One afternoon I sat in a street-car of the Copacabana line running to and from the heart of Rio de Janeiro city. As we approached the Avenida and paused at a sharp turn at the regulator’s signal, a small boy poorly clad in cotton clothes got on to the front platform with a dinner pail in his hand. He set it down, removed his cap, and bent his knee as the motorman, with a swift smile at the child, extended his right hand. The boy respectfully kissed it, replaced his cap, and jumped down.

The little incident was typical of the wide spread of gentle manners in Brazil; it is here usual enough to see elderly bankers kiss the hands of their parents, but courtesy is not confined to cultured classes. One may in Brazil depend upon a street cleaner as much as upon a senator for chivalrous politeness. A stranger may address any passer-by in a Brazilian street in the most execrable Portuguese and will almost invariably receive serious and kindly attention: it is said that the Brazilian with his agreeably poised attitude to life “laughs at everything except a stranger who is speaking bad Portuguese.”

I do not mean that strangers are treated with special courtesy; good manners are habitual. Brazilian men meeting each other in the street half a dozen times in a day, lift their hats to each other: no one, obliged to step past another closely on a street-car, but will raise his hat and murmur “Com licença!” A woman walking down the narrow streets of the older cities or older parts of the rejuvenated cities will always find her path cleared by men who step aside into the road with hats in their hands. If she happens to be very pretty looks will follow her and whispers may, but in my opinion the ordinary woman with quiet manners is safer in Brazilian towns than in most centres of population in the world, may break all the small rules with impunity and may always depend upon the grave kindness of the Brazilian. People of less punctilious societies are apt to speak with a degree of contempt of “surface politeness,” and to say that they prefer roughness and a good heart; generally this kind of remark is a clumsy apology for boorishness, and as a matter of fact a good heart is quite as likely to exist under a courteous exterior as under a discourteous one; a habit of consideration for others in speech and small actions is without doubt good training for any variety of heart and head. The Brazilian is in his mental attitude an inheritor not only of Latin tradition in general but of French ideas in particular: Paris is his Mecca, French literature and French science and French art the inspirers of his youth; more cosmopolitan than the Portuguese born, because he is in close touch with all Europe as well as with the Americas, quite minus the feeling that makes the Spaniard love bull-fights, the Brazilian has grounds for his claim as the brightest spiritual heir of Latinity. His excellent manners are a part of his heritage.

Apparently, the very considerable additions to the Brazilian population by immigration during the last hundred years have made little difference to Brazilian society; it is true that the Englishman with his tennis and football and his rowing-clubs has introduced and popularized sport, so that today there are thousands of young Brazilians taking part in these pleasures and it is true that the influx of artistic French in the reigns of the two Emperors affected and stimulated sculpture, painting and writing in Brazil; in each case these were entries into Brazilian society, the new element arriving with a recognized status as members of important firms or with a semi-official position. There has been family mingling, many English and French choosing wives from distinguished Brazilian families, and in this way the influence of European ideas frequently has its effect on the education of the children of such unions. To a less noticeable extent almost every nationality is found in Brazilian society, for this is a country which has always welcomed the stranger of distinction, but no race has impressed itself so firmly upon national characteristics as the Franco-Latin. Immigration, properly speaking, the systematic colonization with which São Paulo supplied her coffee lands with labour and Rio Grande and Paraná settled their open spaces, and Minas tried to supplant negro workers, has affected Brazilian social conditions scarcely at all. Generally isolated in wide areas, often with no communication with the outside world except by mule-trail or river until the railway came a few years ago, the organized colonies of Russians, Poles, Basques, Bessarabian Jews, Japanese, Swiss and Germans lived their own lives, retaining perforce the language and customs of the lands from which they came. The Italians, employed on great fazendas, were more in contact with Brazilian life than any other race, and even they keep their own speech together with newly-learned Portuguese, eat Italian food and read Italian-language newspapers printed in Brazil. Not until the development of industry brings the colonies into closer contact with each other and with Brazilian centres of old standing will the Galician and Arab affect any society but of his own race. No attempt has been made, probably wisely, to force these settlers into the Brazilian national communion; they were needed to fill spaces, to bring land into cultivation and develop the wasted resources of an enormous land: they have done Brazil this service, and Brazil in return respects their feelings and traditions. One reason for this lack of interference with the colonies was that Brazil possessed little machinery which could have brought about a marked change: but deliberate policy also entered into the question. It was realized that a change would come about with the passage of years, when the second or third generations grew and mingled in a common society, Brazilians born and bred, and that meanwhile Brazil was too big to fear the effect of these nucleos with their strong retention of foreign loves and habits. Broadminded enough to sympathize with such feelings, the Brazilian knows that no man worth his salt forgets his native land; his idea was expressed by the genial writer, J. M. de Macedo, when, speaking of the French who made fortunes in Brazil and returned with their savings to France, he said: “If it be a sin to love one’s own country better than any other country, then am I a sinner too!” It is in fact because the Brazilian has so keen a devotion to his own beautiful land that he comprehends the home-love of the immigrant.

Class distinction still reigns in Brazil to a certain degree, as may be expected in a land where slavery existed until twenty-eight years ago, and which twenty-seven years ago still had an Emperor and a Court with a retinue of nobles. These nobles retain their titles still, except in cases where formal renunciation was made, but a provision was made at the establishment of the Republic that they should not be inherited. It is an example of the liberal spirit in which the break was made, and the absence of ill-feeling towards the Empire, that Brazil thinks as much of her Commendadores, Conselheiros, Barões, Viscondes and Condes as she does of any newly distinguished bacharel of today. Dom Pedro II gave these titles, very often, in recognition of some special service to Brazilian development, and it is for this reason that, encountering the Conde de Leopoldina, we find him to be an Englishman surnamed Lowndes. When the Princess Isabel (Condessa d’Eu) celebrated her seventieth birthday in the summer of 1916 the Brazilian newspapers printed long notices speaking with appreciation of her regencies over Brazil, and acclaiming her act in freeing the slaves of 1888; a few months previously a monarchical society held meetings in the capital, their sayings and doings were reported in the public press without any excitement, and the trend of editorial comment was, “Well, with the republic in such a muddle, it is no wonder.”

It is needless to say that the restoration of a monarchy in Brazil is quite unthinkable, and that the society’s existence is more interesting than important, but I mention it to show the amused tolerance of the Brazilian towards other people’s opinions. He has a detached, sometimes cynical attitude, believes in frank discussion and the airing of ideas, and together with a markedly democratic habit of life retains a European respect for tradition and authority. In Rio, the intellectual centre of Brazil, the influence of the administration is very strongly felt, and it is the focus of interest and activity: the Brazilian takes a passionate part in politics, criticizes the Government when and where he thinks fit, but will never do anything to undermine the power and prestige of the administration. With but one notable exception the heads of the Brazilian Government have been men of such ability and force of character that they have thoroughly earned the confidence of the thinking classes. From the cultivated caste in Brazil is chiefly drawn the political group: there have been exceptions, as in the case of Pinheiro Machado, but as a rule the reins are in the hands of a distinct social element, descendants of white Portuguese families and frequently men of great intellectual strength. The names of the Visconde de Rio Branco, Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves, João Alfredo and Affonso Penna are but four out of a long list of statesmen of the first rank in Brazil. The ruling classes are almost always great landowners, fazendeiros, and there was a time when sons of such families destined themselves to politics, agriculture or one of the “professions;” today commercial careers are sometimes chosen—perhaps partly because the planter of coffee or sugar is often necessarily a mill owner and shipper as well—as Brazil becomes more industrialized, but although these young men may enter other than the traditional spheres, it is seldom that theirs is invaded from the world of industrialists or commerciantes. The latter are, indeed, largely recruited from the foreign element; shop-keepers as well as commission agents and dealers all down the coast were once largely British and French, but now the energetic Portuguese-born trader, with the keen Italian and Spaniard, and the still more insinuating Syrian, has absorbed a marked proportion of the retail business.

Below the commercial element comes that of labour, stratum of entirely different composition; it differs too in varying localities, from that of the south, where slavery tailed off in São Paulo, never penetrating the more southerly states, and where white labour of immigrant origin performs field work, to the central section where the mestizo (mixed blood) of white and Indian or, about Bahia and Pernambuco, white and negro, blood is the worker; in and near Bahia itself thousands of pure-blood negroes or mulattos form the labouring class, to the almost total exclusion of any other. Farther north the negro element fades out and the Indian mixture predominates in a wiry strain which furnishes all the labour of the Amazon valley.

Upon this great mass of mixed-blood labourers the educational systems of Brazil make a certain if slow impression. Intelligent and apt, docile if conciliated and stubborn if crossed, the mestizo has some excellent qualities; the indolence of which he is often accused is sometimes want of direction, and sometimes the result of ill-health in certain regions, disappearing when the enervating malaria and ankylostomiasis are conquered, exactly as in the South of the United States where the same troubles are common. With better sanitation in the crowded warm regions, and persistence in good schooling, the brasileiro of the labouring classes would not need supplanting with introduced immigrants. Between him and the legislator there is a great gulf fixed; its existence might be dangerous were not the habit of the Brazilian gentle; it can be bridged only by education. “We have no organization for the expression of popular opinion,” declared a Brazilian writer recently. “The statesman, the government official, the legislator, the administrator has to be a kind of powerful Jehovah, capable of creating worlds out of nothing ... unless the bachelor (bacharel—“doctor”) president, the bachelor governor, the bachelor minister or the bachelor deputy should sally forth through Brazil (saiam por esses Brazis afóra), over mountains and valleys, to enquire at the window of every farm, at the door of every store, at the entrance of each factory, in each lacemaker’s shop and at each blacksmith’s forge, what Agriculture, Commerce, Industry and the Proletariat wish for their practical and effective betterment....” At least it can never be said that the faults and lapses of Brazil are not understood and discussed by her own educated classes; there is no country where self-criticism is more hearty. During the early part of 1916 a party of specialists in tropical maladies from the Rockefeller Institute passed through Brazil and made some investigations; one of the weeklies of Rio famous for its cartoons and skits on public affairs remarked that the visitors need not have come to Brazil to study malaria—they would find that in a hundred places: they should study the troubles that were really peculiar to Brazil. It gave an illustrated list: among the items was the “national long tongue”—we talk too much; another was bacharelismo—everyone in Brazil wants to be a “Doctor” of medicine or law or philosophy. It is a disease not altogether limited to Brazil, despite the Malho.

Cartoons in Brazil have a point of interest in addition to their wit, in the presentment of a national figure, “Zé (José) Povo.” Zé Povo is “the people,” quite distinct from the dignified figure of the República, a lady in draperies crowned with the Phrygian cap. Zé is the man in the street who stands by and makes acid comments; he has no counterpart in North American or English journals, but speaks his mind much as “Liborio” does in the Cuban humorous-political papers. No one can say that the press is not free in Brazil.

Industrial expansion in Brazil will be the great amalgamator of the grades and divisions of the population; colonists of foreign origin cannot continue to live in separate nests, commercial fortunes will blend society, and the expansion of agriculture will sooner or later mean the evolution of the sertanejo into a modernized, trading farmer; as the hills are opened for metals and the forests are entered for hardwoods and dyes and latex, the millions of Indians of the interior must be brought into line, or, retreating, eventually die out—the worst solution of his case and probably an unnecessary one. But at the present day there are many distinct types among Brazilian populations, and of them that of the sertanejo, the farmer of the interior, the sertão, is not the least interesting. Here on the wide uplands of the plateau he lives very much as Isaac lived, his world about him, his home, servants and herds his chief interests; simple, philosophic, intensely hospitable although reserved and proud, he makes little money but by his cattle, and wants little. His bodily needs are few, his furnishings of the simplest; his food is mainly the inevitable farinha de mandioca, milk products, beans (feijão) and eggs and carne. He may be the owner of great expanses of land, but he will seldom sell or divide it and there is no other life that he will endure and live. In touch with the open sky, the broad horizon before him, the sertanejo is of a class apart; his is a simple and a dignified figure.

Brought to town, through acquisition of money or the wishes of his womenfolk, the farmer of the interior is a peg for many witticisms of the townsman; he is a “caipira,” a countryman, a hayseed, and endless amusement is obtained at his expense. One of the Rio weeklies, the Careta, once ran a series of illustrated adventures of such a farmer who is supposed to come to Rio de Janeiro on a visit with his wife and pretty daughter, and who takes in the “sights” of the Capital from the countryman’s angle.

A simple camaraderie prevails in the upland interior, where little money passes and barter of goods is the most common form of exchange; it is frequently impossible to hire labour, and as a consequence farmers and their sons invite the help of their neighbours when field work is needed, giving their own time in turn when occasion arises. No distinction between rich and poor occurs in a society of such friendly simplicity.

In the cattle regions there is a special ceremony every year, for rounding and branding cattle, known as the feira dos bizerros (calf branding) and the apartação do gado—separation of herds, frequently running with those of other fazendeiros over unfenced country. All the neighbours arrive at the farm which is thus counting its stock, families making it an occasion of friendly reunion. During the evenings of the two or three days of festa there is a continual round of coffee drinking and eating, many a marriage is arranged and consummated; at the close of the work there is frequently a series of competitions of skill in horsemanship, the clever performance of the vaquejada or derrubada always exciting a critical audience. Horsemen, mounted on well-trained animals, post themselves at the gate of the corral where bulls have been shut up for a day or two; the bars are let down and when the cattle rush out each of the horsemen tries to seize a bull by its tail and throw it to the ground—success largely depending on the cleverness of the horse in avoiding the rushes and struggles of the bull. The last night is one of continual dancing and temperate feasting, the flute and violin sounding until dawn. It is a little curious that these instruments, with the guitar, are the favourites of the musical peasantry of Brazil, and that the exquisite marimba of African origin, carried by negroes into Central America and there enthusiastically adopted by the Quiché-Cachiquel natives, should not have also found a home in the southern continent.

Among the other figures of the sertão, created by the absence of mechanical transportation in a series of great regions, is the tropeiro, the leader and frequently the owner of a troop of mules carrying the products of the interior to market. A good tropeiro is entrusted with the marketing of the cotton crop of a fazenda or even a district, and he will carry cash for long distances, settling accounts, making purchases; his mules are trained performers who know their work and make themselves understood if there is anything wrong with one of their number. In the north of the Brazilian promontory—Bahia, Pernambuco, interior Ceará, Maranhão and Rio Grande do Norte as well as the hinterlands of the central states, the tropeiro undertakes the transportation of much of the interior crop of cotton, sugar and tobacco.

He is doomed to extinction as the steel arms of the railroads push out into the interior, but his day is not yet done.

Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the Englishman and baseball to the North American. It is a form of excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a great deal, an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. Opinion is not popularly opposed to the system in Brazil, any more than it is in, for instance, Italy, and in like manner it is conducted by the Federal Government, is a recognized source of revenue, and many charities and other worthy institutions supported by the authorities derive their main income from it. Few people express any adverse sentiments to these regularized lotteries, but an amusing offshoot from it, illegal, forbidden, pounced upon now and again by the police, generally denounced by the press, and indulged in by everyone, is the famous bicho. A bicho is in Brazil any kind of animal or bird or insect—everything living is popularly a bicho—and in this underground lottery groups of numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc., something more interesting than a bald set of figures. The bicho was of independent origin, with twenty-five animals represented, but nowadays depends upon the government results, and is really a gamble on a gamble, but with the advantage that combinations and groups can be played on, and very small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on your favourite humming-bird again and again without feeling the loss when the anta persists in coming up instead, and there would be little harm done did not servants sent to the market get the bicho habit so badly, together with shoe-shiners and waiters and all the working class, that in its acutest form “playing on the bicho” becomes an obsession equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the bicho can be bought at many newsdealers, in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run it, and some daily papers print pictures of the winning animals: it is well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because while a modest winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no redress as the whole thing is illegal.

Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not yield a public revenue, and that people spend, in the aggregate, more money on the bicho than on public lotteries which are sources of governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occasionally prosecuted, the bicheiros continue to exist and to furnish a mild form of excitement and adventure. I do not think that lotteries are more objectionable originators of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is universally abstemious, and the rule is not broken in Brazil.

Rarely does the Brazilian born and bred drink anything stronger than coffee, and this he takes, in little cups in the innumerable cafeterias of every city, many times a day. Since the established price of a little cup of hot, very strong black coffee is but a tostão (two U. S. cents) there is no great extravagance about this. At family meals a little wine, generally imported from Portugal, France or Italy, is on the table: since Rio Grande has been trying her hand at wine-making the bottle may contain vinho nacional; in any case it is sparingly used. The younger generation has taken to a limited extent to the whisky introduced by the Britisher, the beer of the German, now very well brewed in the country, and the cocktail of the newcomer of North America, but he appears to drink these exotics more with a desire to be in the fashion or a “good sport” than because he likes them.

Deliberate drinking is almost confined to the festas beloved of the mestizo and mulatto populations, especially celebrated in agricultural districts, when the Brazilian-made cachaça, a kind of rum made from sugarcane, is liberally consumed. Its festive use seems to be a survival of Indian custom, for the natives of the coasts and forests in pre-Portuguese days made a fermented liquor (from milho = maize) for special occasions, and their descendants as well as the negro element, also great lovers of celebrations, regard an occasional period of revelry as a right. The influence of Christianity has succeeded in identifying these festal occasions with, and confining them to, saints’ days and other Church celebrations, but their root is more primitive.

Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dissension or the cause of social upheaval: the original donatarios brought chaplains with them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and members of Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding establishments in the settlements. With regard to the natives their task was easy, since there existed no definite religion to be eradicated, and, except when the work of the missionaries interfered with the designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the padres, colonists, and authorities; many of them had a hand in political matters, were emissaries between the mother country and Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever established in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the erection of the Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State, probably much to the betterment of conditions, for considerable criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity following upon security; put upon her mettle as an independent organization, and faced with the competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman Catholic church in Brazil is said to have performed much needed purifying.

Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity exist undisturbed, and although their temples are very generally attended exclusively by the foreign congregations responsible for their origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is undoubtedly useful. In the southern organized settlements each community practises the form of faith of the home land, the Russians of the Greek church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and so on; there is not the slightest interference—religious intolerance is indeed unimaginable in Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that this attitude arises from indifference, that the practice of religious observances is left to women and children and that the grown men of communities are cynical—next door to what used to be called “agnosticism” by the professional European unbelievers of the past generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is common for Brazilian men in conversation to affect an airy amusement before the claims of religious bodies: but due allowance must be made for French influence. Almost up to the time of the European War there was a parade of emancipation from clerical leading strings by the intellectual French, yet the course of the conflict has witnessed a spiritual awakening, the resurrection of something dormant; the France of today is probably more sincerely religious than she has been for many a century. The cynicism of masculine Brazil may be no more deeply rooted.

As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions comparable to the tendency in the United States which is so curious an indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to conceive Brazilian reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable example of serious adoption of a new faith is found in the extreme South, where the principles of August Comte have taken root, and the riograndense of the educated ruling class is generally a Comtist.

In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion of Roman Catholic churches to the population is remarkably large, particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder sister, Olinda. That they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element, for here as in all other parts of the world where he has been taken the negro is a fervent admirer of almost any kind of religion. It is the swarming coloured people of Bahia, crowded in the cobble-paved, half-lighted rookeries of the lower town and the tilted streets leading to the upper town, who make it possible to keep open the doors of that city’s four hundred churches. In these centres all the many saints’ days are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a simple faith in “white magic” survive; here that the ceremonies of All Hallowe’en are performed by maids of the sertão, and spells invoked. St. John’s is one of the popular days, with its legends and traditional celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion as youth of Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves and flowers, go down to the river banks to wash, singing as they go, because as the verse says: “Nessa noite é benta a agua. Pará tudo tem virtudes.” Fires are lighted outside each house in homage to St. John, and at these green corn is roasted—the traditional milho assado na fogueira. Over the hot ashes of these fires the faithful walk barefoot without being burnt....

On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart, and girls try to discover their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is not the only aider of candidates for matrimony—there is “São Gonçalvo,” a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint is quoted by Pereira da Costa in his Folklore Pernambucano and begins: “Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm binder, tie him who wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder the steps of Fulano as with a strong cage....”

St. Raymund is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed prayer of noted efficiency is addressed to him; translated freely it runs:

From which it will be seen that the saints are expected to be useful, and that festas of the church are agreeable to these young people, leading in the older centres a rather restricted social life.

Women in Brazil occupy a position out of which they have been forced or have voluntarily emerged in many countries. It is for many reasons a very happy life, for, withdrawn as she is, the Brazilian wife and mother has complete authority over the wide sphere which tradition has so long assigned to her. It is a moot point whether women in other lands would seek emergence from that circle if circumstances did not send them from it; the salary-earning women of Western Europe and North America perhaps do not always realize that theirs is not altogether a choice between home and independence, that they work because they must work. The exigencies of climate, as well as modern education, send women out to the ranks of the workers in lands where there are at least as many women as men.

In Brazil there is no such equality of numbers. The list of men is always much longer than that of women, chiefly because of the stream of male immigrants who arrive in the country without families, and, earning good wages, set about the acquisition of a home. The predominant classes of such immigrants are Portuguese, and these men, speaking the same language and with close affiliations to Brazil, readily seek wives among the Brazilian families to which their status gives them entry. Little social adjustment is needed in such unions, much less than in the case of the marriage of Brazilian girls with foreigners of a totally divergent origin.

The Brazilian girl is said to be precocious, and she is certainly the possessor of tactful manners and distinct aplomb in her early teens. If she is a member of a wealthy family she has generally spent some years in French schools, and it is not unusual to find beautiful young women of nineteen or so who have been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland and England, and who speak four or five languages fluently. All educated Brazilians speak and read French, most of them understand but will not speak English, and nearly all those from the more southerly parts of Brazil have learned German for commercial reasons or have been partly educated in Germany. Educational affiliations with the United States are new, and apply to young men more than to girls; technical training in engineering or trading is sought increasingly in North America for business reasons as commercial exchange develops, but the closely guarded, often conventual training of the girls has a very different aim. The young Brazilian girl is frequently a good horsewoman, for life on a farm is almost sure to be included in the tale of her early years; she is often also a good swimmer. Music is an invariable part of her education on which stress is laid, and I have heard some brilliant executants among Brazilian women. Dressed in the height of Parisian fashions, chic, demure outside her family and full of gay camaraderie with her endless lines of brothers and sisters inside the home, the Brazilian young girl is a very charming creature. She has the loveliest dark eyes in the world, and often possesses a very fine clear pale skin.

Married, she seems to resign herself contentedly to a purely domestic life; one enters homes in Brazil whose handsome hostess entertains delightfully, always exquisitely dressed, and sparkling with the big diamonds that are considered the simple right of every woman in Brazil—my washerwoman in Rio had a pair of brilliant earrings that cost three contos of reis, representing her life’s savings—but this same smiling hostess will never be seen outside her spacious home and gardens, except upon the formal occasions when she is obliged to make an appearance in public with her husband. She not infrequently displays a tendency to embonpoint early in life, the result of lack of exertion and the eating of the extraordinary and delicious doces (sweets and candies), the creation of which is a special art of Brazilian women, but she does not mind this at all, fearing a thin figure as the most terrible of disasters in this land where the highest compliment paid to a woman is: “How pretty and fat you are getting!” Gorda and bonita are indeed interchangeable terms.

She accepts her destiny as a mother of many children, and generally spoils them badly, at least in their infancy; the father is equally indulgent. A harsh parent is a rara avis, and nothing excites popular indignation in Brazil more than any story of hardship in which children are concerned. Passionately devoted to her babies, the Brazilian mother stays within her home, is the gracious sovereign of her circle, and seems little disturbed when it expands notably. This expansion is likely to happen if any relative either on her side or her husband’s falls upon evil days; in that case he will come with his family and camp out until fortune smiles again. There is no turning of the cold shoulder upon poor relations in Brazil—they are welcome to a share of the family fare, and to hammock space if beds are lacking in the case of poorer homes, secure in the knowledge that they in turn will repay this good deed with similar ones later on. The city centres have of course their more rigid social laws, but in the less restricted life of smaller towns or fazendas there is often encountered another variation from the harsher rules of some other lands: this is the placid acceptance into a home of children who do not claim the mistress of the house as mother, but who receive from her bed and board and a status little inferior to that of her own babies, regular members of society. Lapses from social law occur all over the world; they are punished to a greater or lesser degree everywhere, but in some countries the innocent suffer more than the guilty; unhappy and unwanted children bear a stigma against which they rebel in vain. Brazilian opinion does not spare offenders, but it does withhold any harsh hand from innocent children. Acknowledged and treated with affection, they are given a chance in life together with the more fortunate.

Life in the two chief cities of Brazil, Rio and São Paulo, takes its hue from the European capitals with which they are closely in touch, and from which they have derived mental food for many a generation. There is little about either of these fine cities, apart from the hot summers, the brilliant vegetation, their remarkable cleanliness and the Southern Cross overhead, to distinguish them from European cities; the clothes, amusements, buildings, and literature of the population is predominantly European, and there is not much to remind the visitor that he is in tropical South America. Rio is the “intellectual centre” of Brazil, and here are gathered the scores of good writers and poets, the artists and politicians, of the country; there is a profuse and characteristic literature. If the North American writer was correct in saying that “American literature is only a phase of English literature,” he would have been equally justified in saying that South American literature is a phase of French literature: yet in Brazil this would have less truth than in most parts of Latin America, because this country has so largely developed a series of writers who take native Brazilian life for their theme. There are long lists of Brazilian novels and poems which really reflect Brazil conditions in the very varied sections of the country; I know no other South American country whose literature is so emancipated, not from French style so much as from European subject matter. There is for instance the excellent work of the Visconde de Taunay, whose charming Innocencia is a picture of interior conditions, and has been translated into almost every language, not excepting Japanese. The books of José de Alencar form another series of provincial pictures; Machado de Assis wrote a number of historical novels of great merit and interest; Coelho Netto, Aluisio de Azevedo, J. M. de Macedo, Xavier Marques, are among a score of names of writers who have left records of Brazilian life. If I were advising the study of a brief list of such novels, this would be a preliminary dozen:—

Innocencia: by the Visconde de Taunay. Novel of fazenda life in the interior—a delicate and touching story.

Os Sertões: by Euclydes da Cunha. Powerful and vivid description of a page of national history, with a setting in the interior Brazilian uplands.

O Sertão: by Coelho Netto. Scene also laid in the interior, with its simple customs.

O Mulato: Aluisio de Azevedo. Deals with the position of the negro half-caste in Brazil.

O Gaucho: José de Alencar. Life of the Brazilian cowboy.

Os Praieiros: Xavier Marques. Life of the fisherfolk on islands near Bahia.

O Paroara: Rodolpho Theophilo. Exodus of the Cearenses to the rubber forests of the Amazon.

Maria Dusá: Lindolpho Rocha. Story of diamond hunters in the interior of Bahia.

Braz Cubas and Quincas Borba: Machado de Assis. Historical novels dealing with colonial life.

Esphynge: Afranio Peixoto. Social life of Rio and Petropolis, or Dentro da Noite or Vida Vertiginosa, by “João do Rio,” also social life of the Capital.

There are also the finely written novels of Brazil’s woman writer, Julia Lopez de Almeida, whose Fallencia is a very skilful piece of work; and no study of Brazilian life would be complete without José Verissimo’s Scenas da Vida Amazonica, preserving tales and legends of the Amazon, and the kindly Memorias da Rua do Ouvidor, of J. M. de Macedo, telling tales of the early days of Rio de Janeiro.

Poets are many. The “Prince of Brazilian poets,” acclaimed by public vote, is Olavo Bilac, whose Via Lactea is a beautiful work: he is one of the most distinguished members of the Academia Brasileira, whose President is the publicist and orator of international fame, Senator Ruy Barbosa.

Olavo Bilac is something more than a poet; he has recently made it his mission to sound a “call to arms,” addressed to Brazilian young men, with the object of bringing about physical and moral improvement through military service. His addresses in the capitals in 1915 made a great stir: he later, in the middle of 1916, began a tour of Brazil, penetrating into interior regions as well as visiting coast towns, to repeat his appeal. A most admired and beloved poet, Bilac has prestige which few other people could bring to such a self-appointed task.

After Bilac comes Alberto de Oliveira, and a long list of other dexterous versifiers; many produce charming poems, and he who wishes to have an acquaintance with classical Brazilian verse must read the output of Gonçalves Dias, who took the life of the Indians for his theme, as well as that of the lyric writer Gonzaga and the graceful Claudio da Costa.

Brazil also has a national stage. I know of no play of first-class importance, but there is an active supply of native Brazilian actors and actresses, and if their work is generally that of playing in the home-made revistas, and if these revistas are not very high art, at least they are genuinely Brazilian, and often extremely amusing. I suppose that on the stage, as in the pages of the Brazilian press, there is a limit beyond which the libel law would become active, but I cannot imagine where it is drawn; the audience rocks with laughter when well-known political personages are caricatured upon the stage—as they are lampooned in the press—and no notice appears to be taken of whatever alludes to matters of intimate family concern. Nobody in the public eye is exempt, and the result is that Brazil possesses a lively, home-made stage which is at least a beginning in dramatic craft.

Brazil has an exuberant press. There is a large number of dailies and weeklies in proportion to the population, many of the smaller journals existing to serve the purposes of some special movement, colony, or party, and there are many technical periodicals of varying merit. Grace, pungency and a frequently merciless frankness are the chief characteristics of the free-lance sections of the Brazilian press, although there are certain staid and conservative journals whose dignity never deserts them. The first of all Brazilian newspapers was a little sheet started in Rio, soon after the arrival of Dom João, by Frey Tiburcio; it was practically a Court Journal. Two of its notable antagonists later on were the Tamoyo and the Sentinella. All of these early periodicals died a natural death, the newspaper of longest continual publication in Brazil being the Diario de Pernambuco.

The premier newspaper in Brazil, which is also perhaps the best in South America, although it has a formidable rival in the Argentine, is “o velho,” the famous Jornal do Commercio, the semi-official, powerful, wealthy, and most excellent daily of Rio, with a circulation all over Brazil and reaching out as well to most parts of the educated world. It is a great paper in all senses of the word, is finely printed—this great sheet, often with thirty-two and sometimes eighty big pages, eight columns wide, printed in a language requiring the “til,” “cedilla,” acute and circumflex accents, constantly employed, comes out day after day almost without any typographical errors. Its reviews of commercial affairs are made with authority; it is remarkable for having no editorials, anything that needs to be said editorially appearing in the “Varias Noticias;” months may pass without this column containing more than chronicles of official acts and movements, but when the Jornal is moved to speak its voice comes in no uncertain tone. Its denunciations and pronouncements are discussed like a Papal Edict in the Middle Ages.

Anyone who reads the Jornal day by day, with its pages of European telegrams, its excellent letters from world capitals, its fine literary and political essays, its Publicações a pedido where every kind of public or private matter is thrashed out, often to the great entertainment of the reader, knows everything that is going on in Brazil, is well up in European news, but will hear only faint echoes coming from North America and these as a rule only when some distinguished Brazilian happens to be travelling there, and cables are sent south dealing with his sayings and doings. When I have enquired the reason for this lack of news from North America the reply has generally been that the news services are responsible: that the arrangements made with certain European agencies cannot be duplicated. It seems as if this is a matter needing thoughtful attention, for it is obvious that the Brazilian cannot be so deeply interested in a country about which he hears practically nothing as about others which present even trivial domestic news to him in long cables every day. The same lack occurs, of course, in the United States in regard to Brazil; if accurate, frequent information were disseminated we should not read that “in the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, in Brazil, the entire population subsists on bananas as food and are famous for their strength and endurance,” or that (an item of early October, 1916) “the Brazilian coffee crop is estimated at 11,000,000 bags, the greatest ever harvested and three million bags bigger than last year’s crop,” nor should we see the “Girl from Brazil” represented upon a New York stage dressed, and comporting herself, much like a Carmen, and speaking Spanish; or read tales repeated in the press of the “little republic of Coanani” near the Guiana boundary in Brazil which has “sent its army to fight on the side of the Allies.” With the United States as Brazil’s best customer, and, at least for the present, Brazil’s greatest supplier, there should be better channels of interchange not only of information but ideas; there should be room for a Brazilian journal in New York—there is one in Paris—and for a Bureau of Information with exhibits, something on the lines of the existing Bureau in the French capital, where Brazilian hardwoods, cotton, precious stones, fibres, ores, etc., are on view. The Pan-American Union, as well as other organizations and publications with the Pan-American object in view, do sincere and arduous work which has borne much industrial and social fruit, but their labours are necessarily spread over a great field: nor can Consuls do everything, however energetic. Brazilian interchange with North America is quite important and promising enough to merit a special news service.

Other strong Brazilian newspapers published in Rio are O Paiz, O Imparcial, O Correio da Manhã issued in the morning, with a host, including A Platea, A Tarde, O Noite and the afternoon edition of the Jornal do Commercio, issued any time after mid-day: the latter has had a wonderful war-review series of articles running since 1914. Very many papers of the Brazilian press, like the major part of the non-German Brazilian people, are strongly pro-Ally, and particularly pro-French, and have no hesitation in declaring their feelings, as witness the “Liga Brasileira pelos Alliados” formed by some of the foremost men of the country, but in the case of the war articles of the afternoon Jornal there was a serious attempt at impartiality. It was possible thus to read first a criticism of the war-telegrams of the day showing that a distinct advantage had accrued to the Allies, while printed just below would be another analysis by a second contributor, demonstrating that the news was distinctly favourable to the Teutonic forces.

Also published in Rio are many technical papers, medical and engineering periodicals, etc., and some of the gay illustrated weeklies of very free speech, as O Malho, A Careta, Fon-Fon; also the Revista da Semana, a society paper. There are French, Italian and German papers, but the great home of a polyglot press is São Paulo, with its groups of immigrants. Here the oldest Brazilian paper is the Correio Paulistano, sixty years established, a daily morning paper; another in the same class and perhaps the most widely read is the Estado de São Paulo, while the Commercio de São Paulo^[5] also has a high reputation. The Estado runs an afternoon edition, and there are many other evening papers—the Diario Popular, Naçao, Gazeta, etc. For the Italian population there is the daily morning Fanfulla, the afternoon Giornale degli Italiani and the weekly Italiano. Germans have the morning Diario Alemão and the weekly Germania. Two French weeklies seem to do well, the Messager de S. Paul, and the Courrier Français. There is a Spanish Diario Español, two Turkish papers, and in the colonies outside the city there are said to be Russian and Japanese sheets published. The city of S. Paulo counts eighty journals, the State counting over two hundred dailies and weeklies.

Rio and S. Paulo are the two chief literary centres, but every town of any size in Brazil has its newspaper. Of these perhaps the most important are the Pernambuco papers; the Diario de Pernambuco, already mentioned, bears the proud inscription of its age in conspicuous lettering on the front of its building in a square in Recife; it is a very good paper, and so is the Jornal do Recife, among several other daily sheets. Bahia has the Diario de Bahia and Diario de Noticias, amongst others, and the State Press here also publishes daily an excellent Diario Official.

Pará has quite a variety of papers, the Estado de Pará and the Folha do Norte probably the two most powerful. Manáos also supports several newspapers, of which the Jornal do Commercio and O Tempo appear to be most widely read.

Many imported foreign periodicals have a ready sale in Brazil, as the French L’Illustration, many Portuguese publications, and the Blanco y Negro of Madrid; nearly all the English serious reviews and illustrated weeklies are sold, and there is an increasing demand for illustrated North American periodicals of good class. Altogether Brazil has a remarkably cosmopolitan class of readers and therefore a cosmopolitan press.

Almost all the Brazilian authors of note have, at one time or another, contributed to the great Jornal do Commercio; this is really the cradle of much fine writing. Founded in 1827, it is today housed in a splendid building on the corner of the famous Rua do Ouvidor and the Avenida Rio Branco, the building and press equipment costing over half a million dollars.

Linked with the life of the Jornal for the last twenty-five years is that of José Carlos Rodrigues, Director from 1890 until his retirement in 1915; a great student and great organizer, possessed of international prestige, José Carlos was the moving spirit of the newspaper for a generation. He is one of the eminent figures in modern Brazilian life. At seventy-two years of age he is completing his Vida de Jesus, fruit of long years of research.

José Carlos Rodrigues is one of the constructive Brazilians. There have been many others, as the great Andrada brothers, Campos Salles, the Visconde de Rio Branco and his son, the Barão; Varnhagen (Visconde de Porto Seguro), politician and historian; Joaquim Nabuco, writer, ambassador, and instigator of slavery abolition—as were also several fine men still alive, as Rodrigues Alves, the great Paulista.

Of modern Brazilians to whom the country owes a debt there are none with more claim to gratitude than Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who banished yellow fever from coast towns once notorious for their unhealthiness, and Colonel Rondon, who has devoted his life to the opening-up of the Brazilian interior, and besides mapping, charting, and creating telegraphic communication throughout the hinterlands of Matto Grosso, has brought whole tribes of wild Indians into civilized ways of living.

Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social conditions, that of the Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy Barbosa said the other day, “Americans are descendants not of Apaches, but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins.” The Indian admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical hardihood. The extreme south of Brazil, as we have already seen, has had during the last century an enormous influx of European white blood other than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Germanic, while all the large coast cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In the interior of the northern promontory a noticeable feature is the blonde average of the population, partly an inheritance from the days of Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the groups of unhappy retirantes from the drought districts, encountered in the streets of Pará and Manáos, waiting for shelter and work, there are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue eyes who might have come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany.

On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there is another very strong admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but occasionally the cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says frankly that the European was not, in early colonial days, “strong enough to repel the native savage and cultivate the soil, and so resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa ... the ally of the white men.” He calls the negro “a robust civilizing element,” and says that from the close association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood descendants, who constitute today “the mass of our population and the chief beauty of our race.”

“Still today,” he declares, “the most beautiful feminine types are these agile, strong, brown-skinned girls with black eyes and hair, in whose veins run, although well diluted, many drops of African blood.... The coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our statesmen, and he spoke truth; the negro has influenced all our intimate life and many of our customs are transmitted from him. It is sufficient to remember that the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the cozinha bahiana, is entirely African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature of ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this energetic race should have suffered the brand of slavery; we should make a vow to revindicate its place in our history. There are means of utilizing the negro without degrading him.”

Sylvio Romero adds that “all the first-class people of Brazil have white blood, either pure or mingled with that of another race,” but that the white element should do justice to the degree to which the black has been a mental, political, economic and social factor. He traces, in a little book of which I found a stray copy on a bookstall in Manáos market, the negro element in the folklore of Brazil (Contos Populares, Rio de Janeiro) as well as that of the native Indian, and makes the point that both Indian and negro are “inarticulate” in Brazilian society, except through the medium of a language foreign to their ideas, Portuguese, which has undoubtedly coloured their mental expression. These Folk-tales of Sylvio Romero’s collection, as well as those preserved by Couto de Magalhães in his Selvagem, are delightful tales, many hinging upon the adventures of various wild animals, and frequently displaying a decided streak of humour not unlike that of the “Uncle Remus” negro tales of North America.

At least one negro poet of Brazil has a claim to fame—Cruz e Souza; the sculptor Pinheiro was also chiefly of African blood; José de Patrocinio, who worked hard for the abolition of slavery and stood by the chair of Princess Isabel when she signed the decree of freedom, was an able and eloquent negro writer. Altogether, the debt of Brazil to the strong African races appears to be quite as important, if not much more so, than that owed to the Tupi-Guarani and other “Indian” tribes of native Brazil. Fleeing from before the hard hand of the white man, the Indian as a separate social element has disappeared from those parts of Brazil brought into touch with modern life.

This native Brazilian, the “Indian” of the coasts, inland plains, and forest-bordered rivers who lived in the country before Portuguese possession, has left no traces of civilization comparable with that of the Incas or pre-Incas of the north-west of South America, or with the culture of the Maya of Central America and their pupils and conquerors, the Aztecs. Only in the north, along the Amazonian river highway connecting with Peru are there remains of ceramic art, and survivals of weaving skill, which denote marked attainments by a people with settled homes and defined social habits.

The Museo Goldi at Pará is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and much dug from burial grounds on the great island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon; Marajó has a lake which in turn shelters an island which has proved a mine for the archaeologist—and none too respectfully treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been more occupied in acquiring loot than in making historical records. This island in the lake appears to have served for a burial ground of tribes with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good artistic design; there is a very noticeable resemblance between certain of these Marajó pottery specimens, especially the smaller jars and domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central America.

To the present day the Amazon Indians have preserved their skill in weaving native fibres; hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with elaborate feather devices worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices reaching several hundred milreis. Both the Museum in Pará and that in Rio de Janeiro, begun by Dom Pedro and housed in his one-time palace, contain beautiful specimens of Indian feather work, the exquisite pinks, blues and greens of Brazilian birds lending themselves to the gay effect. Allied in race, apparently, to handsome, stocky natives of British Guiana, the Amazon Indian often has a skin of a cinnamon tint, is physically strong so long as he is not called upon for regular and confined labour, is a good waterman and archer, and is not inimical while he is allowed to remain undisturbed in his forests. If it were not necessary to enlist his help or enter his retreats, his effect upon Brazilian modern social conditions would be nil; there was a time when Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that period is past, although the effect of the former survives in the fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that resulted was able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably could not have done.