child will catch in one day enough to feed ten
men. The fish, indeed, save the blacks from the obligation of
regular labour. Although by no means the whole of the soil is under
cultivation, certain sugar-producing districts are thus able to
support a population of extraordinary density, swarming like ants in
an ant-hill.
"In Bahia the sugar plantations have entirely disappeared. In
Pernambuco the majority of the negroes live, as formerly, on the
plantations. A large number, however, have crowded into the towns;
for the negroes, who, in order to show their independence, have
scattered far from the _fazendas_ on which they used to live, none
the less hate solitude, and are very eager for an urban life. In
Pernambuco and Bahia the urban population is too large for the
business capacity of the cities and the activity of the harbours.
Around the cities properly so called stretch immense suburbs, vast
villages where the negroes live, without very appreciable resources,
among the mango and bread-fruit trees. It is amazing, on crossing
a _fazenda_ in Minas, or a Campos plantation, to see the number of
negroes who can lodge and feed themselves on a minimum quantity of
work. One feels the same astonishment in the large villages of the
north. If you desire a boat, twenty boatmen dispute your custom. In
Pernambuco market I remember having seen twenty merchants who had
between them a stock of fruit which could have been carried in two
baskets.
"To sum up: the moral and economic inferiority of the negro
population of Brazil is incontestable. The puerility of the negroes
is extreme. They have no foresight, and are innocent of any form of
ambition, the sole motive-power of progress. They are modest in their
desires and easily satisfied. Whoever has heard, in the streets of
Bahia, the sincere, sonorous, joyful laughter of some negro woman
cannot fail to have experienced the mixture of contempt, indulgence
and envy with which this nation of children inspires the Caucasian.
Their imagination is strong and nimble; their sentimental life
active; intellectual life they have none. They are superstitious,
and their devotion has supported and still supports the four hundred
churches of Bahia.
"They amuse themselves with ardour. More than half their life is
devoted to amusements and festivals. The circus is their favourite
amusement. The wit of the clown keeps them happy for hours. Some
of their festivals are connected with their agricultural labours.
They were formerly celebrated on the _fazenda_ by the slaves; they
have survived slavery. In Minas the black workers still come, when
the coffee harvest is over, bearing in their hands boughs of the
coffee-tree, which they ornament with multi-coloured ribbons of
paper, shouting for the master to give the signal for the rejoicings
to commence."[31]
In Southern Brazil we may still see the picturesque figure in an
old industry--the _gaucho_ of the cattle-plains. The _gaucho_, or
"cowboy," is a product of his calling, a creature of his kind. From
childhood he has lived on horseback; has early learned all feats of
wild horsemanship, including the throwing of the _riata_, or lasso,
and the _boliadeira_, the latter a thong with a ball at each end
which, dexterously thrown, winds around the legs of a fleeing animal
and brings it to the ground. This form of lasso is peculiar to the
South American _gaucho_, and is unknown to the _vaquero_ of Mexico,
whose marvellous exploits with the ordinary noosed lasso, or riata, we
may have witnessed. Again, the _gaucho_ will stem a charging bull by
striking it across the muzzle with a short whip, and he seems quite
fearless at the animal's onslaught upon him.
The life of this strange cattle-minder may be lived on the lonesome
_pampa_ for long periods. For his meat he may bring down a steer, cut
off a portion of flesh with hide attached, and lay it in the embers of
the camp fire, in rude cookery. He eats _farinha_ with it, washed down
with water, if his wine or _aguardiente_ has given out, but follows
it with the inevitable _maté_, the "Paraguayan tea." He will not live
in the town, he is a creature of the plains. His wide-brimmed hat and
silken or woollen poncho and huge coloured neck-handkerchief, raw hide
boots, and enormous silver spurs, and other decorated trappings, are
the habiliments he fancies best, and no ornate palace in Rio would
tempt him to abandon his free and independent life.
Turning now to a different field; if the interests of the traveller in
Brazil lie in the rich world of minerals, he will not find here so
varied and historical a field as that we have traversed in the regions
of the Cordillera. Yet Nature has not necessarily been niggardly even
here. In centuries past much gold has been produced, in _placer_
and other workings, and diamonds have been exported for nearly two
centuries. One of the most famous gold mines of South America, indeed,
the largest and most constant producer of any on this continent, is
situated in the Republic, that of the St. John del Rey, whose workings
are a matter of annual congratulation to its London shareholders, with
its plentiful dividends, distributed with almost monotonous regularity
to an amount approaching at times to half a million sterling per annum.
The mine is of enormous depth.
Baser metals have also their possibilities here. Brazil has been
endowed by the geological operation of Nature with immense deposits of
iron, such as we certainly do not encounter in any other part of Latin
America, and these we may survey in the department of Minas Geraes.
Very high-grade ores of iron exist here--thousands of millions of tons.
Unfortunately the country has little coal for purposes of smelting the
ore, and the iron industry may be largely confined to that of export of
the raw mineral.
Along the sandy coasts of Brazil another mineral, found of recent years
to be of value, has been disposed. This is the peculiar monazite.
There are, in addition, many other metals and minerals of commerce in
various parts of the country: also petroleum. Perhaps the mining laws
of Brazil have not been so favourable to the foreigner as those of the
Spanish American Republics.
The general economic policy of Brazil, one which with greater or less
intensity seems to be set before the Government and the intelligent
classes, is a scheme of self-supplying trade, commerce and production
in general, to produce its own food supplies, to manufacture its own
goods, to be less dependent in these matters on the outside world. The
magnificent and varied resources of the country are such as, as far as
material is concerned, would render this policy possible of fulfilment
as time goes on. It has been said by some observers that the Brazilian
hates trade. Be it as it may, the country is very highly protected in
a fiscal sense. It is a wealthy land, and undoubtedly has before it a
future of such life and importance as at present it is impossible to
picture in detail, but which might well be one of prosperity.
In Brazil there are innumerable matters of great interest, whether
in town or country, whether in "the desert or the sown," which we
have not space here to consider; and the traveller and observer will
find material of the most varied and surprising nature to absorb his
energies, be they in what field they may.
To the south, Brazil merges into those distinctive regions of the great
plains and rivers of the Plate, which we now enter.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[24] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[25] This is not the case among the business and commercial circles of
Rio and San Paolo, where many of the women are educated in Paris and
visit it yearly.--[TRANS.]
[26] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[27] Besides being grown in the great sugar centres, the sugar-cane is
a staple crop in Brazil. It is most often used, not for the manufacture
of sugar, which calls for a costly plant, but for the production of an
alcohol, or sometimes a crude kind of sugar known as _rapa dura_, which
is sometimes a kind of molasses, sometimes a sticky cake-sugar.
[28] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[29] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[30] _Brazil_, op. cit.
[31] _Brazil_, op. cit.