The occasional recurrence of such incidents as that of November, 1910, had not for some years prior to my visit prevented the government of Uruguay from emulating that of Argentina in efforts to keep abreast of Europe in all sorts of administrative schemes for the advancement of education, and for the development of the country. In two respects it has entered on a policy different from that of other South American states. It is the only one in which schemes or ideas tending towards state socialism have been countenanced by the Executive, and it is also the only one in which there is a distinctly antireligious party. In Peru the church has still some political influence. In Chile she has less, in Argentina practically none, but in neither is she the object of hostility. Here, however, a section of the dominant party is professedly antagonistic to the church, and this would seem to be due not to any provocation given recently by the clergy, whose Blanco friends have been long out of power, but rather to a spirit which seeks to strike at and eliminate religion itself.
Such a movement does not seem, any more than do socialistic ideas, to be a natural growth of the Uruguayan soil. Just as the anarchistic propaganda in Argentina has been recently brought thither from Europe by immigrants, so this less fierce expression of the revolutionary spirit bears marks of having been transplanted from those parts of southern Europe where the more violent advocates of change regard not only the Roman Church, but religion itself, as hostile to progress and to the reconstruction of society on a new basis. The rural population of Uruguay are not the sort of people among whom such ideas would spontaneously arise, for they belong, so far as their beliefs and views of life are concerned, rather to the eighteenth than to the twentieth century. Elsewhere in South America, enmity to the church has been due to the power she has exercised in the secular world, or to the memory of her old habits of repression. One does not hear, however, that she has for a long time past been politically obnoxious here; nor can there have been any memories of serious persecution to provoke hatred, for the era of persecution was passing away when these regions began to be thickly settled.
With her temperate climate and her fertile soil, Uruguay is an attractive country. In no part of South America, except perhaps southern Chile, would a European feel more disposed to settle down for life. The people are of pure European stock and have many of the qualities—frankness and energy, courage, and a high sense of honour—which make for political progress. The country is no doubt comparatively small, and it is the fashion nowadays to worship bigness and disparage small nations. Yet the independent city communities, or the small nations—such as were England and Holland in the seventeenth century—have produced not only most of the best literature and art, but most of the great men and great achievements which history records. National life is apt to be more intense and more interesting where it is concentrated in an area not so wide as to forbid the people to know one another and their leaders. Thus one cannot but hope that the Uruguayans, with some favouring conditions, and without the disadvantage of excessive wealth suddenly acquired, will seriously endeavour to smooth the road, now rough and dangerous, over which the chariot of their republican government has to travel. It is not the Constitution that is at fault, but the way in which the Constitution is worked. The backward state of education and consequent incompetence of the ordinary citizen is usually assigned as the source of political troubles. There is certainly an inadequate provision both here and generally in South America of elementary and secondary schools. But the experience of many countries has shewn that the education of the masses is not enough to secure a reform in political methods. There is surely force in the view I heard expressed, that if the whole population, or even the whole of the educated class in the population, were to exert themselves to take more active part in politics, they could set things right by checking the abuses or grievances out of which revolutions grow and by moderating the party spirit which rushes to arms when grievances remain unredressed.
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.
Other cities there are where mountains rising around form a noble background and refresh the heart of such town dwellers as have learnt to love them. "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my aid." Such cities are Athens and Smyrna, Genoa and Palermo, San Francisco and Santiago de Chile. But in Rio the mountains seem to be almost a part of the city, for it clings and laps round their spurs just as the sea below laps round the capes that project into the bay. Nor does one see elsewhere such weird forms rising directly from the yards and gardens of the houses. One can hardly take one's eyes off the two strangest among these, which are also the most prominent in every prospect. The Pan de Azucar (Sugar Loaf) is a cone of bare granite, so steep as to be scaleable at one point only by the boldest climbers, which stands on the ridge between the bay and the ocean. The other peak is the still loftier Corcovado, a vertical shaft of rock something like the Aiguille de Dru,91 which springs right out of the houses to a height of over two thousand three hundred feet. Such strange mountain forms give to the landscape of the city a sort of bizarre air. They are things to dream of, not to tell. They remind one of those bits of fantastic rock scenery which Leonardo da Vinci loved to put in as backgrounds, though the rocks of Rio are far higher, and are also harder. A painter might think the landscapes altogether too startling for treatment, and few painters could handle so vast a canvas as would be needed to give the impression which a general view makes. Yet the grotesqueness of the shapes is lost in the splendour of the whole,—a flood of sunshine, a strand of dazzling white, a sea of turquoise blue, a feathery forest ready to fall from its cliff upon the city in a cascade of living green.
It is hard for man to make any city worthy of such surroundings as Nature has given to Rio. Except for two or three old-fashioned streets in the business quarter near the port and arsenal, it is all modern, and such picturesqueness as there is belongs to the varying lines of shore and hill, and to the interspersed gardens. A handsome modern thoroughfare, the Avenida Central, has been run through what used to be a crowded mass of mean houses, and it has the gay effectiveness of a Parisian boulevard. Villas surrounded by trees crown the hills that rise here and there; and one street is lined by two magnificent rows of Royal palms, their stems straight and smooth as marble pillars, crested by plumes of foliage. At the east end of the city the semicircular bay of Botafogo is surrounded by a superb palm-planted esplanade, whose parapet commands the finest general view over the entrance to the bay and the heights behind Nictheroy, and as far as the Organ Mountains which rise in a row of lofty pinnacles thirty miles away.
In such a city, the curious traveller does not need to hunt for sixteenth-century churches or quaint old colonial houses. Enough for him that the settings of the buildings are so striking. The strong light and the deep shadows, and the varied colours of the walls and roofs of the houses, the scarlet flowers climbing over the walls, and the great glossy dark green leaves of the trees that fill the gardens, with incomparable backgrounds of rock and sea,—all these are enough to make the streets delightful.
Not less delightful are the environs. The Botanic Garden about a mile away has long been famous for its wonderful avenue of royal palms, each one hundred feet high, all grown from the seed of one planted a hundred years ago, in the days when the king of Portugal held his court here. But it has other things to shew, equally beautiful and more interesting to the botanist. Not even the garden of Calcutta contains a more remarkable collection of tropical trees, and its vistas of foliage and bowery hollows overarched by tall bamboos are enchanting. As respects situation, there is, of course, no comparison; for at Calcutta, as at our own Kew, all is flat, while here the precipices of the Corcovado on the one side, and the still grander crags of the Tijuca and Gavea on the other, shoot up thousands of feet into the blue.
A longer excursion to the south of the city carries one in the course of a five hours' drive through a succession of mountain landscapes unsurpassed even in Brazil. A road winds up the hillside through leafy glens, where climbing plants and tree-ferns fill the space between the trunks of the great trees. Now and then it comes out on the top of a ridge, and one looks down into the abysmal depths of forest, bathed in vaporous sunlight. Through a labyrinth of valleys one reaches a clearing in the forest, above which is seen the beautiful peak of Tijuca, and beyond it, still higher, the amazing Gavea, a square-sided, flat-topped tower of granite. In their boldness of line these peaks remind one of those that stand up round the Mer de Glace at Chamouni. There moraines and masses of fallen stones are heaped upon the bases of these Aiguilles, and nothing breaks the savage bareness of their sides except snow beds in the couloirs. Here the peaks rise out of a billowy sea of verdure. The steepness of their faces seems to defy the climber; yet on their faces there are crevices just big enough for shrubs to root in, by the help of which a daring man might pull himself aloft. Nature, having first hewn out these peaks into appalling precipices, then set herself to deck them with climbing plants and to find foothold for trees on narrow ledges and to cover the surface with the bright hues of mosses and lichens, and fill chinks and crannies with ferns and pendulous flowers that wave and sway in the passing breeze. Some way further, from the top of a gap between the peaks, the open ocean is suddenly seen a thousand feet below, its intense blue framed between green hills, with long billows rushing up over the white sands of the bay, and lines of spray sparkling round the rocky isles that rise beyond, like the summits of submerged mountains.
Though the bay of Rio was discovered as far back as 1531 by the Portuguese sailor who took its mouth for a river, and was settled not long after, first by Frenchmen in 1558 and then by Portuguese in 1567, the settlement grew slowly, and it was not till 1762 that the seat of government was transferred here from Bahia, seven hundred miles further to the north. Now the population, estimated at a million, is in South America exceeded by that of Buenos Aires only, and in recent years much has been done to improve both the city and its port and wharves. Still greater service has been rendered by sanitary measures which have not only cleared away slums, but have practically extinguished yellow fever, and reduced the mortality from other tropical diseases. Rio is now a pleasant place of residence in winter, and the sea-breeze makes the climate agreeable in all but the hottest months, during which Europeans find it debilitating. Fifty years ago the then Emperor Dom Pedro the Second built himself a summer residence among the mountains which rise beyond the further end of the bay, and this presently became the "hot weather station," as people say in India, for the richer class of citizens and for the representatives of foreign countries. Now that Rio itself is more healthy, the need for an annual migration is less imperative, but the natural charm as well as the much cooler air of Petropolis—so the place is called—have maintained it as a summer resort. It is an excellent centre both for the naturalist and for the lover of scenic beauty.
The railway from Rio, after traversing the low and marshy ground along the margin of the bay for more than twenty miles, reaches the foot of the Organ Mountains, which form a part of the Coast Range already referred to.92 These Organ Mountains (Serra dos Orgãos) rising in a row of granite towers to a height of 7300 feet, the ravines between their peaks filled with luxuriant forest, make a noble ending to the view from Rio along the length of the bay. A botanist could spend no more delightful week than in rambling among them at a season when the rains are not too heavy. The railway climbs the Serra at its lowest point, about 2600 feet above sea-level, descending a little on the other or northeastern side to Petropolis. The grade is so steep as to require trains to be hauled up by a wire rope. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the views which the ascent gives over the bay with its islands and all the way southeastward to the mountains that surround Rio.
Petropolis is a pretty little spot, nestling under steep hills, its streets well planted and shady, its rows of shops which address themselves to the summer visitor reminding one of a Pyrenean or Rhenish bathing place. But the charm of its surroundings is beyond that of any place in Europe, for in no temperate clime are such landscapes with such woods and such colours to be found. Here, better even than in the neighbourhood of Rio, one can explore the glens and penetrate the forests on foot, wherever a path can be found to follow, for to force one's way along without a path, by cutting openings through the tangle of shrubs and climbers with a machete, is a task beyond the powers of the solitary walker. It is not so easy as in Europe to get to know the mountains, for the pedestrian cannot go where he will. The thickness of the wood stops him. He cannot fix upon some attractive summit and say he will climb there for a view, because access on foot, and, still more, access on horseback, is possible only where there exists a regular "trail" or well-marked path. Yet it is a genial country, fit to be loved, and not on too vast a scale, like the Himalayas or the Andes. When one rambles along the valleys, new beauties appear as the mountains group and regroup themselves with rock peaks springing unexpectedly out of the forest, and new waterfalls disclose themselves along the course of the brooks, for in this land of showers every hollow has its stream. The heights are sufficient to give dignity,93 and the forms are endlessly varied, with here and there open pastures or slopes of rocky ground rising to a rocky peak, while the heat is tempered by the elevation and by the seldom failing breeze.
We learnt still more of the character of the country in an excursion over the Leopoldina railway, down into the valley of the Parahyba River, and back up one of its tributary glens, to the top of the Coast Range whence we descended to the coast at Nictheroy opposite Rio. In general one does not get the best impression of any scenery, and perhaps least of forest scenery, from a railroad. Here, however, a railroad must be turned to account, because roads are few and driving difficult. Our train moved slowly and the rains had laid the dust.
This Leopoldina railway (the property of a British company, to the kindness of whose managers we were greatly beholden) descends a narrow valley, hemmed in by steep mountains whose projecting spurs and buttresses turn hither and thither the course of the foaming river. Right and left waterfalls leap over the cliffs to swell its waters. The slopes are mostly too steep for tillage, but here and there a cluster of houses clings to the slopes, and round them there are fruit trees and maize fields or little gardens. At last the ravine widens and we emerge into the broad valley, bordered by lower hills, of the Parahyba, one of the chief rivers of the Atlantic side of Brazil. Running down it, through a rich country, we stopped at a wayside station to take horse and ride up to a Fazenda (estate) whose hospitable owner had invited us to see his coffee plantations and live stock. The house, set on a hill with a pretty garden below it and charming views all round, and inhabited by a large family of his children and grandchildren, gave a pleasant impression of Brazilian rural life. Here was simplicity with abundance, the beauty of groves and flowers, a bountiful Nature, labourers, nearly all negroes, who seemed contented and attached to their kindly master. A band of coloured people turned out to greet us and played the national air of Britain. The plantation and stock farms are managed by the owner and his son, who take pleasure in having everything done in the best way. We saw the process, quite an elaborate one, and carried on by machinery, of washing and drying the coffee-beans, sorting them out by size and quality, separating the husks and membranous coverings from the beans before they are fit to be packed and shipped. Coffee is an exhausting crop. Fresh land must be taken in from time to time and the old land allowed to rest; and we were to see next day many tracts where it used to be cultivated, which have now been abandoned to forest because the soil had ceased to repay tillage. A large piece of ground was ready to be planted with young coffee-plants, and we were asked to inaugurate it by planting the first trees, which was done to the accompaniment of rockets let off by the negroes in the full afternoon sunlight. The love of fireworks, carried by the peoples of southern Europe to the New World, reaches its acme among their coloured dependants.
Leaving with regret this idyllic home, we sped all too quickly down the vale of the Parahyba. Everyone knows that there is nothing more beautiful than the views one gets in following a river. But here we felt as if we had not known before how beautiful a valley can be till this Brazilian one was seen in its warm light, with the heavy shadows of tropic clouds falling upon woods and pastures, the broad stream now sparkling over the shallows, now reflecting the clouds from its placid bosom. The nearer ridges that fell softly on either side were crowned with villages clustering round white church spires; other ridges rose one behind another to the west, their outlines fading in the haze of distance. Not often in the tropics does one get the openness and the mingling of cornfields and meadows with forest which make the charm of south European scenery. Here the landscape had that Italian quality one finds in Claude and in the backgrounds of Titian but bathed in the intenser light of a Brazilian sun. In Brazil, as in Mexico, scenery that is both splendid and romantic stands awaiting the painter who is worthy to place it on canvas.
At last, turning away from the Parahyba, which the main line of railway follows to the sea, we mounted by a branch up a lateral valley, passed through great stretches of rough pasture land into the higher region of thick woods, and halted for the night in the midst of a thunderstorm which pealed and growled and flashed all night long, as often happens in these latitudes where one bank of clouds comes up after another to renew the discharges. Next morning the line, after keeping along the heights for some miles, descended through a forest more wonderful in its exuberance than any we had yet seen. From the summit we looked over a wilderness of deep valleys, the waving green of their tree-tops seamed with the white flash of waterfalls, with many ranges and peaks rising in the far distance, few of whose tops any European foot had pressed, for it is only the bottoms of the valleys that are inhabited. The views were all the more beautiful because the precipices on the hillsides beneath which we passed were dripping with rivulets from last night's rain, and cascades leapt over a succession of rock ledges and hurried in foaming channels down the bottoms of the glens.
In the hollow of the valley lies a quiet little town called Novo Friburgo, because first inhabited by a Swiss colony brought here many years ago to grow coffee. These Brazilian villages are loosely built, the houses scattered along wide streets, among spreading trees, and this one had retained something of the trimness of the industrious people who first settled it. Many of the coffee plantations of forty or even thirty years ago have been abandoned, and their sites are now practically undistinguishable from the rest of the forest. How long it will take for the land to recover its pristine vigour is not yet known, and there is still so much virgin land waiting to be planted that the question is of more importance to the individual owner than to the nation at large.
From this smiling vale the line climbs another high ridge and then descends once more through a long valley to the level land that lies behind the bay of Rio, coming out at last in the town of Nictheroy opposite the city.
This long run through the mountains on the top of the ridges and down along the terraces cut out in their sides, whence one can look over great spaces of woodland, completed the impressions of the forest which our excursions round Rio and Petropolis had given. Regarded as a piece of Nature's work, these Brazilian forests are more striking than those of the eastern Himalayas or of the Nilghiri Hills in India, more striking even than that beautiful little forest at Hilo in Hawaii, which no one who has visited that extraordinary island can ever forget. It is not that these Brazilian trees are very lofty. I was told that further north there are places where the great trunks reach two hundred feet, but here none seemed to exceed, and not very many to reach, one hundred. Thus, as respects either height or girth or general stateliness of aspect, these trees of the Serra do Mar are not to be compared either to the so-called "Big Trees" of California94 or to the red woods of the Pacific Coast Range,95 nor do they equal the forests of the Cascade Range above Puget Sound, where many of the Douglas firs and the so-called "cedars" approach, and some are said to exceed, three hundred feet. But they have a marvellous variety and richness of colour both in flowers and leaves. Very few—in this part I could see none—are coniferous, but very many are evergreen, changing their leaves not all at the same time, like the deciduous trees of temperate countries, but each tree at its own time, so that there are always some with fresh leaves coming as the others are beginning to go. The variety of tints is endless, from the dark glossy green of many a forest tree to the light green of the bamboos. Some leaves have white undersurfaces, which when turned up by the wind are bright enough to give the effect of flowers; and one tree, frequent in these mountains, has a group of what seem white bracts round the corymb at the end of its flower-shoots. Still more varied and still more brilliant are the flowers. These are seen best from above because it is the highest boughs touched by the sun that burst forth into the most abundant blossoms. Though we were too early in the hot season to see the blossom-bearing trees at their best, the wealth of colour was delightful even in November. Yellow and white were perhaps the most frequent, but there were also bright pinks and purples and violets. Palms rising here and there often high above the rest gave a variety of tint and form, while the space between the trunks was filled by tree-ferns rising to twenty feet and by a bewildering profusion of climbing and hanging and parasitic plants, many of them girdling the boughs with flowers. There were far more than anybody could give me names for, and as I had no means of ascertaining the scientific names, it would not serve the reader to give the popular Portuguese ones, especially as I found that the same name was sometimes applied to quite different plants because their colour was similar.
It is in a region like this that one begins to realize the amazing energy of nature. In the Andes we had seen the power of what are called the inanimate forces acting from beneath to shake the earth and break through its solid crust. There heat, acting upon water, has produced volcanic explosions and piled up gigantic cones like Misti and Tupungato, and has destroyed by earthquakes cities like Valparaiso or Mendoza. Here heat and water are again the force and the matter on which the force works; but here it is through life that they act. Every inch of ground is covered with some living and growing thing. While the tall stems push upward to overtop their fellows and let their highest shoots put forth flowers under the sunlight, climbing plants slender as a vine-shoot or stout as a liana embrace the trunk and mount along the branches and hang in swinging festoons from tree to tree. The fallen trunks are covered thick with ferns and mosses. Orchids and many another parasite root themselves in the living stem, and make it gay, to its ultimate undoing, with blossoms not its own. Even the bare faces of gneiss rock, too steep for any soil to rest upon, support a plant with a thick whorl of succulent leaves that is somehow able to find sustenance from air and moisture only, its roots anchored into some slight roughness of the rock. When a patch of wood has been cut down to the very ground, five years suffice to cover the soil again with a growth of trees and shrubs so rank that the spot can scarcely be distinguished from the uncut forest all round. But this swift activity of life is hardly more wonderful than is the variety of forms. Each of the great forests of Europe and North America consists of a few species of trees. In the New Forest in England, most beautiful of all, in one place chiefly beeches are found, in another chiefly oaks, mixed, perhaps, with some birches and white thorns. The woods of Maine and New Hampshire are composed of maples and birches, white pines and hemlocks and spruces, with now and then some less frequent tree. In the majestic forests of the Pacific coast there are seldom more than three or four of the larger species present in any quantity and this is generally true also of the Eucalyptus forests of Australia. But on this Brazilian coast the diversity is endless. Those who have traversed the Amazonian forests have made the same remark. There as here you may find within a radius of eighty yards, forty kinds of trees growing side by side, species belonging to different families with myriad shapes and hues of leaf and flower. Not content with the abundance of its production, this creative energy of nature insists on expressing itself also in an endless variety of forms. Do any principles which naturalists have yet discovered quite explain such a marvellous diversity where the conditions are the same?
After the doctrine of the Struggle for Life had been once propounded by two great naturalists who had seen, one of them South America, and the other, the tropical islands of the Further East, men soon learnt to recognize and observe the working of the principle in every part of the earth until in the arid desert or the freezing north a land was reached where life itself was extinct. But it is in Brazil that the principle is seen in the fulness of its potency. Here, where life is so profuse, so multiform, so incessantly surging around like the waves of a restless sea, this law of nature's action seems to speak from every rustling leaf, and the forest proclaims it with a thousand voices.
Rambling round Rio, and noting the physical characteristics of the ground it occupies, the rocky hills and the promontories and the islands, the traveller is reminded of the historic cities of Greece and Italy and naturally asks himself: Supposing Rio to have been one of those cities, where would the Acropolis have been, and where would the citizens have met in their assembly before they rushed to attack a tyrant, and to what sea-girt fortress would a ruler have sent his captives by water as the East Roman emperors seized their enemies and sent them into exile from the Bosphorus? Then, remembering that few streets or hills in Rio have any associations with the past, he wonders whether such associations will come into being in the future, and whether insurrections and civic conflicts may ever render some of these spots famous. In old cities like Florence and Paris and Edinburgh historic memories make a great part of the interest of the place. How much of English history connects itself with the Tower of London and with Westminster Hall! It so happened that during our stay in Rio there befell an incident which shewed that the smooth surface of things may, even in our own days, be troubled by explosive passions, an incident which revealed a new kind of danger to which in times of domestic strife modern engines of warfare may subject a maritime town.
On the day when we were to embark for Bahia and Europe, we started early in the morning from Petropolis to come down by train to Rio, and heard at the station rumours of a revolution, confused rumours, for no one could say from whom the revolution, if there was one, proceeded or against whom it was directed. When we reached Rio, things cleared up a little. It was not a political revolution nor a military pronunciamento, but a marine mutiny. The crews, almost entirely negroes, of the two great Dreadnought battleships which the Brazilian government had recently ordered and purchased from an English firm of shipbuilders, and which had shortly before arrived in the harbour, had revolted during the night. The captain of one of the vessels, the Minas Geraes, had been murdered by his crew as he stepped on board upon his return from dining on a French ship. The story ran that he had been first pierced by bayonets and then hewed in pieces with hatchets. Of the other officers some few had been killed, the rest put on shore. The only white men left on board were some English engineers forcibly detained in order to work the engines. The crews of a cruiser and two smaller war vessels had joined in the revolt. All the ships were in the hands of the crews, who, however, were believed to be obeying non-commissioned officers of their own colour, and who were led by a negro named João Candido,96 a big man of energy and resolution, who had shewn his grasp of the situation by ordering all the liquor on the Minas Geraes to be thrown overboard. The grievances alleged by the seamen were overwork, insufficient wages, and the frequency of corporal punishments. Rumours were busy connecting the names of prominent politicians with the outbreak, but so far as could be made out then or subsequently there was no foundation for these suspicions. The mutiny seems to have been the spontaneous act of the crews, who, it was remarked, had just arrived from Lisbon, lately the scene of a revolution, and might have there caught the infection of rebellion. In demanding the redress of their grievances, which was, of course, to be accompanied by an amnesty for themselves, they had threatened to lay the city in ashes, enforcing the threat by firing some shots into it (not, however, from the heavy guns). One shot killed two children, and several other persons were wounded.
The aspect of the city was rather less affected than might have been expected. Some troops were moving about, here cavalry, there infantry. Few carriages or motor cars and few women were to be seen. Business was slack, and groups of men stood talking at street corners, evidently imparting to one another those tales and suspicions and guesses at unseen causes with which the air was thick. All water traffic from the opposite side of the bay had been stopped by the mutineers, who had also compelled the submission of one of the forts at the entrance. Strolling along to the great Botafogo Esplanade under the palms, I found a battery of field artillery, their guns pointed at the two battleships, the Minas and the São Paulo, against which they would, of course, have been as useless as paper pellets. There the majestic yellow grey monsters lay, fresh from Messrs. Armstrong's yard at Newcastle, flying the ensign of Brazil, but also flying at the fore the red flag of rebellion. So the day wore on, terror abating, but the sense of helplessness increasing. We were lunching at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—it was a small party, for considerations of safety had kept away the ladies who had been invited—when suddenly the heavy boom of the guns was heard, and continued at intervals all through the repast. When again in the streets, I found that the two Dreadnoughts were shelling some torpedo-boats, manned by crews still loyal, which had approached them. The practice was bad, and none of the boats was hit, but they prudently scurried off up the bay into shallow water where the ironclads could not follow.
So the hours passed and everybody was still asking, "What is to be done?" "The mutineers," so men said, "can't be starved out, because they have threatened to destroy the city if food is refused them, and the city is at their mercy. By this threat they have forced us to give them water. We cannot blow up the ships with torpedoes, first because they have stretched torpedo nets round the hulls, and secondly because it would be a serious thing to destroy property for which we have paid no small part of our annual revenue. Doesn't it look as if we should have to submit to the mutineers? What else can we do?" Later on the firing recommenced and I mounted to the third story of the British Consulate to see what was happening. The ships were shelling the naval barracks on the Isla das Cobras in the harbour, and the island was replying, and we were near enough to see the red flash from the iron lips just before the roar was heard. Lying out in the bay was the British liner by which we were to sail for Liverpool. The lighters that were carrying coal to her had been commandeered by the mutineers, but she had just enough in her bunkers to get to Bahia. The immediate difficulty was for the passengers to reach her across the line of fire. At last, however, a boat was sent out from shore bearing a flag of truce, and the São Paulo consented to cease firing and let the passengers get on board the British vessel. They were accordingly embarked in a launch which, flying the Consulate flag, crossed unharmed the danger zone. It was the only chance, but a sense of relief was visible in every face when we stepped on board, for if a negro gunner had been smitten by the desire to let fly once more at the Isla das Cobras, his ill-aimed shot might very well have sent the launch to the bottom. As we steamed slowly out to the ocean the magnificent São Paulo ran close alongside us, and we could see her decks crowded with negroes and the red flag still flying. "A study in black and red," someone observed. Outside the entrance were lying the Minas Geraes and the Bahia, partly to be out of harm's way from torpedoes, partly to guard the mouth of the bay. In the sober light of a grey sunset, the clouds hanging heavy on the Corcovado, but the lofty watch-tower of the Pan d'Azucar still visible through the gathering shades, we turned northward, and bade farewell to Rio. Two hours later, looking back through a moonless night, we could still see the flash, from beneath the horizon, of the searchlights which the Minas Geraes was casting on the sea all round her to guard against the stealthy approach of a loyal torpedo-boat.
A few days later, at Pernambuco, we heard that peace had been restored. The Chambers had voted an amnesty with eloquent speeches about the beauty of forgiveness, and had promised to redress the grievances of the mutineers. Another mutiny broke out afterwards, which, after many lives had been lost, was severely suppressed, but these later events happened when we were far away, nearing the coast of Europe, and of them I have nothing to tell.
The coast for some way north from Rio continues high, but the steamers keep too far out to permit its beauties to be seen. Before one approaches Bahia, the mountains have receded, and at that city, though picturesque heights are still visible, they lie further back, and scarcely figure in the landscape. Still further north, towards Pernambuco, and most of the way northwestward to Pará, the coast is much lower. The bay of Bahia is singularly beautiful in its vast sweep, as well as in the verdure that fringes its inlets, and the glimpses of distant sunlit hills. Nor is the city, long the capital of Brazil, wanting in interest; for, though none of the buildings have much architectural merit, there is a quaint, old-fashioned look about the streets and squares, with many a house that has stood unchanged since the eighteenth century. The upper city runs along the edge of a steep bluff, sixty or eighty feet above the lower town, which is a single line of street, even more dirty than it is picturesque, occupying the narrow strip between the harbour and the cliff. Here, far more than in Parisianized Rio, one finds the familiar features of a Portuguese town reproduced, irregular and narrow streets, houses, often high, roofed with red tiles, and coloured with all sorts of washes, pink, green, blue, and yellow. Sometimes the whole front or side of a house is covered with blue or yellowish brown tiles, a characteristic of Portuguese cities—it is frequent in Oporto and Braga—which has come down from Moorish times. But a still greater contrast between this and southern Brazil is found in the population. In São Paulo there are few negroes, in Rio not very many, but here in Bahia all the town seems black. One might be in Africa or the West Indies. It is the same in Pernambuco and indeed all the way to the mouth of the Amazon.
Finding this to be a region filled with coloured people as São Paulo was with white people, and knowing that a thousand miles further west one would come into a region entirely Indian, one began to realize what a vast country Brazil is, big enough to be carved up into sixteen countries each as large as France. Were there natural boundaries, i.e. such physical features as mountain ranges or deserts, to divide this immense region into sections, the settled parts of Brazil might before now have split apart into different political communities. As it is, however, there are no such natural dividing lines, and if the Republic should ever break in pieces it will be differences in the character of the population or some conflict of material interests that will bring this about.
How has it happened that so huge a country has fallen to the lot of a people so much too small for it, since one can hardly reckon the true Brazilian white nation at more than seven millions?
What did happen was that the French, English, and Dutch, having their hands full in Europe, did not pursue their attempts to occupy the country with sufficient persistence and with adequate forces, and so lost their hold on the parts they had seized. Thus it became possible for a handful of Portuguese on the Atlantic coast to send out small colonizing parties into their unoccupied Hinterland, and as there were no civilized inhabitants to resist them, to go on acquiring a title to it without opposition until they met the outposts of the Spanish government who had advanced from the Pacific across the Andes just as the Portuguese had advanced from the Atlantic. Neither Portuguese nor Spaniards had been numerous enough to colonize this interior region of the continent, so it remains (save for a few trading posts on the rivers) an empty wilderness.
Nevertheless, though Brazil is physically all one country, it contains regions differing in climate, in economic resources, and in population. I will try in a few sentences to indicate the character of each.
The most northerly part along the frontiers of Guiana and also along a good deal of the coast between the mouth of the Amazon and Cape St. Roque is the least valuable, for large tracts are stony and protracted droughts are not uncommon. The extreme north has been hardly at all settled.
The east central part, consisting of the mountain ridges and table-lands referred to on page 368, together with slopes which descend on all sides from these highlands, is a region of great natural resources where all tropical crops and fruits can be produced. Most of it is healthy, much of it not too hot for white men to work and thrive, and the magnificent forests, no less than the mines, will make the mountains for many years to come no less a source of wealth than are the more level tracts. Its weak point is the want of white labour and the inefficiency of black labour.
This tropical region passes imperceptibly into the temperate country which occupies the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande, a section of the country no less fertile than the last and better fitted for European constitutions. Here all sub-tropical products can be raised; here also are forests; and here, where the land has not yet been brought under tillage, there is abundant and excellent pasture for all sorts of live stock. As the east central region is the land of cotton and sugar, so this southern region is the land of coffee and cattle,—coffee in its northerly parts, cattle and the cereals in its southern.
There remain the vast spaces of the west and northwest, still so imperfectly explored that it is hard to estimate their economic value. To the Amazonian forests, the Selvas, I shall return in another chapter.97 They are the land of another great Brazilian staple—rubber. Most parts of the region where Brazil adjoins Bolivia, a vast level or slightly undulating country, partly grassy, partly covered with wood or scrub, is believed to be available either for cultivation or for ranching. At present access is difficult, and markets are far away, but when the districts of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina that lie between this region and the coast have been more fully settled, its turn will come.
Taking Brazil as a whole, no great country in the world owned by a European race possesses so large a proportion of land available for the support of human life and productive industry. In the United States there are deserts, and of the gigantic Russian Empire much is desert, and much is frozen waste. But on the Portuguese of Brazil nature has bestowed nothing for which man cannot find a use. Such a possession as this was far more than enough to compensate the little kingdom for the loss of the empire which it began in the sixteenth century to build up in India, before the evil days came after the death of King Sebastian.
The material prosperity of a country, however, depends less on its natural resources than on the quality of the labour applied to its development and on the intelligence that directs the labour. In these respects Brazil has been less fortunate. When the Portuguese first settled the coast lands, they forced the Indian aborigines to work for them, and in many places destroyed by their severities the bulk of the native population. Negroes began to be imported about A.D. 1600, but not in great numbers until the discovery of diamond and other mines in the inland country created a sudden demand for labour. After that, there came a large importation of slaves, for agricultural as well as for mining purposes, from all the Portuguese dominions of Africa, and from the Congo regions; and this went on, though latterly much reduced, down to our own time. Between 1825 and 1850 it is said that 1,250,000 slaves were landed, and cargoes came in even later. Thus the working population of the tropical region, including the coast towns, became largely, and in the north, predominantly negro. Slavery was abolished by successive stages, the last of which was reached in 1888. For a time the plantation culture was disorganized, but most of the freedmen ultimately returned to work. It is by their labour that sugar and cotton are raised to-day, though they take life very easily, and often content themselves with just so much exertion on just so many days a week as is needed to provide them with food and the other scanty necessaries of their life. Here, as elsewhere, the race is lighthearted and thoughtless, caring little for the future, loving amusement in its most childish forms. It is kindly and submissive, but dangerously excitable, and quickly demoralized by drink. The planters find it hard to count on their work people, who stay away if they feel more than usually lazy, and will, if displeased, transfer themselves to another planter, who, in the general scarcity of labour, is glad to have them. Many children are born to them, but many die, especially in infancy, so that, taking the country as a whole, they do not seem to increase faster than the other sections of the population.
Such are the cotton and sugar regions: now let us turn to those southerly states of the republic, whose staples are coffee and cattle and cereals. In them, and especially in São Paulo and Rio Grande, the conditions are altogether different. The number of negroes was never large there, and it does not grow. Owing to the elevation of the ground and to the less powerful sun, the heat is not excessive in either state, and European immigrants can work and thrive and be happy. So Europeans have flocked hither. Between 1843 and 1859 about twenty thousand came from Germany to Rio Grande do Sul, and there are now, it is said, about two hundred thousand, forming a compact community which preserves its national habits and manages its own affairs with little interference by the central government. It is, in fact, disposed to resent any such interference and to "run things" in its own solid German way. Even larger is the number of Italians who in more recent years have entered these southern states. The labour on the great coffee estates of São Paulo is almost entirely Italian; and in Rio Grande they have become well-to-do peasant proprietors, living in less comfort than their German neighbours, but working just as steadily. This better quality of population has largely gone to making the southern states the most progressive part of Brazil. Should the Italians and the native Brazilians of the south, who have far less negro blood than those of the middle states, continue to spread themselves out as settlers over the still thinly peopled southwestern districts, they will probably give prosperity to that region also. Cattle ranching is in the south carried on by Gauchos much like those of Uruguay or Argentina. They are said to have communicated their love of horses to the Germans and Italians, so that on holidays even the women of those races appear on horseback in a way that would startle their peasant cousins left at home in Swabia or Lombardy.
The foreign element in Brazil is more important by its energy and industry than by its numbers, for it probably little exceeds a million all told, and the total population of the republic may approach nineteen or twenty millions. In 1910 about 88,000 immigrants entered, most of them Italians, and the rest Portuguese, Spaniards, and Syrians, these last mostly travelling peddlers, or small dealers who establish themselves in the towns. The afflux of Syrians that has found its way to South America and the West Indies during the last few years is a new and curious feature in the currents of ethnic movement that mark our time.
But what of the Brazilian people itself? The influences that tend to make it vary from its original type are counterworked by the steady immigration from Portugal, and from Spain also, for though any sort of Spaniard (except a Gallego) differs materially from a Portuguese, the two races differ much less from one another than either does from any other European stock. The Brazilian is primarily a Portuguese in the outlines of his mind and character. He has, however, been modified by intermixture with two other races. The first of these is the native Indian. The settlers both in São Paulo and along the northeastern coast, while they killed most of the Indian men either in fight or by working them to death as slaves, intermarried freely with Indian women. The offspring were called Mamelucos, an Eastern term which it is odd to find here, and which is now beginning to pass out of use. In the south this mixed race as well as the pure Indian race has been now absorbed into the rest of the population.98 You would as soon expect to see a Pawnee in Philadelphia as an Indian in Santos. In the north the half-breed is generally called a Caboclo, a name originally given to the tame native Indian, as opposed to the wild Indio bravo; and in that region, a large part of the agricultural population is of this mixed stock.
The second modifying influence is that of the imported Africans. When the first slave ships disgorged their cargoes on the Atlantic coast, the aborigines of those districts had already been either killed off or merged in the Portuguese population, so that the mingling of Indian and negro blood which is supposed to produce an especially undesirable class of citizens was comparatively small. The intermarriage of blacks and whites has, however, gone on apace, and the negroes constitute a large, the mulattoes and quadroons a still larger, percentage of the population. Some observers hold that the coloured people, taken all together, equal or outnumber the whites. The intermixture continues, for here, as in Portuguese East Africa, no sentiment of race repulsion opposes it.99 Any figures that might be given would be quite conjectural; for the line between the mixed black and white and the white cannot be drawn with any approach to accuracy. Even in the United States, where conditions permit more careful discrimination, no one can tell what is the percentage of mulattoes to the total coloured population, nor how many quadroons and octoroons there are to be found among those classed as whites, for many people who have some negro blood succeed in concealing its presence, while others are classed as coloured who in Europe would pass as white. Much more difficult is it to tell in Brazil who is to be deemed a person of colour.
How far the differences between the Brazilian and the Portuguese of to-day are due to racial admixture, and how far to the conditions of colonial life and a new physical environment, is a matter on which one might speculate for ever and come no nearer to a conclusion. The descendants of Englishmen who were living in Massachusetts and Virginia in 1840 before immigration from Continental Europe had begun to affect the English stock shewed already marked differences from the Englishmen of old England, and it is impossible to tell how far the changes that have passed on the people of the United States since then are due to the influx of new immigrants from Europe, how far to other causes. The Brazilian is still more of a Portuguese than he is of any other type. His ideas and tastes, his ways of life, his alternations of listlessness and activity, his kindly good nature, his susceptibility to emotions and to a rhetoric that can rouse emotion, belong to the country whence he came.