THE CAPITAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.
The city of Rio is the center of life in Brazil. We entered the Bay of
Rio after nightfall on the sixth of June. The miles and miles of lights
in the city of Rio on the one side, and of Nietheroy on the other, gave
us the impression that we were in some gigantic fair grounds.
Missionaries Entzminger, Shepard, Maddox and Mrs. Entzminger came
aboard to welcome us and bring us ashore. We were taken to the Rio
Baptist College and Seminary, where we were entertained in good old
Tennessee style by the Shepards. This school building was built in 1849
by Dom Pedro II. for a school which was known as the "Boarding School
of Dom Pedro II." It accommodated two hundred students. The Emperor
supported the school. In 1887 the school was moved to larger quarters.
Dr. Shepard is renting the property for our college, but our school
like Dom Pedro's has outgrown these quarters and we are compelled to
rent additional buildings some distance away to accommodate the
increasing number of students. There are about three hundred students
in all departments.
As we studied the situation at close range, we had it driven in upon us
that one of the greatest needs in Brazil is the one Dr. Shepard and his
co-laborers are trying to meet in this school. Three-fourths of the
population of Brazil cannot read. We need, above all things now,
educated leaders. What a call is there for trained native pastors and
evangelists! Some of the Seminary students have been preaching as many
as twenty-one times a month in addition to carrying their studies in
the school. Dr. Shepard has been forced to stop them from some of this
preaching because it was preventing successful work in the class room.
The need is so great that it is very difficult to keep the students
from such work.
I must not go too far afield from the subject of this chapter, but I
must take the time to say that nothing breaks down prejudice against
the gospel more effectively than do the schools conducted by the
various mission boards. One day a Methodist colporter entered a town in
the interior of the State of Minas Geraes and began to preach and offer
his Bibles for sale in the public square. Soon a fanatical mob was
howling around him and his life was in imminent peril. Just as the
excitement was at the highest two young men belonging to one of the
best families in the place pressed through the crowd and, ascertaining
that the man was a minister of the gospel, took charge of him and drove
off the mob. They led the colporter to their home, which was the best
in the town, and showed him generous hospitality. They invited the
people in to hear him preach, and thus through their kindness the man
and his message received a favorable hearing. It should be remembered,
too, that these young men belonged to a very devout Roman Catholic
family.
What was the secret of their actions? They had rescued, entertained and
enabled to preach a man who was endeavoring to propagate a faith that
was very much opposed to their own. The explanation is that they had
attended Granberry College, that great Methodist school at Juiz de
Fora. They had not accepted Protestant Christianity, but the school had
given them such a vision and appreciation of the gospel that they could
never again be the intolerant bigots their fellow townsmen were. The
college had made them friends and that was a tremendous service. First
we must have friends, then followers. Nothing more surely and more
extensively makes friends for our cause than the schools, and it must
be said also that they are wonderfully effective in the work of direct
evangelization.
The First Baptist Church commissioned Deacon Theodore Teixeira and Dr.
Shepard to pilot us over the city. The church provided us with an
automobile and our splendid guides magnified their office. It is a
MAGNIFICENT city, indeed. The strip of land between the mountains and
the seashore is not wide. In some places, in fact, the mountains come
quite down to the water. The city, in the most beautiful and
picturesque way, avails itself of all possible space, even in many
places climbing high on the mountain sides and pressing itself deep
into the coves. Perhaps no city in the world has a more picturesque
combination of mountain and water with which to make a beautiful
location. It has about a million inhabitants, and being the federal
capital, is the greatest and most influential city in Brazil.
Most of its streets are narrow and tortuous and until recently were
considered unhealthy. A few years ago the magnificent Avenida Central
was cut through the heart of the city and one of the most beautiful
avenues in the world was built. Twelve million dollars' worth of
property was condemned to make way for this splendid street. It cuts
across a peninsula through the heart of the city from shore to shore,
and is magnificent, indeed, with its sidewalks wrought in beautiful
geometrical designs, with its ornate street lamps, with its generous
width appearing broader by contrast with other narrow streets, with its
modern buildings.
There is another street, however, which is dearer to the Brazilian than
the Avenida. He takes great pride in the Avenida, but he has peculiar
affection for the Rua d'Ouvidor. Down the Ouvidor flows a human tide
such as is found nowhere else in Brazil. No one attempts to keep on the
pavement. The street is given over entirely to pedestrians. No vehicle
ever passes down it until after midnight. In this narrow street, with
its attractive shops filled with the highest-priced goods in the world,
you can soon find anyone you wish to meet, because before long everyone
who can reach it will pass through. In this street the happy, jesting,
jostling crowd is in one continuous "festa".
In passing through the city one is greatly impressed by the number of
parks and beautiful public squares, and in particular with the
wonderful Beiramar, which is a combination of promenades, driveways and
park effects that stretches for miles along the shore of the bay. What
a thing of beauty this last-named park is! There is nothing comparable
to it anywhere. When Rio wishes to go on a grand "passeio" (promenade)
nothing but the grand Beiramar will suffice.
One cannot help being impressed also by the prevalence of
coffee-drinking stands and stores--especially if he meets many friends.
These friends will insist upon taking him into a coffee stand and
engaging him in conversation while they sip coffee. On many corners are
little round or octagonal pagoda-like structures in which coffee and
cakes are sold. The coffee-drinking places are everywhere and most of
them are usually filled. The practice of taking coffee with one's
friends must lessen materially the amount of strong drink consumed by
the Brazilian. Nevertheless, that amount of strong drink is, alas,
altogether too great.
The greatest nuisance on the streets of Rio, or any other city of
Brazil, is the lottery ticket seller. These venders are more numerous
and more insistent than are the newsboys in the United States. There
are all sorts of superstitions about lotteries. Certain images in one's
dreams at night are said to correspond to certain lucky numbers. Dogs,
cats, horses, cows and many other animals have certain numbers
corresponding to them. For instance, if one should dream tonight about
a dog, he would try tomorrow to find a lottery ticket to correspond in
number with a dog. Say the dog number was thirty-seven. This man would
try to find a ticket whose number ends in thirty-seven. Such a ticket
would be considered lucky. The ticket sellers often call out as they
pass along the street the last two numbers on the tickets they have to
sell, and if a man hears the number called which corresponds to the
animal he dreamed about last night, he will consider it lucky and buy.
There are also many shops where only lottery tickets are sold. No evil
has more tenaciously and universally fastened upon the people than has
the evil of gambling in lotteries. There are 310 Federal lotteries,
besides many others run by the various States. These 310 lotteries
receive in premiums the enormous sum of $19,399,200 every month--about
one dollar for every individual in Brazil. A portion of the profits
amassed by the lottery companies is devoted to charity, a portion to
Roman Catholic churches and a portion goes to the government. Even
after these amounts are taken out, there is ample left for the
enrichment of the companies' coffers to the impoverishment of many very
needy working people.
It is difficult to write temperately of Rio de Janeiro. There is such a
rare combination here of the primitive and the progressive, of the
oriental and occidental, that one is inclined to go off into
exclamation points. On the Avenida Central one sees numbers of street
venders carrying all kinds of wares on their heads and pulling all
sorts of carts, making their way in and out among the automobiles, and
handsome victorias PULLED BY MULES. We note also all types of people.
The Latin features predominate, but the negro is in evidence, the
Indian features are often recognized, and mingled with these are seen
faces representing all nations. One is impressed with the dress of the
people. Who is that handsomely-groomed, gentleman passing? From his
fine clothes you think he must be a man of wealth and influence. Who is
he? He is a barber. That one over there is a clerk. But why these fine
clothes? Ah! thereby hangs the tale. Appearance is worshiped. Parade
runs through everything, even in the prevailing religion, which, alas,
is little more than form--parade. Don't get the idea that everybody is
finely dressed and that every handsomely-dressed man is a barber. Many
are able to afford such clothes and are cultured gentlemen. One notices
most the dress of the lower classes, the most striking article of which
is the wooden-bottom sandals into which they thrust their toes and go
flapping along in imminent peril of losing the slippers every moment.
The remainder of the clothing worn by these beslippered people consists
often of only two thin garments. Certainly this is a place of great
contrasts. But somehow these contrasts do not impress one as being
incongruous. They are in perfect keeping with their surroundings. Rio
is really a cosmopolitan city and is a pleasant blending of the old and
the new.
There are several places from which splendid views of the city can be
had, but none of them is comparable to the panorama which stretches out
before one when he stands on the top of Mt. Corcovado. The scene which
greets one from this mountain is indescribable. The Bay of Rio de
Janeiro, with its eighty islands, Sugar Loaf Mountain, a bare rock
standing at the entrance, the city winding its tortuous way in and out
between the mountains and spreading itself over many hills, the open
sea in the distance and the wild mountain scenery to the back of us,
constitute a panorama surpassingly beautiful.
Nictheroy lies just across the bay. We went over there one night and
spoke in the rented hall where our church worships, and spent the night
in the delightful home of the Entzmingers. The next morning, before
breakfast, Dr. Entzminger showed me over the city. Nictheroy has forty
thousand inhabitants and is the capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro.
It is a beautiful city and offers a wide field for missionary work. Its
importance is apparent.
We have a church in the populous suburb of Engenho de Dentro. We were
present there at a great celebration when the church cleared off the
remainder of its debt and burned the notes. The building was crowded to
its utmost capacity. The people stood in the aisles from the rear to
the pulpit. They filled the little rooms behind the pulpit and occupied
space about the windows. There are about seventy members of the church.
A far greater progress should be made now that the debt as well as
other encumbrances have been removed.
There are in Rio the First, Engenho de Dentro, Governors Island and
Santa Cruz churches, and twelve preaching places, four of which are in
rented halls. Missionary Maddox utilizes many members of the churches
in providing preaching at these missions. There are only a very few
paid evangelists in this mission, but a great many church members are
glad to go to these stations and tell the gospel story.
Besides our Baptist work, the Southern Methodists are conducting a very
prosperous mission. They have several churches and a station for
settlement work. The Presbyterians and the Congregationalists have some
excellent churches and the YMCA is one of the most flourishing in South
America.