South America Observations and Impressions

CHAPTER XI

BRAZIL

That more than half of South America was settled by and still belongs to the men of Portugal is due to what may be called an historical accident. In the year following the discovery of the West Indies by Columbus, Pope Alexander the Sixth issued his famous Bull (A.D. 1493) which assigned to the Crown of Castile and Leon "all the islands and lands to be discovered in the seas to the west and the south of a meridian line to be drawn from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole, one hundred leagues to the west of Cape Verde and the Azores." Though there is in the Bull no mention of Portugal, it was intended to reserve the rights of Portugal in whatever she had discovered or might discover on the other, i. e. the eastern, side of the line of delimitation. The Portuguese, however, were not satisfied, and next year a treaty between Spain and Portugal moved the line three hundred and seventy leagues farther west. This had the effect, as discovery progressed, of giving to Portugal the eastern, to Spain the western, part of the Continent which was first touched by Columbus in his third voyage (1498). Now it so happened that one of the first navigators who actually saw that eastern part was a Portuguese, named Cabral. Driven out of his course while sailing for India, in A.D. 1500, he touched the South American coast, in latitude 8° south, and took possession of it in the name of his sovereign. A few months earlier the Spanish sailor, Pinzon, had struck the same coast and had taken possession of it for Spain, but as Spain had plenty of discovered land already, and did not care to depart from her treaty of 1494, the territory was left to Portugal. Both nations had recognized the Pope as the authority entitled to dispose of all new-found lands, and possibly they may have supposed in 1500 that these new lands were part of the same Indies which Portugal had reached by the eastern route in 1498, six years after Columbus had, as was then supposed, reached them by the western.89 Thus Brazil became and has ever since remained a Portuguese country, except during the eclipse of Portugal, when, after the death of King Sebastian, it fell for a time under the Crown of Spain.

The area of Brazil is about 3,300,000 square miles, larger than that of the United States, and more than double that of India. Most of its territory is inhabited only by aboriginal Indians, many of them wild savages, and a good deal is still practically unexplored. As I saw, and can attempt to describe, only a very small part, it may be proper, lest any reader should fancy that particular part to be typical of the whole, to sketch very briefly the general features of the country.

It is geologically one of the oldest parts of the South American Continent. The mountains which form its central nucleus stood where they stand now long before the great volcanoes of the Andes, such as Aconcagua and Chimborazo, had been raised. This mountain centre of the country falls abruptly on the east to the Atlantic, more gently on the west towards the level ground in the middle of the Continent, and is composed of ancient crystalline rocks, which have probably been reduced from a much greater height by the action of rain, sun, and wind, continued through countless ages. It may be roughly described as an undulating plateau, 800 miles long by 300 broad, traversed by various ranges which are seldom of great height. Their loftiest summit is Italiaya, about fifty miles to the southwest of Rio de Janeiro and nearly 10,000 feet high. Few exceed 7000 feet, while the average elevation of the highlands as a whole is from 2000 to 3000. The scenery of their richly wooded eastern side, where they break down steeply towards the Atlantic, is as beautiful as can be found anywhere in the tropics. They are continued northward and southward in lower hills, and on the west subside gently, sometimes in long slopes, sometimes in a succession of broad terraces, into a vast plain, only slightly raised above sea-level, from which streams flow southward into the Paraná, northward into the Amazon. In this plain, still imperfectly explored, Brazil touches Paraguay and Bolivia. The inland regions, both highlands and plains, are less humid and, therefore, less densely wooded than is the line of mountains which faces the Atlantic, the climate steadily growing drier as one goes inland from the rain-giving ocean. Large parts of them are believed to be fit only for ranching, but settlement has in the western districts not gone far enough to determine their capacity for agriculture, though it is known that some are unprofitable because marshy and others because sandy. On the other hand the country south of latitude 20° is for the most part fertile and well watered, and more developed than any other part of Brazil except the coast strip.

There remains another and still larger region which lies in the northwest part of the republic; I mean the vast plain of the Amazon and its tributaries. It is the so-called Selvas, or woodland country, covered everywhere by a dense forest and for part of the year so flooded by the tropical rains which raise its rivers above their banks that much of it can be traversed only in boats. Except for a few white settlements here and there, its sole inhabitants are the uncivilized Indian tribes, of whom there may be several hundred thousands in all, a number very small when compared to the space over which they are scattered. To these Selvas and their possible future I shall return.90 Meanwhile the reader will have gathered that: (1) The whole eastern part of Brazil from latitude 5° south to latitude 30° south is mountainous or undulating, with here and there wide valleys. All of this country is valuable either for cultivation, for pasture, or for timber, and it contains rich mines. (2) The western part and the whole plain of the Amazon and its tributaries is practically quite flat, and most of it is a forest wilderness. (3) Though there are some arid districts along the coast north and south of the mouth of the Amazon, there are nowhere in Brazil such deserts as those which cover so large a space in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. (4) The only parts that are as yet comparatively well-peopled are the coast strip and the fertile valleys debouching on that strip, some inland districts in the state of Minas Geraes, and in the southern states of São Paulo, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Even in these the population is still far below the capacities of the country.

I have made these few remarks in order to give the reader some notion of the general features of this immense country. The only parts I saw were on the east coast; and these I shall try to describe before returning to a discussion of the people and prospects of Brazil as a whole.

The south Atlantic all the way from Buenos Aires to the Amazon has the credit of giving passages as smooth and pleasant as any in the world. Very different was our experience between Montevideo and Santos, for there was some rain, more wind, and quite a heavy sea, with weather so thick that little could be seen of the coast along which we sailed. We were, of course, told that it was "quite exceptional weather," but old travellers know that nothing is commoner than exceptional weather.

When at last our steamer, rounding a lofty cape, turned her prow shoreward to enter the harbour of Santos, how unlike was the landscape to any which we had seen since passing the Equator at the northern extremity of Peru. All down the west coast there had been a stern and mostly barren coast, with cold grey clouds over a cold grey sea. But here at last were the tropics. Here was the region of abundant and luxuriant vegetation, a soft, moist air and a sea of vivid blue, with the strange thin-bodied, long-winged frigate birds hovering above it. As we came near enough to see the waves foaming on the rocks, an amphitheatre of mountains was disclosed, surrounding the broad, flat valley through which a river descends to form the port of Santos. To the north there ran along the coast a line of lofty promontories against which the surges rose. The mountains behind, all densely wooded, were shrouded with heavy mists, but the sun bathed in light the banks of the river, covered with low trees and flowering shrubs, and the gaily painted houses of the suburb which stretches out from the town of Santos, embowered in palm groves, to the white sands of the ocean beach.

Moving slowly up the winding channel into smooth water, we found many British and German ships lying at the wharves, for the harbour has now been so deepened as to admit large steamers, and its improvements, accompanied by draining operations, have made the place reasonably healthy. Twenty years ago it was a nest of yellow fever. I was told that once, during an inroad of that plague, forty-three British ships were lying idle in the river with their crews all dead or dying. Now the disease has practically disappeared, and the port is one of the busiest in South America, since it is the exporting centre for the produce of the vast coffee country which lies inland. All day long, and during the night, too, at some seasons, an endless string of stalwart porters may be seen carrying sacks of coffee from the railroad cars on the wharf to the ships lying alongside. In 1910 coffee to the value of nearly £19,000,000 ($93,107,000) was exported from Santos, more than half of what went out of Brazil to all quarters of the globe.

Such a trade gives plenty of traffic to the railway which connects the coffee-planting interior and the thriving city of São Paulo with the sea. It is quite a remarkable railway. First built in 1867, its most difficult portion, which climbs a very steep slope, was laid out afresh along a better line between 1895 and 1901, and is a really skilful and interesting piece of engineering performed for a British company by British engineers and contractors. As was observed a few pages back, there lies behind this part of the Brazilian coast a plateau, here averaging from 2500 to 3000 feet in height, which breaks down abruptly to the sea. The edge of the plateau, which, from below, appears like a mountain range, is called the Serra do Mar (Sea Range). To reach the plateau from the flats at sea-level it was necessary to ascend some 2500 feet, and this had to be done in a distance of about six miles, which means an average gradient of about eight per cent from the bottom to the top of the slope. The line has accordingly been constructed in a series of five inclines, on which the trains are worked by wire-rope haulage, each incline having its own power-house and haulage plant, and safety being secured not only by the "locomotive brake" which is attached as a last car to each ascending and descending train, but also by the simultaneous descent and ascent of trains each way, and other devices too numerous to describe. These, taken together, are sufficient to ensure perfect safety. The extraordinary completeness and finish of every part not only of the roadbed and rails, but also of the stations and other buildings, and of the iron bridges and the thirteen tunnels, together with the neatly set tile drains which have been laid down the slopes to carry off in channels the rainwater which might otherwise dislodge loose earth from above and weaken the embankments below, – all these things witness to the unusual success and prosperity of the line as a business undertaking. It has been the best-paying one, next to that at Panama, in South America. Since the dividend assignable to the shareholders is restricted, the directors spend their surplus in securing not only efficiency and security, but even elegance. The saying, current among Europeans in Brazil, is that the only thing that remains to be done upon the São Paulo and Santos line is to gild the tops of the telegraph poles.

The scenery, which we saw to advantage from seats placed in front of the leading car, is extremely beautiful as the train winds along steep slopes from which one looks down into richly wooded glens, with tiny waterfalls descending through ravines amid a profusion of tall ferns. It is a very wet bit of country, and before reaching the top, we were enveloped in clouds and heavy rain, and so lost what are perhaps the finest views, those looking back from the higher levels down the main valley and out to the now distant ocean. On the top one seemed suddenly to lose sight of the mountains, for we came out upon level ground without any descent to the other side of the hill. The weather cleared, and across a sparsely wooded undulating plain, in some parts open moorland, in other parts under tillage, we could descry distant peaks that rose sharp and clear in the less humid air. Whoever has travelled from north to south in Spain will remember a similarly abrupt transition when the railway, after climbing the mountains south of Santander, dripping with the rainstorms that constantly drive in from the Bay of Biscay, emerges on the bare dry plateau of Old Castile.

The train, speeding along the perfectly smooth roadbed which this gilt-edged railroad boasts, brought us after fifty miles to the city of São Paulo, the briskest and most progressive place in all Brazil, though with less than half the population of Rio de Janeiro. It is one of the oldest towns in the country, founded in 1553 by a Jesuit missionary. The early settlers, many of whom intermarried with the native Indians, became the parents of a singularly bold and energetic race, who, in their search for gold and silver, explored the land and raided the Indians and whites, too, if there were any, all the way down from here to the Uruguay and Paraná rivers. In those days the Portuguese government at Bahia, far off and weak, seldom interfered with its subjects. The free spirit of these "Paulistas" has passed to their descendants. Living in healthy uplands, they have shewn more industrial and political activity than the people of any other state in the federation. Since 1875 the planting of enormous tracts of land with coffee has rapidly raised the wealth of the region, and this city, being its heart and centre, has risen in sixty years from a small country town to be a place of four hundred thousand inhabitants.

It stands upon several hills, from the highest of which there are charming views to the picturesque ranges to the north and along the valley of its river, the Tiete. Rising only thirty miles from the sea, this stream flows away northwestward to join the Paraná and enter the ocean above Buenos Aires, the slope of all this region, so soon as one has crossed the Serra do Mar, being from east to west. The city has grown so fast as to shew few traces of its antiquity, except in the centre, where the narrow and crooked streets of the business quarter have a picturesque variety rarely found in the rectangular towns of the New World. The alert faces, and the air of stir and movement, as well as handsome public buildings rising on all hands, with a large, well-planted public garden in the middle of the city, give the impression of energy and progress. This plateau air is keen and bright, and, though the summer sun was strong, for we were in mid November, the nights were cool, and the winter, which sometimes brings slight frosts, restores men to physical vigour. We drove out a few miles to see the Independence Building, a tall pile, which from its hilltop looks over a wide stretch of rolling country. It was erected to commemorate the revolt of Brazil from Portugal in 1822, and contains what is one of the largest fresco paintings in the world, shewing Dom Pedro of Braganza, then Regent of Brazil, surrounded by his generals, proclaiming the independence of the nation, a spirited if somewhat theatrical composition. There is a collection of objects of natural history, as well as of native weapons and ornaments, but both here and elsewhere in Brazil, and, indeed, generally in South America, one is struck by the small amount of interest shewn in all branches of knowledge, except such as have a direct practical bearing and pecuniary value. Considering the enormous field of research which this Continent presents, and what advances have been made in scientific natural history during the last sixty years, far too little is being done to gather or to arrange and classify specimens illustrative either of the world of nature or of prehistoric and savage man. The collections are for the most part inferior to what European museums were seventy years ago. Let it be said, on the other hand, that the state of São Paulo has set an admirable example to the rest of Brazil in the liberal provision it is making for elementary schools.

Many immigrants from Italy have in the last decade entered the state and the city, and now by their labour contribute largely to the prosperity of both. Negroes are comparatively few; it is these Italians that do the most and the best of the work. The larger business, both commercial and industrial, for there are now a good many factories, is chiefly in the hands of foreigners, Italians, Germans, and English, with a few French, a state of things which accelerates material progress and leaves the native or Portuguese Brazilians more free to devote themselves to politics, a sphere of action into which, as already observed, the modern Paulistas have carried the energy of their ancestors. The state is not only the most prosperous, but politically the most influential, in the republic. One way or another, what with Paulistas and foreigners, city and state are vigorous communities, and to see them disabuses the traveller of the common belief that the South Americans are slack and inert.

The railway – a government line – from São Paulo to Rio runs at first through that high, rolling country which lies behind the escarpment facing to the coast. Its variety of surface, and its patches of woodland, the trees handsome though seldom tall, make it very pretty, and there are glimpses of the mountain range to the west, one of whose summits is the loftiest in all Brazil. The line, as it approaches the coast, begins to descend, running along the edge of deep gorges, where the bright green herbage and luxuriant growths of shrubs and ferns contrast with the deep red of the soil produced by the decomposition of granitic rocks. After the arid severity of the Andean valleys of Argentina and Bolivia, and the sternness of chilly Patagonia, there was something cheering in this exuberance of vegetation, this sense that Nature is doing her best to give man a chance to live easily and happily. The train sweeps down a long ravine, and passes many a waterfall, till at last the ravine becomes a wide valley and opens into the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

How is one to describe Rio? I had read a score of descriptions, yet none of them had prepared me for the reality. Why should a twenty-first description be any more successful? Its bay has been compared to the bays of Naples, of Palermo, of Sydney, of San Francisco, of Hongkong, and of Bombay, as well as to the Bosphorus. It is not in the least like any of these, except in being beautiful, nor, I should fancy, is it like any other place in the world. Suppose the bottom of the Yosemite Valley, or that of the valley of Auronzo in the Venetian Alps, filled with water, and the effect would be something like the bay of Rio. Yet the superb vegetation would be wanting, and the views to far-away mountains, and the sense of the presence of the blue ocean outside the capes that guard the entrance.

The name (River of January) suggests a river, but this was a mistake of the Portuguese discoverers, for nothing but trifling streams enter this great inlet. It is a landlocked gulf, twenty miles long and from five to ten miles wide, approached from the ocean through a channel less than a mile wide between rocky promontories upon which forts have been erected. On the north side, inside the entrance, is the town of Nictheroy, whose name commemorates a long-extinct tribe of Indians. Bold rocky isles lie in front of it and high hills rise behind.

The city of Rio lies upon the south side of the gulf, the great bulk of it inside, though two or three suburbs have now grown up which stretch across a neck of land to the ocean. It runs along the shore for five or six miles, occupying all the space between the water and the mountains behind, and cut up into several sections by steep ridges which come down from the mountains and jut out into the water. The coast-line is extremely irregular, for between these jutting promontories it recedes into inlets, so that when one looks at Rio, either from offshore in front or from the mountain tops behind, it seems like a succession of towns planted around inlets and divided from one another by wooded heights. All these sections are connected by a line of avenues running nearly parallel to the coast, so that the city sometimes narrows to a couple of hundred yards, sometimes widens out where there is a level space between the water and the hills, sometimes climbs the hill slopes, and mingles its white houses with the groves that cover their sides. Behind all stands up the mountain wall, in most places clothed with luxuriant forests, but in others rising in precipices of grey granite or single shafts of rock. Thus Rio stands hemmed in between mountains and bays. There is hardly a spot where, looking up or down a street, one does not see the vista closed either by the waving green of forest or the sparkling blue of sea.