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THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
BRAZIL— WHERE ALL, NATURE SMILES, AND THE SOFT AIRS
SLEEP IN THE PALM TREES
THE BRAZILIANS
AND THEIR COUNTRY
BY
CLAYTON SEDGWICK COOPER
WITH MAP AND MANY ILI.tlSTRATIOMS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
GIFT OP
i>Coi\ Nash
^.rrr..- EARTH
Bcas SCIEMCE3
PSINTSD BY
THE BURR PRINTING HOUSE
U. S. A.
PREFACE
The purpose of this book is to present a somewhat
comprehensive idea of the life and work of the present-
day Brazilians. As no people can be known without a
knowledge of the land in which they dwell, and also of
the historical sources from which they have drawn their
traditions and customs, attention has been given to the
character of the largest of the South American Repub-
lics, and to the debt that Brazil owes to Europe, espe-
cially to Portugal, for its growth and development.
It is the common impression of those who visit Brazil,
that here a natural stage is set for a great world drama.
Already the curtain has fallen upon the two first acts,
the Colonial and the Imperial periods. In the year 1889,
the curtain began to raise on the third great modern Re-
publican scene. It disclosed members of almost every
nationality extant among the players. The background
of national temperament is not radically different, but
the foreground is filled with the denizens of a new Brazil
— races of men blending into a new amalgam, under the
fires of new activities. It is a fascinating picture of men
becoming conscious of themselves, and aware for the first
time of the almost unlimited physical and industrial
riches of a gigantic country.
The Brazilians of to-day are awake and moving for-
w^ard. As "VValt Whitman once said of Americans :
"They go! They go! I know that they go, but I know not
where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best — toward some-
thing great."
V
M130736
vi PREFACE
It goes almost without saying that a book record-
ing impressions, with some attempt at interpretation,
written by a North American of any people in South
America, lacks what Mr. Clemons would call the ' ' uncon-
scious absorption" that a lifetime of residence in a coun-
try affords. Nevertheless in a period when territorial
barriers are being so rapidly dissolved and when national
and social conditions are being so deeply stirred by the
greatest human conflict of all the ages, isolation and
localism are no longer possible for any thoughtful or
patriotic citizen. To-day truly, the whole world is a stage
and all men are players, and any attempt to make any
part of this world citizenship more clear or meaningful
finds a new audience of interested beholders. It is my
hope that this book may add something to the knowledge
and understanding of a people who share with us a large
and very important portion of the Western Continent,
but of whose existence we, as a nation, have been in the
past strangely unfamiliar.
My indebtedness to Brazilians, to foreigners resident
in Brazil, and to a wide circle of men and women who
have helped me in many ways in connection with this
book, is gratefully acknowledged.
Clayton Sedgwick Cooper.
Westcolang, Pa.
July 1st, 1917. %,
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface v
CHAPTER I
Mental Hospitality 1
A trait needed to understand Latin America — Historical con-
trasts with United States — Traces of visit of Elihu Eoot —
The two Americas as complements of each other — Reasons
for lack of contact — Competition with the English and Ger-
man trader — Too little attention to a strong diplomatic serv-
ice — Present agencies to eliminate ignorance of Latia Amer-
ica.
CHAPTER II
Brazilian Traits 16
Danger in sweeping generalisations — What Brazilians say of
themselves — Hospitality and conservatism — Traces of the roy-
alist — Slavery and Constitutionalism — State pride, Portu-
guese language and individualistic culture — Officialdom —
* ' Boom ' ' crops — Absence of colour lines — The new type in
the making — Domestic conditions.
CHAPTER III
Portugal and Brazil 28
Portuguese inheritances — Early settlers contrasted with Pil-
grim fathers and Spanish American adventurers — The de-
scendants of heroic discoverers and knights of chivalry — Por-
tuguese poetry — Attitude of Brazilians toward the mother-
country— -Sacredness of old family ideals — The contribution
of the Jesuits — The effect of the strong immigration from
Portugal in the beginning of the sixteenth century — The Por-
tuguese contesting with the Indians and Europe for Brazil —
The Capitanias of King Joao III — The settlements of French
Huguenots, the first Protestant colony in the New World —
Brazil's evolutionary struggle for Independence — Opening
of Brazilian ports — Influence of the French Revolution —
Prince Regent Dom John VI bringing the Royal Court of
Portugal to Brazil — Imperialism and democracy do not mix —
The bloodless revolution and the young Brazilian ruler.
Prince Dom Pedro I.
CHAPTER IV
The Brazilian Empire 46
' ' Independencia ou Morte, ' ' watchword of the Brazilian Rev-
olution — The birth of democracy in Brazil — Brazil's Boston
Tea Party in a coffee city — A Government * ' Monarchical,
hereditary, constitutional and representative" — Contrast
vii
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
with Mexican constitutionalism — The Emperor versus the
Eepublicans — A fateful night — The farewell of the "Wash-
ington of Brazil" — Dom Pedro II and his forty-eight years
of benevolent emperorhood — Industry and commerce awak-
ening — Dr. Ruy Barbosa's reasons for the last bloodless
political upheaval bringing in the Republic — Dom Pedro's
"place in history."
CHAPTER V
The Orientalism of Brazil 59
The conquering of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century
by the Moors— Signs of Orientalism in treatment of women,
family clans, hospitality, love of colour and display, form and.
etiquette — Attitude to deportment different than in North
America — "Manners maketh men" — Eastern mental traits —
Attitude to labour — Oriental regard of poetry politics and lit-
erary excellence — Eastern freedom seen in treatment of so-
cial engagements — Beauty and pleasure before business — ^A
needful counterpart to our civilisation of ' ' efficiency. ' '
CHAPTER VI
Republican Government 74
No two Republics alike in traditions and beginnings — United
States compared with Brazil as a Republic — Too much satire
concerning South American Revolutions — Government in tran-
sition — Three notable decades of representative Government
— Some "splendid names" of Brazilians — The weak side of
politics in Brazil — The powers of the Federal Government —
Positivism and the Republic — Absence of political parties —
Separation of Church and State — Need of ballot reform —
Dominance of old families in politics — States Rights — The
Constitution, modelled on that of the United States, beginning
to march.
CHAPTER VII
A Leviathan Country 91
Brazil's size and natural resources demand a peculiar destiny
— A land of vast areas of unoccupied territory, without des-
erts, with unexampled water-courses and all the climates save
that of the frigid zone — The Amazon Valley as a future cat-
tle country — Variety of productivity — The cry of Brazil,
' ' Give us men to match our country ! ' ' — The North American
opportunity for investment — Capital more eloquent than Mon-
roe Doctrines.
CHAPTER VIII
Education 100
No nation-wide laws for compulsory education — The learned
professions of law, medicine and pharmacy carry prestige —
No university and no graduate schools — Students go abroad
to finish education — Special need of primary education to
combat illiteracy which is 70% of the total population — Ef-
fect of Portuguese traditions and slavery on the school-life —
Monastic schools — Modern education inaugurated in 1808 —
Revolutionised in 1878 — Abolishing degrees as undemocratic
— Government control of schools — Broad and liberal profes-
sional training — Sao Paulo leading educational cohorts — En-
CONTENTS ix
PAGB
gineering, military, and arts and crafts institutions popular —
Schools of foreign missions — Characteristics of students —
Practical and technical training needed to meet growing in-
dustrialism — Students returning from abroad bring new vi-
sions — Generalisation strong — Application of knowledge
needs strengthening.
CHAPTER IX
Brazilian Home Life 118
The nation revealed in the home — Brazilian home making com-
pared with English and Teuton — Moorish influences seen in
partial seclusion of women — Homes vary with the diverse
sections — An ethnological congeries — Influence of foreign
marriages — The Brazilian woman, wife and mother — Middle-
class homes in the making — No modern fads — Training of
children — Amusements and outings — Bachelors so rare as to
be almost suspicious characters — Anniversaries — Coffee and
not spirits the reigning beverage — Attitude of men toward
the home, Latin, not Anglo-Saxon — Men's clubs — High pre-
mium placed on relatives and f rienda
CHAPTER X
The Triumph of the Engineer 132
Dr. Frederick Pearson, and his contribution to Brazilian en-
gineering — The transformation of mule cars and gas plants
to electric traction and incandescents — The romance and real-
ity of electric energy applied to Sao Paulo and Rio de Ja-
neiro since 1900 — The people said, "nao pode" (you can't
do it) — The Federal Government granting rights in 1905 to
The Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company
Limited — The first electric car in Sao Paulo — The first great
light and power service in South America — Seventeen years
of accomplishment — Brazilian co-operation and progressive-
ness — American leadership — Kind of men needed for such en-
terprises in Brazil — A great gas plant — Labour problems —
Telephone systems.
CHAPTER XI
Seeing Rio de Janeiro by Tramway 147
If you would know a people study their tram-car behaviour —
Brazilian politeness in public — Street-transportation, ancient
and modern in the Federal Capital — Sightseeing by tramways
— As democratic as a Parisian omnibus — Femininity at the
windows of Brazilian houses — Tropical splendours — Where the
"bond" cars take the traveller — "If there be a paradise on
earth, it is here, it is here ! ' '
CHAPTER XII
Electric Energy Transforming Brazil 161
Thomas Edison 's prayer — Electricity the servant of usefulness
and beauty — No electric lights in Bio de Janeiro in 1905 ; now
the best electrically lighted city in the world — How it waa
accomplished — Lages, the dynamo of hydraulic power — The
beauty of the Brazilian lake-country — Mountain rain-fall — In
the land of power houses and transmission lines — A great
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
with Mexican constitutionalism — The Emperor versus the
Eepublicans — A fateful night — The farewell of the "Wash-
ington of Brazil" — Dom Pedro II and his forty-eight years
of benevolent emperorhood — Industry and commerce awak-
ening — Dr. Euy Barbosa's reasons for the last bloodless
political upheaval bringing in the Eepublic — Dom Pedro 'a
"place in history."
CHAPTEE V
The Orientalism of Brazil 59
The conquering of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century
by the Moor»— -Signs of Orientalism in treatment of women,
family clans, hospitality, love of colour and display, form and.
etiquette — Attitude to deportment different than in North
America — "Manners maketh men" — Eastern mental traits —
Attitude to labour — Oriental regard of poetry politics and lit-
erary excellence — Eastern freedom seen in treatment of so-
cial engagements — Beauty and pleasure before business — A
needful counterpart to our civilisation of "efficiency."
CHAPTEE VI
Eepubucan Government 74
No two EepubUcs alike in traditions and beginnings — United
States compared with Brazil as a Eepublic — Too much satire
concerning South American Eevolutions — Government in tran-
sition — Three notable decades of representative Government
— Some "splendid names" of Brazilians — The weak side of
politics in Brazil — The powers of the Federal Government —
Positivism and the Eepublic — Absence of political parties —
Separation of Church and State — Need of ballot reform —
Dominance of old families in polities — States Eights — The
Constitution, modelled on that of the United States, beginning
to march.
CHAPTEE VII
A Leviathan Country 91
Brazil's size and natural resources demand a peculiar destiny
— A land of vast areas of unoccupied territory, without des-
erts, with unexampled water-courses and all the climates save
that of the frigid zone — The Amazon Valley as a future cat-
tle country — Variety of productivity — The cry of Brazil,
' * Give us men to match our country ! ' ' — The North American
opportunity for investment — Capital more eloquent than Mon-
roe Doctrines.
CHAPTEE VIII
Education 100
No nation-wide laws for compulsory education — The learned
professions of law, medicine and pharmacy carry prestige — ■
No university and no graduate schools — Students go abroad
to finish education — Special need of primary education to
combat illiteracy which is 70% of the total population — Ef-
fect of Portuguese traditions and slavery on the school-life —
Monastic schools — Modern education inaugurated in 1808 —
Eevolutionised in 1878 — Abolishing degrees as undemocratic
— Government control of schools — Broad and liberal profes-
sional training — Sao Paulo leading educational cohorts — En-
CONTENTS ix
PAGE
gineering, military, and arts and crafts institutions popular —
Schools of foreign missions — Characteristics of students —
Practical and technical training needed to meet growing in-
dustrialism — Students returning from abroad bring new vi-
sions — Generalisation strong — Application of knowledge
needs strengthening.
CHAPTER IX
Brazilian Home Life o 118
The nation revealed in the home — Brazilian home making com-
pared with English and Teuton — Moorish influences seen in
partial seclusion of women — Homes vary with the diverse
sections — An ethnological congeries — Influence of foreign
marriages — The Brazilian woman, wife and mother — Middle-
class homes in the making — No modern fads — Training of
children — Amusements and outings — Bachelors so rare as to
be almost suspicious characters — Anniversaries — Coffee and
not spirits the reigning beverage — Attitude of men toward
the home, Latin, not Anglo-Saxon — Men's clubs — High pre-
mium placed on relatives and friends.
CHAPTER X
The Triumph of the Engineer 132
Dr. Frederick Pearson, and his contribution to Brazilian en-
gineering — The transformation of mule cars and gas plants
to electric traction and incandescents — The romance and real-
ity of electric energy applied to Sao Paulo and Rio de Ja-
neiro since 1900 — The people said, "nao pode" (you can't
do it) — The Federal Government granting rights in 1905 to
The Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Company
Limited — The first electric car in Sao Paulo — The first great
light and power service in South America — Seventeen years
of accomplishment — Brazilian co-operation and progressive-
ness — American leadership — Kind of men needed for such en-
terprises in Brazil — A great gas plant — Labour problems —
Telephone systems.
CHAPTER XI
Seeing Rio de Janeiro by Tramvfay 147
If you would know a people study their tram-car behaviour —
Brazilian politeness in public — Street-transportation, ancient
and modern in the Federal Capital — Sightseeing by tramways
— As democratic as a Parisian omnibus — Femininity at the
windows of Brazilian houses — Tropical splendours — Where the
"bond" cars take the traveller — ^"If there be a paradise on
earth, it is here, it is here ! ' '
CHAPTER XII
Electric Energy Transforming Brazil 161
Thomas Edison 's prayer — Electricity the servant of usefulness
and beauty — No electric lights in Rio de Janeiro in 1905 ; now
the best electrically lighted city in the world — How it was
accomplished — Lages, the dynamo of hydraulic power — The
beauty of the Brazilian lake-country — Mountain rain-fall — In
the land of power houses and transmission lines — A great
X CONTENTS
PAGE
dam and a great tunnel — "Fazenda" and Brazilian country
life in the matta — Fifty miles of pipe-lines — Fighting the
Brazilian mosquito — Team-play in a big business family.
CHAPTER XIII
The Racial Melting Pot 178
Colonisation vicissitudes and victories — The Europeanisation
of Brazil — Early Portuguese colonists and their racial mix-
tures with Brazilian Indians, African Negroes and Euro-
pean immigrants — Influence of the Catholic Church doctrines
—Feudal aristocracy — The evolution from medieval condi-
tions — Absentee landlordism — Colonisation becoming serious
in the last half century — The strong and flourishing German
colonies in South Brazil — Things seen in German-Brazilian
towns and cities — The one and a half million Italians in Bra-
zil — Colonisation by other nationalities — Mixed marriages
with colonists — Government, State and railway colonisation,
laws, propaganda and the results — Visiting colonies on horse-
back along the lines of the Brazil Railways — Agriculture
— Moving crops — Conditions similar to those in the United
States, fifty years ago.
CHAPTER XIV
In the Land of the Paulistas 195
Arriving in Brazil at Santos, the coffee port — The Santos and
Sao Paulo Railway — Sao Paulo the "Voice of the South" —
Population, property and progress — The military and police
— A bit of history — The Automobile Club where successful
business men and gamesters are synonymous — The stimula-
tion of coffee in the Paulista State — Visiting coffee farms —
Brazilian coffee, how it came to Brazil, and how it is grown
and exported — Cattle breeding as a side issue on the fazenda
— Sao Paulo the land of vast water power — A description of
the way this energy has been harnessed to light the cities elec-
trically and run the power plants — Industrious, scientific, lib-
erty-loving Paulistas, the "Yankees of Brazil."
CHAPTER XV
The Awakening of Southern Brazil 213
The Indians of the Brazilian forests — Water-roads giving way
to railroads and woods to waving cornfields — The riches of
Parana, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul — An inter-
view with the President of the State of Parana — Fighting the
men of the ' ' bush ' ' — A visit at a big lumber camp — Business
openings — Suspicions of towns where every one speaks Ger-
man — Ranching lands — Brazilian Gauchos, or cowboys — The
world's great future cattle country — Frigorificos — Manufac-
tures — Agriculture, the coming "Middle West" — Brazilian
farmers and plainsmen — The notable Cattle Congress — A
ranch-man's home — Greater cattle possibilities in Rio Grande
do Sul and Matto Grosso than in Argentina.
CHAPTER XVI
Trade and Transportation 232
The United States Steel Corporation as an American steam-
ship pioneer for trade with Brazil — North American favor-
CONTENTS xi
PAGE
able geographical advantages for Brazilian commerce — Reci-
procity of products — Patriotism as well as good business to
build merchant ships for South American trade — What Europe
has been doing — Her steamship lines with Brazil — * ' Give us
ships ! ' ' the cry from Panama to Patagonia, from Patagonia
to Para — ' ' Vain regrets ' ' — Brazilian coastwise shipping —
Passenger and freight service by European lines to all parts
of the Old World — Eiver transportation — Brazilian railroads,
history and problems — The "intoxicating influence of space"
— Co-ordination needed — Inter-state and transcontinental plans
— Railroads double mileage since 1900 — Easy money from
Europe — After the War, What? — The Government railroads
— Roads organised and managed by foreigners — Travelling
over three thousand miles of the Brazil Railway in Southern
Brazil — Diverse enterprises carried on by railroads — The de-
sire for foreign capital — Future trade limited only by trans-
portation facilities.
CHAPTER XVII
Outdoor Sports and Lotteries 254
Aeroplaning over the Brazilian mountains — ^Water-planes in
the Bay of Rio de Janeiro — Boat-clubs and rowing — Associa-
tion football and horse racing — Influence of English and
Americans in outdoor sports — Motoring, the Brazilian femi-
nine idea of open air exercise — The gambling temper of Latin
America — Lotteries an amusement and also a big business —
Endless varieties of games of chance — The prestige and prac-
tice of the daily Government Lottery — The "Bieho" even
more popular though "illegal" — Gambling clubs — Effect
upon the people — special hardship to the labouring man.
CHAPTER XVIII
Eio DE Janeiro, City o5' Enchantment 267
The discoverer of Brazil — The City and the Bay exert an in-
fluence resembling that of personality — The Bay of Guana-
bara — First impressions — A miracle of natural beauty to which
man has added — Avenida Rio Branco and the great Minister for
whom it was named — An Avenue revealing Brazilian charac-
teristics — The Monroe Palace, modelled from the St. Louis
Exposition, where the Chamber of Deputies meets — Arts and
architecture — The "movies" — Rua Ouvidor is sui generis —
Shops and shoppers — Old Rio with her memories and mist-
stained buildings — Street-vendours — The tropical garments
of a city of seductive charm.
CHAPTER XIX
Bahu, Old and Bizarre 282
A City with a "Past," a century older than Plymouth — Sao
Salvador, the Bay of all Saints, for which Europe fought —
Thome de Souza, the first Governor General — Diogo Alvares,
the Brazilian John Brown — An Indian Princess — The first
Capital of the Brazils, home of aristocracy, seat of the Arch-
bishop, City of Churches — Cocoa and coffee, sugar and to-
bacco — German trade — Climate and population — The Pictur-
esque mulatress — A children 's paradise — Politics, modern city,
and Bahia's future.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Brazil — where all nature smiles, and the soft airs sleep in
the palm trees Frontispiece
Monroe Palace, Rio de Janeiro — •which in the brilliant lights of
evening resembles a beautiful bon bon box, enlarged to fairy
proportions 8
Bahia, the first capital of Brazil 9
In Old Brazil, in slavery days 40
(A) It might be almost anywhere in the Orient. (B) The home
of a new settler in South Brazil 41
Bibliotheca National, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil .... 110
Normal School in the Capital of Sao Paulo Ill
Brazilian Fishers: "But sweeter, Brother, the kiss of the
spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee" . . . 122
Homes of Brazilian laborers about a big "fazenda" . . . 123
(A) The main car station in the old mule-tramway days. (B)
Present car station and main oflBce of the "Rio de Janeiro
Tramway, Light and Power Co., Ltd." .... 134
(A) The Old Rio of Imperial days. (B) The New Rio of the
Republic 135
A full-grown coffee plant 148
Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro — one of the artistic ares of the Bay of
Guanabara 149
Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro, where all Rio comes daily . 158
The Old aqueduct in Rio de Janeiro, upon which the tram-cars
now run 159
The big dam at Lages, over which the Federal Capital receives its
hydraulic energy 170
Lages Fazenda, home of the superintendent of the hydraulic
works of the "Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power
Co., Ltd." 171
XV
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
PACINQ
PAGE
Drying coffee, Sao Paulo 208
(A) Hydro-electric Plant — Lages. Penstock and value house
above; club house of operators below. (B) The State of
Sao Paulo is a land of water power which the "Sao Paulo
Tramway, Light and Power Co., Ltd.," has harnessed for
utilization 209
(A) The home of cattle in South Brazil, the coming cattle coun-
try of the world. (B) Agriculture, slow but sure . . 224
(A) The "Southern Brazil Lumber and Colonization Company"
loading pine logs at Tres Barras, Parana. (B) "The Paran-
aqua railway fairly flings one into the bosom of these virgin
woods" 225
Rio de Janeiro, the City of Enchantment, lying in sunlight on the
feet of her hills 26S
"When other 'visions splendid' of land and sea are forgotten, I
shall recall that panorama from Corcovado, as one who
dreams" 260
A sequestered spot in rural Brazil, where "the busy world's 'un-
ceasing noises' are too far away to be heard or to distract" 29A
Rua do Rosario, Sao Paulo, in 1898 295
A Pemambuco street, where can be seen "workmen carrying on
their assembled heads everything from a small cargo of sugar
to a piano" 310
Mosteiro de S. Bento in Bahia, "The City of Churches" . . 311
The "smoking hut" of the rubber gatherer of the Amazon country 330
(A) Brazil is the "tree" country of South America. (B) The
dripping loveliness of the tropics 331
Inauguration of electric ears in Sao Paulo, May 7, 1900. A time
of municipal rejoicing 372
A tramway station of the "Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and
Power Company, Ltd.," at Largo do Machado Park in the
Federal Capital 373
THE BRAZILIANS AND
THEIR COUNTRY
MENTAL HOSPITALITY
To create a more sympathetic appreciation of the history, the civi-
lisation and the problems of our sister American Republics is our na-
tion's most pressing diplomatic task.
Db. George H. Blakeslee, of Clark University.
The phrase, '* mental hospitality," has been attributed
to Confucius, the Chinese philosopher; it represents a
characteristic of those who come nearest to a successful
existence among the Latin Americans. It is an essential
requirement for understanding the Brazilians.
The phrase signifies a willing desire to know. It in-
volves sympathetic imagination. It represents the op-
posite of preconceived prejudice. It opens the door to
clear and honest understanding. It makes for what
President Butler of Columbia University has called ''the
international mind."
Some years ago in one of the smaller towns of our
Southern States a horse wandered away from its owner
and no one seemed able to locate the animal. After con-
siderable vain searching on the part of the townsmen, a
somewhat simple and naive countryman came forward
and volunteered to find the horse, providing the owner
would tell him where the beast was last seen, and any-
thing he knew regarding the horse's habits. The coun-
1
2 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
trymaa went to the spot where the horse was seen last,
stood in the very horse's tracks, and as the incident was
told to me, closed his eyes and began to repeat to him-
self : ''Now, I'm a horse! I'm a horse! Being a horse
and able to do anything I like, where shall I go!" Then
said the horse-finder, "I thought of that piece of oats
about half a mile from the town, and the hollow just be-
low it out of sight which nobody would think about but a
horse. If I were a horse," soliloquised the farmer, ''I
would go to that patch of oats and eat as much as I could
and then go and lie down in that hollow. I went over
there, and there was the horse 1 ' ' The man easily found
the horse because he put himself in the horse's place.
It was a case of mental hospitality applied horse-ward.
It is this hospitality of the mind and spirit that is most
needed to-day between the two Americas. I know that
we are told that commerce is the life blood of the nation,
but the heart of a nation is more vital even than its blood
and we in the United States do not know the heart of the
Latin people. Their inner intent, their motives, their
customs growing naturally out of their traditions and
history, their ideals and admirations shaped by climate
and environments diverse from our own, are still a sealed
book to most of us here in these United States. We are
gradually getting closer to South Americans in trade,
but trade relations with a people do not necessarily imply
personal acquaintance, any more than courteous defer-
ence implies mutual understanding. Germany traded
widely with the whole world, but her diplomacy and her
policies in connection with the war in Europe did not
signify that she had ever grasped really, either the men-
tal or spiritual point of view of her nearest neighbours.
If she had taken pains to do this, the calamitous tragedy
of all time might have been mitigated, if not prevented.
Therefore I plead at the outset with those who are in-
terested in our relations with Brazil, in many senses the
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 3
greatest and the most important of all the Republics
lying to the south of us, that we endeavour to get ac-
quainted with her in the realm of her deepest springs of
life; that we bring to the subject of our study a mental
reciprocity, and that we set ourselves to that hardest of
tasks, individual or national, — the attempt to fathom
something of the soul of these people without which
knowledge and understanding, trade and political con-
tacts will register only our superficial and temporary
success.
There is first of all the need of clear historical perspec-
tive. It is apparent that we are inclined to seek in all
the Latin American countries for the same conditions
existing in our Northern lands, and we forget that the
streams of beginnings of our respective countries arose
from most diverse sources. Brazil was more fortunate
than some of her South American neighbours, both in the
character and also in the aims of her first settlers and
rulers for the early centuries of her existence. Generally
speaking, however, the Latin American world is one, in
the sharp divergent contrasts from the United States in
racial and colonisation matters.
"While our Northern ''Providential Republic" began
from the very start with men and their families coming
from the old world with deep personal and religious con-
victions, somewhat schooled already in the science of
self-government, Brazil was ruled rather than colonised,
and that by men who knew and cared far more for navi-
gation, adventure, and the spoils of autocratic office,
than for constructive upbuilding of a new country. These
early Portuguese, unlike the Virginians and New Eng-
landers, did not as a rule bring wives and families, but
intermarried with the Indians and later with the negroes,
forming a mestizo and Creole stock, which has not become
a fixed or uniform type, but is tending toward a new
Brazilian strain.
t
4 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
North American religion, inherited from the Pilgrim
Fathers, has shown signs at time of inquisitorial ten-
dencies, and like the Catholic faith of Europe three cen-
turies ago, it has frequently revealed in its sponsors a
stubborn narrowness and a loveless aspect far enough
removed from the Great Founder's life and teachings,
which both faiths have claimed to incorporate ; yet noth-
ing in the darkest annals of witch and heresy hunting of
American Protestantism can compare as a religious heri-
tage with the blinding bigotrj^ and the grasping c^iimer-
cialism which Latin America inherited from the Catholi-
cism of the Middle Ages. The new world priest in Brazil
and her sister colonies was not an unmixed blessing, to
say the least, and the Jesuit, Carmelite, Franciscan and
Dominican religious houses, which exerted for a time cer-
tain civilising influences in the country, grew so rich,
autocratic and despotic, that they were driven from the
land on the wave of a great popular indignation. In their
train has come a long straggling line of half -trained na-
tive priests, who, according to the opinion of many Bra-
zilians, have combined, in country districts especially,
the relics of a medieval mysticism with the superstitions
fostered by the negro nurse and an ignorant clergy.
According to a keen student of things Brazilian, him-
self a Catholic, ** There is all the difference between a
Catholic priest from a European or American seminary,
and a Brazilian parish priest, that you would find be-
tween an Anglican bishop, or a great Protestant preacher
at home, and a. 'wild' untaught missionary from Skow-
hegan working among West Africans."
To understand and appreciate Latin America one must
realise that the people are engaged in an herculean strug-
gle to free themselves from inherited conditions, most of
which were bad. Brazil is striving just now to convert a
population into practical business men whose members
are by nature and training fine orators, cultured debaters,
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 5
theorists and idealists, receiving an inheritance from
their progenitors that aristocracy does not spell ''work,'*
especially commercialism. The things that these intelli-
gent people are doing with their big country, despite such
handicaps of tradition, are worth any man's time to go
and see. It is the testimony of those who have known the
Brazilians best, that if a larger proportion of our coun-
trymen could be brought into personal contact with the
high-minded, cultured and thoughtful gentlemen of this
country (and there is no more finished product of pol-
ished gentlemanhood with which we are acquainted in
any part of the world than the Brazilian as he exists
to-day at the summit of his society) : could our scholars
and our best men in public life, who are not first of all
interested in selling something, visit these people as we
visit Europeans, there would be new light cast upon
American-Brazilian relationships.
If more Brazilians, like Judge Amaro Calvacanti and
Dr. Ruy Barbosa and Dr. Jose Carlos Rodrigues, could
make us extended visits, and if we could send in return
to Brazil more of the type of men resembling Elihu Root,
whose tour through Latin America a few years ago did
more to make real friends for us than tons of our flatter-
ing literature have since accomplished, if the great per-
sonalities of the two countries could really become ac-
quainted, it would be a long stride in enthroning mutual,
mental hospitality.
It was interesting-to^ me-to hear some men of Bahia, 4h©-
-el4-4)icturesque city and former Brazilian Gapitai; de-
scribe Mr. Root's visit. In characteristic and comfor-
table American fashion, our former Secretary of State
landed from his steamer, dressed in a light sack suit
and straw hat. The tropics would suggest such costume
if it had not been our national summer dress. Bahian
officialdom was at the wharf to meet him, funereally
clothed but in their right minds with frock coats and
6 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
shining silk hats, while serried banks of Bahians dressed
in black morning-coats and the regulation black Brazilian
ties, lined the streets. A perceptible chill ran through
the crowd assembled to do honour to the American states-
man, as his informal dress was observed. It seemed a
slight to the city's high functionaries.
*'But," said my informant, *'Mr. Root had not been
on shore an hour before his clothes, were quite forgotten ;
as he addressed a great audience^ihe people began to say, " ,
y^c^ ^7'^/^ A\ he is simpatico! — he understands, he seems to be
ytk^f^y^d one of us.' " ''It was not because he flattered us," said
t^*^cf At the resident who heard him speak, ''but he seemed to
'/as sdjf'*^^ know us, he knew of our national history, he knew our
great men, he realised what we were trying to do in
Brazil. I think that he liked us. I'm sure that we liked
him. Many said that they didn't know Americans were
like Mr. Root." It was the touch of personality that
made the two worlds kin, personality with intelligent per-
ception in it, also a dash of kindness to which the Bra-
zilian, like other Latin Americans, is quite susceptible.
It is a good thing to remember when we come down here
out of our cold, -c lear crys taj* civilisation where men al-
ways stand to attention in business, that 4ii-tfe4s4afid- be-
neath the Southern Cross, it is quite as important to be
agreeable as to be efficient. Results of course are valued
as they are everywhere, but the manner in which they
are achieved is also considered. Brazilians are not only
interested in what a man does, but also in Jiow he does
it. If the spirit and the method of attaining their goal
receives marked attention, it may account for the fact
that certain goals do not obtain such specialised and con-
centrated attention as in the North.
No one travels long to the advantage of himself or
others, who fails to recognise that there are ' ' diversities
of gifts" among nations as among individuals. No coun-
try is left without its contributary cog in the great Wheel
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 7
of Universal Utility and Perfection, and the larger num-
ber of these cogs that any nation can weld into its own
turning wheel of destiny, the more certain will that na-
tion be of ultimate success. Moreover, the process of
such ingrafting of other nation's virtues not only re-
quires open-mindedness, but it is an excellent surety for
a more perfect understanding between alien peoples.
It has been impressed upon me repeatedly in travelling
about South America, that the two Americas because of
their antipodal traits and points of view are complements
of each other, and that it is only when both sections of
the Western Hemisphere realise the mutual gain neces-
sarily accruing to each by the acceptance of this fact,
that the larger and fuller life will come in this New
World. There is a sense in which either North America
or South America will be a failure alone. There is a
sense in which both are one-sided and partial. The
United States in her haste toward material well-being,
stands a chance to lose her soul ; the goddesses of Beauty,
Art and Happiness are rarely found in a Pantheon of
Mammon gods. Brazil, along with her Spanish American
neighbours, is a faithful daughter of her imperial and
aristocratic Past ; nothing along the line of the literary,
the chivalric and the artistic is alien to her nature or her
practice; but her giant country calls for the practical
pioneer. Her poets even would say,
"By hammer and hand
All arts do stand."
Why should not the Americas combine and conquer?
Dissimilar though they are in most respects, save in their
loyalty to free institutions, their very diversities attract
them to a marriage of their talents. They are surely too
much unlike ever to bore each other, and one suspects
that down deep in the texture of the two regions there is
8 THE BEAZILIANS AND TPIEIR COUNTRY
a strain of the ideal and a heart quality that, when
blended, will be mightier than Treaties to bind these
peoples in one.
Granted — and it seems patent enough — that there is
tremendous advantage to both the big Republics on this
Continent to sustain toward each other a sentiment of
mental hospitality and mutual comprehension, born of a
real effort to gain the point of view, the one of the other,
why has such understanding delayed so long its coming?
It would seem from a chance observer's view that some
one, or something, should have intervened long before all
these centuries had rolled their generations by, to bring
Brazil and the United States into a closer co-partnership
of spirit and activity than now exists. Of all the Latin
American nations, I doubt if any holds the United States
in higher esteem than do the Brazilians, while in turn one
rarely hears anything but good and favourable comment
in our country concerning the people who have placed the
Monroe Palace on the most queenly site of their beautiful
Capital, Rio de Janeiro. Both countries are building
their civilisations around the liberty-loving principle;
both are manifest enemies to militarism of the monar-
chical stripe, and both are working out their salvation in
a highly productive new world of agricultural and indus-
trial possibility. Brazil exports in normal times the
great bulk of her products to the United States, and she
is beginning to turn more readily than in the past to
North America for her supplies. There are many funda-
mental reasons for a close and friendly union between
Brazil and the United States.
Apart from the difficulties of distance and the absence
of rapid and satisfactory communication, there have been
internal reasons in each country which have consumed
attention and acted as an isolating barrier. Brazil's un-
bounded productivity of soil and climate has made life
easy in this land of the cocoanut palm, the banana, the
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MENTAL HOSPITALITY 9
pineapple, and a hundred other kinds of food-product
to be had almost for the picking. Moreover her national
policy as a Eepublic is comparatively new and has re-
quired attention; there have been boundary matters to
settle, State relationships to unify, colonisation and
scores of political matters to adjust, as was the case with
us in our early Republican days. It must be borne in
mind, as a Brazilian statesman said lately, "Brazil is
going over the same ground that you in North America
have gone over many years before her."
The United States, on the other hand, has only recently
lifted her eyes to survey the world outside her immediate
borders. Home development and a vast country have
made her a provincial nation to an extent scarcely
dreamed, even by Americans themselves, until they, by
travel or study, appreciate how conversant are many
other nations with life and especially trade matters in
foreign nations, about which we are often totally ig-
norant. It is true that during the last twenty-five years
we have been slowly awakening to a world-wide con-
sciousness of commerce, but as compared with Germany
for instance, the United States has been exporting of late
years only 7 per cent, of her manufactured products to
the Teuton's 25 per cent. America, with her enormous
possessions in iron, stone, lumber, and other materials
with which to build her factories and workshops; with
her plentiful supply of labour and her progressive and
efficient manufacturing plants, is only commencing to
stir herself to the necessity of building up reciprocal
trade, as other European nations have been doing for
many generations, with the countries existing to the
south of us. Those who are even now pioneering that
trade are frequently amazed at the far-sighted care with
which nations of the Old World have trained and studied
to gain this field. Our new vanguard of young men, who
are being sent Latin America -ward, are beginning to see
10 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
that in this great industrial game they are to compete
with the most skillful and experienced trader of the
world, the Englishman, and with one of the most cal-
culating and adaptable of business men, the German
manufacturer.
It is small wonder that we should make mistakes due
to lack of knowledge of doing business away from home,
which requires talents that are not called forth in inter-
state American trade. Doubtless we shall make many
more errors. At the close of the European war we shall
find ourselves surrounded in South America with a com-
petition that will tax the Yankee ingenuity and genius
for organisation to the limit, if we attempt to hold our
place in the new ranks of foreign business and interna-
tional relationship, thrust upon us by the tragic exigen-
cies of the times and the unparalleled prosperity of our
nation. That the Americans will prove themselves in-
capable in the midst of these larger tasks and responsi-
bilities, no one familiar with the national intelligence and
alert adaptability (for we are an adaptable people) will
for one moment believe.
The fact remains, however, that both Americans and
Brazilians are better acquainted with Europeans than
they are with each other. Even when representatives of
the two countries have met, it has not been always under
the most favourable circumstances, and the result has
not made for the growth of mutual confidence and good
will. It is true in a sense, as Clough has remarked, that
^'everything lies in juxtaposition," but when it comes to
applying this to persons of widely different ideals and
nationalities, some care needs to be taken in ** juxta-
posing."
The main instrumentalities of the United States
through which friendly intercourse and understanding
with Brazil could be acquired have been our diplomatic
and commercial agencies. That we, as a nation, have
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 11
regarded the diplomatic appointments to Latin America
as of minor importance to those in the large capitals of
Europe particularly, where the United States have had
a long line of brilliant statesmen, is beyond argument.
That this is generally observed in the Southern part of
our Hemisphere is also beyond question. Mr. Leopold
Grahame, formerly editor of the Buenos Aires Herald,
speaking before an important body of Americans, said:
"May I be permitted to suggest that the services of the great diplo-
mats of the United States are more needed in the capitals of some of
the republics of Central and South America, than in London, Pans,
Berlin, Rome, Madrid, or Petrograd? It is not complimentai-y to the
countries which have sent to Washington such distinguished diplomats
and international jurists as Nabueo, Quesada, Garcia Merou, Da Gama,
Naon, and others, that the mere suggestion that men of the type of
Joseph H, Choate, John Hay, James Russell Lowell, Whitelaw Reid,
or David Jayne Hill, should be sent to represent their country in the
South American Republics, would probably be regarded as ridiculous."
That the Brazilians, naturally a ceremonious people,
are susceptible and also appreciative of honourable fa-
vour in respect to the characters of the envoys sent to
them, can be taken for granted. Their high and discrimi-
nating praise of certain diplomatic officers of excellent
ability and adaptability whom the United States have sent
to Rio de Janerio, so indicates. Not to detract from the
present incumbents of our diplomatic agencies in Brazil,
it is nevertheless true that we have gone on the principle
in the past all too generally that these highly intelligent
people were not discerning, and as one American resident
in Brazil expressed it, ''Any one will do down there."
One finds that some of the former consular and diplo-
matic officers sent by us to Brazil have left a track of
ill-starred memory that the more capable and upright
officers of the United States Government in these modern
12 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
days find it difficult to eradicate. One American Govern-
ment agent said that it had taken him a year to gain
access to the office of a certain prominent Brazilian, so
great had been the antipathy aroused in the mind of this
man by the acts and general deportment of a former
official.
Too often these agents have been appointed because
they were there, and evidently for no other ostensible
reason. Some impressed the Brazilians mainly by reason
of their bibulous habits, others by their lack of attention
to dress and public behaviour, while still others have
been too blissfully ignorant of Portuguese even to under-
stand their deficiencies in the eyes of these people, who
have inherited from many generations precise models
of court and diplomatic etiquette. Such requirements
toward better understanding may seem to some in the
Northern world as a bit superficial and flippant. It is
customary for many of us to go on the basis that if a
man is said to be a ''good man," and has obtained ''re-
sults," the way in which he does it is immaterial. The
fallacy of this reasoning resides in the fact that certain
other nationals, among them the Brazilians, go on the
principle that equality of association can be vouchsafed
and maintained only with those who partake acceptably
in that dignity and majesty of deportment which are
inseparable in their minds from real worth and civilised
gentlemanhood. Again it is a question of mental hos-
pitality to views and habits of the people we wish really
to know and with whom we desire close international
intercourse.
Illustrative of the way American brusqueness of man-
ner has impressed certain Latin Americans is the stoiy
of a reception committee of a South American capital,
the members of which were considerably tortured and
exercised about preparing a very elaborate programme
and entertainment for a Chamber of Commerce Commis-
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 13
sion from the North, lest these business men from one
of our leading cities should not be acquainted with the
usages of polite society.
It would seem that the majority of differences which
have occurred in the past between North and South
America have been due to an ignorance of actual condi-
tions on both sides, as they exist in the other's country.
The process of education now going on so vigorously
in the United States, Latin American history and lan-
guage courses in the schools; visits by travellers and
Government and business delegations to the Southern
Republics ; the sending of ever larger delegations of stu-
dents to study in American universities ; the choosing of
educated and socially trained men to take the places in
Latin American cities once held by untrained and often
crudely unscrupulous commercial agents; exchange of
professors ; and the great amount of magazine and other
literature used in clubs and conferences and illustrated
lectures about the people who are our neighbours and
still strangers to us — all this fine propaganda is certain
to yield fruitage and cast new light upon relationships.
There is quite as much need for similar education
among our South American friends concerning North
Americans. They need to learn that the lynchings and
strikes which are often given disproportionate promi-
nence in their press are not the usual order, and that the
American as a rule is not accurately prefigured in the
roistering and fighting seamen in South American ports,
who in other days have brought horror and loathing to
the Latin American populace.
If there could be a series of small and inexpensive
books, in Portuguese and Spanish for the Brazilians and
dwellers in the other Republics telling clearly and frankly
something of our American history and present da}^
ideals; with a similar series in English about South
Americans to be sown broadcast over our Northern con-
14 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tinent and used in our new training schools for young
prospective business men going Southward on commerce
bent, it would be an aid to a better mental picture and a
more exact understanding on the part of both sections.
By every contact, personal and otherwise, there must
be inculcated a relationship based not simply upon politi-
cal or financial expediency, if the associations are to per-
sist and grow into warm friendship. As President Wil-
son expressed this principle regarding South America
not long since:
"We must prove ourselves their friends and champions upon terms
of equality and honour. You cannot be friends upon any other tenns
than upon the terms of equality."
Such high terms require a hospitality of both mind and
heart, applied both ways, from the South as from the
North. They require the learning that there are some
habits and traits of success w^hich are atmospheric in
their workings, the realisation that nation's souls and
their idealism are as important to study as credits and
packing methods.
We are told that the beautiful mausoleum, which holds
the dust of the beloved wife of the old Mogul Emperor at
Agra, the Taj Mahal, cost ten millions of dollars, and
that it weighs hundreds of tons ; but the lover of beauty
and the things that last forgets his statistics when he
looks upon this resplendent marble, white and light as
foam, silhouetted against the sky of the quiet East Indian
night. The knowledge of the material and the means by
which this wondrous tomb has been lifted into beauty is
important. The ability to appreciate the influence and
meaning of its spiritual atmosphere is also quite as im-
portant to its appreciation.
Likewise, in the understanding and the successful as-
sociation of the inhabitants of these two Americas, there
MENTAL HOSPITALITY 15
is something intangibly subtle and powerfully potent,
something that cannot be learned through commercial
reports or tabulated in commission houses. It is the
spirit of mutually satisfactory contact between man and
man, because they understand each other in an under-
standing of feeling and sentiment. It is in the region of
the heart as well as the head that men truly meet, and
this is the highest definition of mental hospitality.
n
BEAZILIAN TRAITS
The rapid development of Brazil since the year 1889,
when this largest of South American countries became a
Republic, together with her present vital and far-reaching
international relationships with Europe as well as with
Latin American states, calls for something more than a
'* guide book" study of these twenty-two million Bra-
zilians. Here in the United States we are inclined to
think well of the Brazilians, and we have a general im-
pression that much is to be expected of this country
which is greater in area than our own, excepting Alaska;
we know that the people of our Southern sister Republic
are polite and progressive, that they furnish us coffee
and rubber, and that considerable American capital has
been invested amongst them. Yet when it comes to a
knowledge of the spirit, the intent and the historical
perspective of a remarkable people, I think that I shall
not be seriously challenged when I state that our igno-
rance is quite impregnable.
Generalisations about the traits of a people inhabiting
a country other than one's own are attended with both
difficulty and danger. The investigator is too apt to
make sweeping assertions before he has examined a suffi-
cient number of specimens ; even after such examination
the Brazilian, like the Oriental, is quite inclined to upset
one's calculations and make it necessary to begin all over
in the analysis of national character.
No doubt one's impressions of a country depend con-
siderably upon the people he meets. When Pierre Loti
16
BRAZILIAN TRAITS 17
wrote his book on Japan, entitled, ' * Madame Chrysanthe-
mum," the Japanese remarked that the book revealed the
kind of women the writer met during his stay in the Sun-
rise Kingdom. The present day traveller in South
America will find frequent instances of transient visitors
who have whirled rapidly through the larger port cities,
and forthwith have essayed to characterise whole popu-
lations in accordance with their experiences, fortunate
or unfortunate, in these limited areas. An instance lur-
idly illustrative of this habit is that of a certain traveller
who is reported to have visited two Republics on the
West Coast of South America during the comfortless
Winter months. Evidently he had neglected the impor-
tant detail of taking with him proper letters of introduc-
tion. Anyhow the tragic result to himself as to the peo-
ple visited was a booklet written on his return to the
United States entitled, "To Hell and Back!" Writing
on South America too often reveals the attitude of one
who sees by chance something unusual in his eyes, and
immediately jumps to the conclusion that this is a na-
tional characteristic. As a matter of fact the thing may
be no more indigenous to the section than a band of Wild
West Indians and cowboys flocking out of a circus at
Madison Square Garden would be indigenous to New
York City.
It should be observed furthermore that when describ-
ing the traits and especially the faults of any nation, it
is extremely hazardous to name these traits as belonging
exclusively to any one set of people. Many of the char-
acteristics of the Brazilians may be applied with almost
equal exactness to the people of the United States or to
inhabitants of certain European nations. Yet the South
Americans are decidedly different from the Americans
of the North, and this applies to traditions, tempera-
ment, climatic influences, and the sources of their present
day ideals.
18 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
The following answers given me by quite a wide circle
of people, residents of the big Republic, when I asked,
*'What is a Brazilian?" may be partially illuminating:
"The Brazilian is a person born in Brazil, no matter what may have
been the nationality of his parents."
"A man of effusive friendliness."
"If of the upper classes, a cosmopolitan who often prefers Paris to
Rio de Janeiro."
"A product of mixed marriages and races."
"A good business man when engaged in business for himself; not so
reliable as a worker for a corporation or the Government."
"Generous to a fault if he likes youj prefers to do business on the
basis of favour and friendship."
"Religion nominally Catholic, sometimes a Positivist, more often
rather indifferent to religion."
"Lacking in industrial initiative on a large scale, generally willing
to let foreigners undertake and carry on the big enterprises requiring
capital, patience and high business efficiency."
"Always a fine dresser, a good linguist, and not a bad fellow."
"Without exception fond of the opposite sex."
"A man loving mildness and having a horror of violence — always the
soul of courtesy, but theoretical rather than practical."
"An inordinate lover of gambling and politics."
The penchant for pleasure is revealed in the numerous
holidays, Saints' Days, festivals of all kinds and his
annual carnivals, which interrupt business for a week at
a time, and call the majority of the population of the
cities and towns to the main plazas and avenues, on harm-
less mischief bent.
Should one have any doubt of the kind-heartedness of
Brazilians, he need but to notice the charitable institu-
tions, hospitals, asylums, as well as take note of the open-
handedness of the people, high and low, at the call of the
poor and the unfortunate. If one wishes to study the
traits of generous and delicately thoughtful hosts, he
may be a guest in a Brazilian home, or at a big *'Fa-
zenda" in the country, where the foreigner will be the
BRAZILIAN TRAITS 19
recipient of hospitality scarcely exceeded by any
Oriental.
A tendency to ** delay and postpone," together with
what the Northerner would call a lack of appreciation of
the value of time, is quickly noticeable. An American
official said: *'We must of necessity work slowly here;
officials are slow to reply; there is an interminable
amount of red tape and ceremony, and the man who is in
a hurry and unable to restrain his rushing habits, had
best not come to Brazil." Perhaps no words become
more familiar to the nervous, impatient, tearing Anglo-
Ajnerican than the reply quite invariably received in
answer to his insistent importunities: '^Paciencia,
Amanhaa," and ''Espera um pouco Senor !" — ''Patience,
to-morrow ; Wait a little, Senor ! ' ' Possibly this explains
why many a quiet-disposed mild man, past the meridian
of life, having had his fill of the "Step Lively!" regime
of our brisker Northern climates, finds Brazil an agree-
able residence. Certain it is that the American strenu-
osity is subdued in these parts, if the business man from
the "States" remains to become a successful factor in
his firm's enterprise.
Although the new Brazil is quite as progressive as any
Latin American Republic, one finds here a dislike of
change and a conservatism which has been inherited in
part no doubt from Portuguese ancestry. One hears the
ancient legend down here of how Adam, struck with
homesickness, requested leave to revisit the world of his
former estate. Permission was granted and an angel
commissioned to conduct him. On wings of love the
patriarch hastened to his native earth; but so changed
and so strange all seemed to him, that he nowhere felt
at home until he came to Portugal. "Ah, now," ex-
claimed he, "set me down; everything here is just as I
left it. ' ' Undoubtedly the dilatory habit, the intermittent
energy, and the aversion for the effort to change, can be
20 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
traced to the tropical climate in which so much of the
Republic is located. Added to this influence is also the
Oriental strain of blood of the Moors which marked
deeply both Spain and Portugal for centuries.
There is a sense in which Brazil is quite new — she is
South America's most recent Republic — but as a racial
entity, she is very old. The country is conscious of her
past. Three centuries have rolled away since the white
man first set foot on Brazilian soil, and the people trace
their ancestry into remote regions antedating consider-
ably these centuries. The consciousness of an ancient
social hierarchy has been largely lost in Argentina, where
the craving for individual independence and modern
wealth is everywhere evident. But the Brazilian is
eager to inform you that he is a son of an old owning
civilisation — Portugal — and that the Brazilians come
from a sounder stock than do the Spanish Americans.
The roots of national tendency are not easily torn
away. The old and beloved Dom Pedro, in his effort to
modernise Brazil and to introduce the higher culture —
perhaps less a preconceived plant than the indulgence
of his own scholarly and cultured tastes — created in ad-
dition to the already existing landed aristocracy, one of
letters. Under his leadership, literature became more
than ever the mode, and with a people already inclined to
speechmaking, with a language traditionally fitted to easy
and fluent writing, the platform and belles lettres became
the sure road to prominence.
It was the Emperor's plan to free the slaves gradually,
and this had already raised up a free-thinking, half-edu-
cated, cross-bred lower class which later, together with
the political imprudences of his daughter, the Princess
Regent Isabel, introduced into the country an entirely
new social element — impulsive, unschooled, socially
snubbed because it neither held land nor had graduated
BRAZILIAN TRAITS 21
from universities, tainted with the reproach of freed-
slave ancestry, and struggling to find a voice.
Upon this foundation was superimposed the new re-
publican Constitution, copied almost word for word from
the Constitution of the United States, and though it may
be heresy to say it, copied with its doubtful virtues of
States Rights, etc., w^hich had not then been clarified by
American Amendments, and the super wisdom that fol-
lowed a five years Civil War and later years of Govern-
ment and social and industrial reform.
result to-day is a society still in a ferment, anji-^
politicar>«mdition that handicaps growth^Jroifir many
angles. The ujTp«a;class landholders' are in a measure
impoverished, but nof^jii^^, and many of these prefer
to remain absentee landlord^**gHa4to reside in Paris or
elsewhere. Qne is amazed to find tti^^-mi^iber of Brazil-
ians who in normal times spend their money^'m^rance,
JiOndon, Rome and Naples, or in travelling about
Although the Brazilian is sensitive, patriotically speak-
ing, there seems to be little national feeling, or perhaps!
one should say that every man seems first to be a citizen)
of his own State and then by richochet, of his countrj^
This is not surprising when one considers the vast dif-
ferences in climate, diet, and way of life in general in the
widely separated sections, which are securely isolated
from one another in the absence of country roads and
ready means of intimate communication. Nevertheless
the Portuguese language, and an individualistic culture
derived from Portugal and not exactly Portuguese, to-
gether with a strong national tradition, make the Bra-
zilians almost contemptuous of all other Latin Ameri-
cans, and rabidly jealous of their country's integrity.
Add to this condition the isolation of the country itself
— an isolation caused by the lack or inf requency of mails,
absurdly expensive cable tolls depriving the people of
fresh news and world contacts, and one has the key to
22 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
many of the present evils of Brazil. One might go into
details in the cataloguing of existing weaknesses; there
is little doubt that the country is officials-ridden; the
National Treasury is burdened with huge pension lists;
the officials often possess arbitrary power because they
are political henchmen who may interpret the written law
to suit themselves, while many officials are said to
''graft" — the natural concomitant of short tenure of
office.
All these things existed in the United States not many
years ago, and we are still too distant from Mount Sinai
and political elysium consistently to cast stones at our
Brazilian neighbours. This country, like the United
States, is a colonial one, an aggregation of humans who
have taken up a life of their own amidst enormous nat-
ural resources, which any one might plunder and grow
rich upon, without distinction of social class. Brazil is
so huge, so diverse in productivity of all kinds, so limit-
less in its undiscovered wealth, that the people have felt,
whatever the failure or the bankruptcy of to-day, to-
morrow would be golden. Thus far it has seemed true.
There has always been money forthcoming from Europe
or elsewhere to tide over crises. Even when foreign cap-
ital has come in and tapped Brazilian enterprises for the
benefit of alien owners, there has always been the cus-
toms revenue, and the states of the Brazilian Union
seem to adjust their export and import duties capri-
ciously with little regard to a national uniform system.
As a matter of fact, Brazil has floated along on the
great prosperity of successive ''booms" — gold, dye-
woods, cotton, diamonds, rubber, coffee, etc., with a big
cattle-boom now in progress — and there is need for the
country as a whole to learn to diversify the crops. Sev-
eral states, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro notably, have
learned or are learning the far-reaching advantage of
investing their "boom "-crop savings in other interests
BEAZILIAN TRAITS 23
within their own frontiers. During somewhat extensive
travels through Brazil, I found scores of new and small
enterprises springing up, not only in the agricultural and
timber regions but also in the smaller towns where mills
and factories for manufacturing glass, clothing, furni-
ture and the weaving of fabrics from Brazilian wool and
cotton point to a new industrial Brazil.
Another factor making for the permanency of the
United States of Brazil lies in the national cohesion in a
common language, the Portuguese, which affects at once
the institutional life of the whole country. Dohne has
said, ''The language is the only characteristic of a nation
which cannot be adulterated. ' ' This seems to be true of • ^ - «<
Brazil. The Portuguese mother tongue was sown in / '
every corner of this great land, and it has preserved its
integrity through all the changing vicissitudes of a check-
ered national history. ''Capitanias," "Provincias,"
Monarchy, and Republic have all swept over this giant
land during the last century, but the country has re-
mained Brazilian in language, the only country in Latin
America perhaps where a large variety of races have
buried their lingual differences in a common tongue.
No less remarkable is the ethnological history of Bra-
zil, and the present racial mixtures arising between Por-
tuguese, negroes, Brazilian Indians and a dozen or more
European and North American races. The Portuguese
settlers of the sixteenth century intermarried with the
Indians. In 1583 negroes from Africa were introduced
for labor. In the year 1585 as many as 14,000 blacks
were imported, and the condition of their existence in this
country was that of slavery. The importation of negroes
was prohibited by the Aberdeen Treaty with Great Brit-
ain in 1860, and the children of slaves were declared free
in 1871 ; the slaves were enfranchised in 1888. Meanwhile
in this country without a ''colour line," a splendid con-
fusion of intermarriage has been proceeding, many na-
24 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tionalities otlier tlian the Portuguese joining the general
miscegenation.
In this racial evolution a new experiment among na-
tions has been in progress, quite different from anything
known either in the United States or in any European
nation in its colonisation of people with colour different
from their own. The attempt is being honestly made
here to eliminate the blacks and the browns by pouring
}/ /• ^_ in white blood. It is claimed that one factor in this
* * process is the natural selection of the female species to
b^r^Y'^G^ choose a mate lighter in colour than herself. Certain
'^ ? parts of Southern Brazil where comparatively few of the
negroid or dark skinned types are found, are cited as
examples of the progress already made toward this dar-
ing and unprecedented accomplishment. Many of the
most highly cultured Brazilians will tell you that this
country will reveal one day to all the world the one and
only method of racial inter-penetration, the only one that
will prevent racial wars and bloodshed.
Yet it must not be thought that Brazil is mixing races
promiscuously in the sense that a prominent white Bra-
zilian family gives willingly its daughters in marriage
to negroes. One will be told that this amalgam is being
made chiefly among the lower classes. Yet in many parts
of the country the darker is tending almost invariably
toward the white, as is natural when the white is the
fashionable or favourite type. It seems to be a clear
case of Lamarck and Darwin's selective process. If for
purely social reasons a certain type becomes fashionable,
all marrying drifts that way, and finally that type pre-
vails in the race. Although probably the average Ameri-
can would express his satisfaction over the fact that our
civilisation places many obstacles in the way of the de-
velopment of such a principle in the United States, not to
recognise the seriousness of the motive of the Brazilians
in this vital mixture of races is unfortunate. A Latin
BEAZILIAN TRAITS 25
American statesman in whose forecast one may have
confidence said that the United States was ''finished," so
far as Latin America went, if it did not forget its colour
prejudices.
The result in Brazil of four centuries of racial fusion,
or this "triple fusion" is a wide range and variety of
population. In one section the traveller will find the Por-
tuguese stock comparatively pure and unadulterated ; in
another, it is so variously mixed with negro and Indian
as to be wellnigh absorbed by the indigenous races. There
are several distinct populations in the country, possess-
ing their own characteristics, activities, traditions and
folklore. It is necessary to name the section when speak-
ing of the characteristics of the Brazilians.
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, Portugal
permitted no foreign immigration into Brazil, populating
the country entirely from her territories. To-day, how-
ever, one finds strong French influences in Rio de Janeiro,
German colonies in South Brazil, traces of the Dutch
and early English settlements along the North coast, and
Italian, Polish, Hollandaise and many other brands in
the coffee and lumber sections. Generally speaking, the
Portuguese form the fundamental and predominating
white structure of the population.
The new type which is now in the making, especially
between the Amazon estuary and Rio de Janeiro, is
probably the most numerous and distinctive type in the
country. The colour of these inhabitants varies from the
coal black negro through every shade of the mulatto and
the innumerable cross-breeds, revealing one of the most
remarkable race competitions in existence — Indo-Aryan,
American-Indian, and African Negro without colour dis-
tinctions, and far more devoid of race prejudice than is
true where white men mix with the men of colour in other
parts of the world
t
26 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Thus proceeds the evolutionary progress of the Bra-
zilian of the future-3;;a_fierY_p5^si25^1^- spirit_pf the In-^
dian in a mixture with the idle and affectionate dispo-
sition of the African negro, overlaid with the traits of the
Portuguese, aristocratic and always courteous, and all
rich in emotional quality.
This emotional, poetic and mystic strain is character-
istic of the Brazilian type. Intuition and imagination
are strongly developed. It is an active and expansive
temperament, with a mixture of melancholy, and a touch
of sadness^and reserve. There is a love of strong and
tragic roman eeT 'The daily papers reveal varied pictures
of passionate acts on the part of the tropically-tem-
pered and jealous people. The ''Movies" can hardly
be too lurid or too melodramatic to please the popular
taste, and the tragic drama and lyric opera are demanded.
The love of home life is another Brazilian trait. The
Brazilian is prolific in progeny. One sees children every-
where, and they are usually well-behaved, revealing a
veneration for older people and a restraint of buoyancy'
which are far too uncommon in the United States. Bra-
zilian homes are provided with "Birthday Books," in
which are noted the anniversary periods of each member
of the family, these events being marked with special
festivities. Sunday is especially the home day ; it is the
Continental Sunday also and excursions and family part-
ies are the rule wherever one goes. The Brazilian makes
a good husband, although his standards of morality out-
side the home are, like his Sundays, more Continental
than American, and might not pass muster in New Eng-
land. The wife, who is accustomed to the semi-seclusion
common to all Latin American women, is primarily a
home-keeper and her life pivots about her children rather
than public matters. The girls are taught to cook, to
sew and to superintend the household matters; their
higher education is inclined to exhaust itself in the polite
BRAZILIAN TRAITS 27
accomplishments of music, painting and language. The
Brazilian is not keen for the "new Woman," but prefers
the girlish-and-motherly, entirely charming and pretty
person whom he sees in his cigarette smoke.
Ill
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL
/ *^ In these latter days when Brazil, the oldest civilisation
y / in the Americas and among the youngest of Republics, is
't.ys»- ' coming to be regarded as a great and coming country,
the old and historic land on the west coast of the Iberian
Peninsula may claim with justice some of the praise. It
is often pointed out that both nations and individuals are
inclined, somewhat ungratefully in the day of their in-
dependence, to forget the hands that have trained and
upheld their early faltering steps. In some parts of
Brazil to-day one finds the word ''Portuguese" in slight
favour, and if by chance a foreigner uses it unconsciously
to denote the inhabitants who still speak the tongue of
their mother-country, he will be promptly and courte-
ously corrected by the remark — "We are Brazilians !"
/ It might be held that Brazil has small reason to be
0ti j thankful to a country whose medieval seamen, grandees
/If \ and priests robbed her that they might enrich themselves
/ and the royal coffers of Lisbon. Some might argue that
Brazil has had to fight for her present-day destiny, and
that it was only after she had laboriously severed the
chains that bound her to the Old "World officialdom, the
new light of republican progress dawned. This could
be freely granted; and still quite as truly as Americans,
who also had to struggle in blood with their English
Mother for their self-governing and "inalienable
rights," brought away an inheritance which memory can-
not despise nor time destroy, likewise the modern Bra-
zilian has in his veins the blood of a race that was once
28
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 29
among the most heroic and virile in all Europe. It was
a race of hardy and adventurous navigators and discov-
erers which joined with Spain in placing the outposts of
European civilisation. It was a people beyond all others
who turned the course of Empire both westward and
eastward. Although the later history of the inhabitants
of the Iberian Peninsula is clouded with many a failure,
their matchless courage and accomplishment in the six-
teenth century will ever mark one of the most brilliant
epochs of the world's history.
It is in fact only as we know those days of heroic ad-
venture, those traditions rivalling that of the Romulus
and Remus story of Rome, those centuries of struggle
with the Moors during the four hundred stirring years
when the Arab strain was stamping the Spanish and
Portuguese race; it is only after we have followed the
erstwhile powerful Portuguese Empire establishing it-
self in India, in Ceylon, in China, in Africa, and in the
islands of many seas, as well as in the confines of the new
Americas, that we can adequately measure what they
brought to their New World possessions on that tropic
April day in 1500 when Cabral's small squadron of thir-
teen ships dropped anchor at the harbour of Porto Se-
guro, just south of the first Brazilian Capital of Bahia.
I hold no special brief for present-day Portugal.
Neither do I find traces of particular greatness in Por-
tuguese immigration to-day in Brazil, aside from fur-
nishing good and provident shop-keepers and often hardy
colonists. I have doubts whether or not the early set-
tlers were greatly superior, in their ideals or their man-
ner of achieving them, to the followers of Pizarro and
Almargo on the West Coast of South America. Both
nations left much to be desired by way of fundamental
and constructive colonisation. Both peoples seemed
more interested in securing treasure or posts of aristo-
cratic power, than in the foresight and patient industry
30 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
that makes for permanent happiness of colonist or col-
onised. The Jesuits evidently did more for the Indians
of Brazil (until their own lust for rule and gold proved
their undoing) than did the early Spanish missionary
priests in Ecuador and Peru, where pious religious cere-
monials at the killings of Inca chieftains were hardly
intended to impress the natives with the benevolence of
either their conquerors or their faith.
Despite all this, however faulty may have been the man-
ner of the Portuguese as to conquest or subjugation of
the conquered, the Brazilians who think, do not fail to
remind you by their conversation as by their monu-
ments, that they have descended from a long line of brave
and gallant knights and a unique coterie of intrepid
discoverers. They will tell you of Bartolomeu Diaz
who, in the reign of Dom John II when the pope issued
his famous bull dividing the undiscovered parts of the
world between Spaniards and Portuguese, in 1486,
rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached Algoa Bay.
You will hear of Vasco de Gama who in 1497 had crossed
the Indian Ocean and reached Calicut, of Pedro Alvares
Cabral who in 1500 found Brazil while on his military
expedition with 1500 soldiers and mariners to reach the
Orient, and gain by persuasion or coercion the trade of
the entire East for Portugal. There is also the hero of
the Portuguese, Duarte Pacheco, who in 1503 defended
Cochin and with 900 soldiers defeated an army of 50,000
natives, and Francisco de Almeida, who in 1505 was
appointed the first viceroy of India.
He who visits the West Coast of India to-day will hear
-m or o. than I can tell now of Affonso de Albuquerque who
occupied Goa in 1510 and laid the early foundations of
strong national influence, which still abides in the Por-
tuguese missions especially, scattered along the Mala-
bar Coast. The discoveries and feats of arms which oc-
curred in the rule of Dom Emmanuel of Portugal illus-
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 31
trate sufficiently of what stock the Brazilians have
sprung: Joao da Nova (1501) discovered the island of
Ascension, and Anierigo Vespucci the Rio Plata and
Paraguay; Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in 1509 occupied
Malacca ; in 1515 Lopes Soares was building Portuguese
fortifications in the Island of Ceylon; in 1517 Fernando
Peres Andrada established himself at Canton and in
1521 he made his way to Peking, while in the year
previous Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor though
in the Spanish service, passed through the straits that
bear his name.
During these bright periods of Portuguese history,
the country's literature was not dumb, and then, as in
later times, the small land whose language has been so
little known, has concealed poets, prose writers and his-
torians of these discovery days of which any nation may
be proud. Portugal had a distinct literature as well a
distinct history. There is brilliancy and dash about the
poetry of this land where all men are singers, and the
biographies and travels of the sixteenth century are un-
rivalled in their time. The poetry of the Portuguese trou-
badours, which attended the growth of national independ-
ence and the victories over the Moors, was truly char-
acteristic of the temper of the people, and its reflection
is seen to-day in many a Brazilian poet's vigorous lines.
It was in the sixteenth century also that the national
epics of Camoens and his followers were produced, after
the language of the nation had been polished in the clas-
sical school of Sa de Miranda. If one would get an idea
of the way in which modern Portuguese thought, espe-
cially in poetry and research, has developed, he need only
to spend some time in the Brazilian libraries or book
shops, where the shelves bend beneath Portuguese lit-
erature. I was interested in visiting small book stores
in out of the way parts of Brazil, and to find there clas-
sics of the language, where in many similar cases in the
32 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
United States one would find only the best selling, recent
fiction. The Brazilians have not taken all their taste
in literary things from France. They have found in
their national tongue, and especially in the new Portu-
guese school of ideas and letters, excellent models.
The Brazilians of to-day are following their national
development in their books, as did their forefathers, and
we find popular native novels with such titles as, "The
Cowboy," "The Diamond Hunter" and "The Rubber
Ranger. ' '
Although the aristocratic Brazilian does not relish
being compared with the Portuguese peasants, which
seems to be the chief portion of the immigration from the
old country at present, when there is a national celebra-
tion like that of the anniversary of a great Portuguese
statesman or poet, indications show that the Brazilians
have still a pride in their mother-country and that some-
thing very much like racial unity is slumbering beneath
the surface. Those who have followed the fighting spirit,
the energy and the perseverance with which the men of
Brazil rose to the occasion in the great war with Para-
guay, may see also indications of a true descent from the
men who under Affonso Henriques overthrew the Moors,
who under John I and John IV refused to be dominated
by the Spaniards, and led by Albuquerque and Joao de
Castro conquered the East ; or who by the famous voy-
age of Vasco de Gama ushered in a new epoch in world
history.
Among the various influences which Portugal has ex-
erted in the past and continues to exert upon her New
World child, now grown to larger stature of possibility
than Portugal herself, aristocratic and old family ideals
are distinctively prominent. No other Latin American
nation, with the possible exception of Peru, is so jealous
of a real lineage with nobility of blood and chivalric
ancestry. It may be added that these are the two coun-
POKTUGaL and brazil 33
tries of South America where this idealism of the past has
been less diluted with outside immigration, and where
perhaps, both through the influence of climate and also
because of direct ancestral descent from royal or im-
perial sources, the ancient aristocracy of language and
culture has been more carefully guarded against the in-
roads of modernity. No one is inclined to underestimate
the persistence of the racial type of pioneer in either of
these countries.
In the early days of conquest and settlement, Brazil
was more favoured than Peru and western South Am-
erica, not only in the class of Portuguese that assisted
in the foundation and growth of the new colonies, but in
the reception of European ideas from different nation-
alities. "While western Spanish America was given over
to the soldiers of fortune, freebooters and a class of
buccaneers in whose programme plunder and bloodshed
seemed. at time s the objects as well as the means of their
search for gold, Brazil for more than three centuries
was treated to the exhibition of rule by Portuguese
grandees from the mother-country, Governor-Generals
of some prominence, and in addition the civilisation of
the Dutch for thirty years, as well as the sovereignty in
certain sections of the French.
It was Brazil's fortune, moreover, to get some ideas
of humanitarian and schooled civilisation from the Jes-
uits, than whom probably no more astute, intelligent,
though politically-minded, clerics, ever existed. To be
sure the Portuguese nobles and grandees, even when
they came to rule personally their fiefs, exercised for a
time autocratic power over large jurisdictions and their
policy, like that of the Spanish, was to enrich .th e nation /^n^s^i^es
at the expense of the people ; yet there was more of re-
straint from the Crown than existed over the faraway
Spanish mariners who were left on the bleak shores of
the Pacific to work their plundering way, almost un-
t
34 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
hindered by any laws of God or men. Brazil had at
least some men in these trying colonising days, like
Father Nobrega, a Jesuit contemporary of St. Francis
Xavier, and his rival and follower in disinterested ex-
\ ertions for his fellows, while the priest-adventurers fol-
lowing in Pizarro's train held a fiery cross over the land
of the Incas, scathing and consuming as were the blood-
stained swords of Spanish chieftains.
The condition of Portugal in the beginning of the six-
teenth century was such as to encourage her sons to emi-
grate, and so great was the tide that set toward Brazil
that it was said that it looked at one time as though Lis-
bon and the Portugal cities would be depopulated.
Times were hard in the mother-country in these transi-
tion days. The Church had been shorn of much of its
power but the king was all supreme. Laws were severe ;
the death penalty was visited upon robbery, and the ruler
could force his subjects to fight his battles and pay their
own expenses while they fought. Animals and virtually
all of the personal property of his people belonged to
him, and roads, docks, revenues and fisheries were also
royal possessions. The new and fabled country across
the seas, which this maritime people loved and of which
they had no fear, offered riches and more freedom than
did the home country. The result was inevitable. Portu-
gal lost in these sixteenth century days many of her
hardiest and best sons, Iberian and Celtic and Saracen
blood ; and in this migration the decadence of the mother-
land was prefigaired, as was also the rise of a greater
than Portugal on the eastern shores of the new and ri s-
•iug world.
The story of these first three hundred years of coloni-
sation of Brazil is at best a vexed and checkered history,
transpiring beneath the jealous gaze of all Europe
which coveted so rich a prize. Shipwreck by sea and
the massacre of the Portuguese on land by the Indians,
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 35
marked the passage of the first thirty years. The early
attachment and veneration of the natives for the white
men were soon changed to fear, and revenge came for
the injuries inflicted upon them by irresponsible and
ruthless pioneers. Portugal in blind disregard of the
future of her colony, at one time made Brazil a penal
settlement banishing hither her criminals instead of ex-
ecuting them at home. Sanguinary battles and hideous
atrocities grew apace. Meanwhile the French were form-
ing settlements in northern Brazil and the Spanish had
taken advantage of the apathy of the Portuguese Court
and settled on the banks of the Paraguay River in the
south.
The Portuguese King, Joao III, now thoroughly alarm-
ed, inaugurated his famous Captaincies (Capitanias)
giving to fifteen of his grandees who had distinguished
themselves by services to the Crown, fiefs, or land grants,
of 150 miles of seacoast, with an unlimited depth of area.
They were given the remarkable privilege of occupying,
pacifying and developing their feudal holdings at their
own cost — probably the most economical scheme of col-
onisation ever devised. It was indeed too cheap and too
absolute to be permanent. The nobles became petty kings,
abused their great privileges, and it was found neces-
sary to appoint Governor-Generals to watch and control
the nobles who in this change were stripped of their
plenipotentiary powers, possessing their lands as fiefs.
Thus for two centuries until the imperial independ-
ence of Brazil, the country breathed the air of battles by
sea and land and many vicissitudes. During this time the
Dutch gained a strong foothold, especially in the northern
provinces, the French having at various times a transi-
tory occupation of central portions of the new land, and
the mother-country for a time passed beneath the yoke
of Spain. Much water passed under the bridge during
these stirring and eventful years, and many influences
36 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIE COUNTRY
were given birth which the Brazil of the twentieth cen-
tury has not entirely lost. It was in this period that
slaves were imported from Africa for labour ; it Avas an
era of the discovery of Brazil's enormous riches in gold
and precious stones ; the sugar mills and the coffee berry
arrived ; and Durand de Villegaignon, a native of Prov-
ence and a Knight of Malta, made his unsuccessful at-
tempt to plant a colony of French Huguenots on an
island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, the first Protestant
colony of the new w^orld.
It was of this early attempt to unfurl the banner of the
reformed religion over Brazil that an evident sympa-
thiser with the French Huguenots speculates in his book
entitled, "Brazil and La Plata":
"With the remembrance of this failure in establishing
the Reformed religion here, and of the direct cause which
led to it, I often find myself speculating as to the possible
and probable results which would have followed the suc-
cessful establishment of Protestantism during the three
hundred j^ears that have since intervened. With the
wealth and power and the increasing prosperity of the
United States before us, as the fruits at the end of two
hundred years colonisation of a few feeble bands of
Protestants on the comparatively bleak and barren shores
of the Northern continent, there is no presumption in the
belief that had a people of similar faith, similar morals,
similar habits of industry and enterprise, gained an
abiding footing in so genial a climate and on a soil so
exuberant, long ago the still unexplored and impene-
trable wilderness of the interior would have bloomed and
blossomed in civilisation as the rose, and Brazil from
the seacoast to the Andes would have become one of the
gardens of the world. But the germ which might have
led to this was crushed by the bad faith and malice of
Villegaignon; and, as I look on the spot which bears his
name, and, in the eyes of a Protestant at least, perpet-
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 37
uates his reproach, the two or three solitary palms which
lift their tufted heads above the embattled w^alls, and
furnish the only evidence of vegetation on the island,
seem, instead of plumed warriors in the midst of their
defences, like sentinels of grief mourning the blighted
hopes of the long past."
legaignon w^as undoubtedly a scoundrel, but sigh-
ings 'Wer the things that might have been, savour of
''vain r^rrets," especially in the light of new republican
progress iiV3razil. In the national allotment of lands and
peoples and\eligions, man proposes but Providence dis-
poses. To use tte strong-packed phrase of a distinguished
European statesSaan, ' * Things are what they are ; results
are what they shaX be ; w^hy then deceive ourselves ! ' '
To him who take^hort and passing views of the civi-
lisation of peoples oiH^r than his own there seems at
hand ready-made remed^s for their evident deficiencies.
''If they could only be liBe us," we cry, looking out of
dim parochial eyes. As ouXyision sweeps more widely
over nations and men, as o^r search for intent and
meanings drives our thought beneath surface impres-
sions, groping for
"things invisible
And cast beyond the moon^
a new reasonableness for international div^sity is pretty
sure to arise, and we become conscious ^i^t our very
differences make for speed toward that "DiVme far-off
event, toward which the wdiole creation movesN
Certain it is that the revolutionary struggle" of the
Brazilian nation for its independence, beginning even as
far back as the seventh of September, 1822, when Brazil
severed forever her political ties with Lisbon, and the
Prince Pedro I was proclaimed Emperor, — a struggle
that is not yet ended — has been the sme qua non of the
country's elevation. I have never heard it stated that
38 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
among the world changes wrought by Napoleon he made
a new Brazil, but when his Peninsular Campaign drove
the Portuguese Prince Joao VI, who was then Regent,
to abandon Portugal and to establish the seat of Mon-
archy in the Western Hemisphere, on that day in 1808,
the Brazil of the present began to break her chains of
enslavement, and sighted her final republican emancipa-
tion from afar.
One of the first signs of beneficial change was the open-
ing of Brazilian ports, which had hitherto been closed to
all but Portugal, to international trade. The centenary
of this momentous event for the nation was celebrated
by a great national exhibition in Rio de Janeiro from
August to November, 1908. During the first year after
this act, ninety foreign ships entered the new port, and
in 1910 a trade treaty was concluded with England. The
>>'^z//^<'*^ renowned ''Brazil woods," from which the country de- ,
X a^ (dy^ rived its name, began to be utilised in bwilding -British ^^^
me^ M)f - wa r ; English merchants took up residences in the ^< _
narrow streets of the old Rio, and Brazil's great game , '!''
of foreign commerce was on.
A glance at the condition of the country at this com-
mencement of the new epoch in the dawn of the nine-
teenth century, throws light upon the rapid achievement
of the last hundred years.
Previous to the opening of the nineteenth century,
Brazil had been endeavouring to live a stifled existence
under the weight of the arbitrary and shortsighted Por-
tuguese Court. As has been suggested, she was a coun-
try with no ''open door"; indeed she was restricted by
a policy as strict and prohibitoiy as ever shut in China
and Japan from touch with the outside world. If by
chance a vessel allied to the mother-country was per-
mitted to anchor within the beautiful harbours of this
land, where every possibility of production awaited only
the coming of population and world contacts a flour-
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 39
ishing commerce inevitably brings, not even the crew
was allowed to go ashore without a guard of soldiers.
If an alien ship was driven of necessity into a Brazilian
port for repairs, a strong guard from the custom house
was promptly placed on board, and a time limit was
placed by the authorities on the ship's stay.
These oppressive measures affected everything. The
gold mines, discovered in the opening of the previous
century by the Paulistas in the state of Minas Geraes
("General Mines"), had been rendered partially im-
potent for the want of implements which could not be
imported. Agricultural supplies and household necessi-
ties were at a premium. The ancient national annals tell
of wealthy planters who could furnish golden plates to
their guests upon which to eat, but did not have enough
knives to "go around," while a single drinking glass
had to do service for the entire company. This latter
state of conditions of the earlier colonial days impressed
me particularly in contrast with present conditions, as
I was shown about the fine and flourishing glass factories
now existing in southern Brazil. There was no free
press, because there were no printing presses in Brazil
in the opening of the nineteenth century ; books were rare
as there were no libraries. "Dependence upon Portu-
gal" was the slogan of the Lisbon authorities, and despite
many evident signs of rising independence on the part
of the Brazilians, the present day enterprise and enthu-
siasm of life and industry were conspicuous by their
absence.
When the Prince Regent Joao VI brought his train of
Court followers and the Portuguese throne to Brazil in
1808, he found a country large and rich enough to sup-
port a population of one hundred millions and more,
but which as far as figures can be ascertained, held only
430,000 inhabitants of white blood, 700,000 Indians and
1,500,000 negroes, the latter for a large part in a con-
40 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
dition of slavery. There were only twelve cities and
sixty-six towns, and the total population of the largest
territory at that time in the Western Hemisphere could
be housed in one of our larger American cities and have
room to spare.
Slavery was under full and shameless headway.
Twenty thousand slaves were being imported yearly, and
in the slave market at Rio de Janeiro five thousand slaves
were annually placed on sale. The Portuguese Crown
owned ten thousand slaves which were used in the dia-
mond fields, while the Benedictines employed one thou-
sand on their plantations. ** Social life," according to
one narrator of these early nineteenth century days, **at
this time was of the most degraded kind. The habits of
the lower orders were filthy, and those of the rich abom-
inably vicious. The monks swarmed in every street, and
were at once sluggards and libertines. For the sum of
two dollars any coward could hire a bravo to waylay
and stab his enemy. The negro population were em-
ployed in every description of labour, both agricultural
and domestic."
In spite of these drawbacks the resourcefulness of the
Brazilians had been revealed in many ways during the
preceding century. Cities had been constructed and Rio
Cc^rcoy»(*o cl6 Janeiro especially, which had been made the Capital,
^c^ -r^^ii-t^ transferred from Bahia, was beginning to rise out of her
t^^^JJjt o^ marshes, showing signs of the queenliness that was to
^ Ucr^"^ ;> - be. Already the colonies were outstripping the country
of their parentage, and Brazilian exports amounted to
$12,500,000 with imports of $10,500,000. The fruits of
three centuries of colonisation up to this time had not
been greatly impressive in the region of material or in-
dustrial progress, but a new nation had slowly been
evolving. A gradual incubation had been proceeding,
so silently as scarcely to be realised by the Brazilians
themselves, through all these conquering and calamitous
IT MIGHT BE ALMOST 'ANYWHERE IN THE ORIENT
nTHE HOME OF A NEW SETTLER IN SOUTH BRAZIL
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 41
years; and now the day was approacliing when Brazil
was to break its shell of isolation and become a part of a
truly self-conscious national world.
The spirit and influence of the French Revolution
reached Brazil by way of the mother-country. When
Napoleon, then the imperial ruler of France, insisted
that Portugal should give assent to the Continental sys-
tem, which meant she should break with her old ally, Eng-
land, the Prince Regent, Dom John VI, found himself
in a desperate dilemma between two great powers of
the era. Although the Prince Regent of Portugal was
by no means a weak or vacillating character, as future
events proved, at this time he waited too long before he
finally decided to declare war against England. Even
then Sir Sydney Smith with the British fleet was block-
ading the mouth of the Tagus and the thunder of Mar-
shal Junot's guns came ominously by land as the army of
Napoleon marched on Lisbon. It was a trying moment
for the monarchy of Portugal. The Ambassador of Eng-
land gave Dom John VI two choices, either to surrender
to England the Portuguese fleet or to be personally con-
ducted by the British squadron, together with the entire
royal family, to the coasts of Brazil.
The Portuguese ruler selected the latter alternative,
and on the 29th of November, 1807, a notable date for
Brazil, the first imperial potentate and thus far the only
one to reign in person in the democratic Americas, with
the treasure and archives of the Portuguese Crown and
a host of Court followers, left the shores of the Old
World. The resounding salvos of the British and Por-
tuguese cannon which sounded in the ears of the depart-
ing monarchical family, were taken up with increasing
volume on the 7th of the following March, 1808, when the
new Portuguese-American ruler sailed into the harbour
of Rio de Janeiro amidst the vivas of Brazilian multi-
tudes.
42 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
When the news of the coming of the Portuguese mon-
arch to take up his royal residence in the New World
Colony came in advance of the arrival, it sent a thrill of
hope and delighted expectation through the entire coun-
try. It seemed too good to be true to these more or less
distracted colonists that their king was to found his
Court on the soil of Brazil. All the latent love of the
mother-country which had been half choked in the breasts
of this proud people by reason of their three centuries
of reverses and rule by adventurers, sprang up afresh.
No hospitality or no honour could be too rich or magnifi-
cent for this generous and pomp-loving people to bestow
on their sovereign. Guanabara Bay was thick with boats
in gala dress that had sailed out to meet the royal squad-
ron. The hills of Rio were alive with spectators who
mingled their welcome with the clang of the bells and the
salute of guns, as the Prince upon landing proceeded to
the Cathedral to give thanks for his safe arrival and
offer prayers for the future prosperity of the Kingdom
of Brazil.
It was said that the city was illuminated for nine suc-
cessive evenings. Swift messengers carried the glad
news throughout the land, and from the La Plata to the
Amazon, Brazil trembled in the exultation of a new des-
tiny.
The high hopes aroused were not ill-founded, during
at least the opening days of the new regime. Not only
did the Portuguese Prince give to the country of his
enforced adoption the Carta Regia which flung wide the
gates of world commerce, but he also brought the first
printing press, and the Royal Library with sixty thou-
sand volumes which he opened for the free use of the
public. New academies of fine arts and medicine sprang
into being almost fullgrown; new diplomatic embassies
from England and France arrived, new buildings were
erected ; fashions from Europe began to change the prov-
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 43
incial aspect of social customs; better communications
with the interior parts of the country were accom-
plished, and the entire face of the Brazilian land under-
went a sudden change.
It was only a few years after these transformations
that Brazil was raised to the rank of a kingdom, form-
ing an integral part of the United Kingdom of Portugal,
and when the Prince Regent was crowned Dom John VI
in the Palace Square of the nation's Capital, the_yery_
pa lms that ru stle d their troj)ical heads_above thesun-
stained roo fs of Rio seemed no less beneficent and peace-
ful than was the happy aspiration that breathed across
all the Brazils.
But, alas! for human hopes and permanent security!
This was only a dash of Brazilian sunshine which is often
scattered by the sudden storms that sweep over the green
crests of the Sierras. The country was not yet emanci-
pated. As Livingstone once said of Africa, ''the end of
the exploration is the beginning of the enterprise."
Within these new and mixed elements with which a Euro-
pean monarch was here endeavouring to reinstate a tot-
tering throne, there were antagonistic and highly diverse
ambitions and ideas, forces of unrest and political striv-
ings whose ultimate unity not even the steady hand and
brain of Dom John VI could compass.
Imperialism and democracy never permanently mix.
The nineteenth century emperors of Brazil were not the
first, neither will they be the last of the world's rulers, to
realise this fact.
It took only thirteen years for the new King of Por-
tuguese-America to learn that the twenty thousand or
more place-loving and unprincipled adventurers, whom
he had brought with him from the old country, steeped
in monarchical ideas, were not fit amalgam with which to
cement nations in this hemisphere. The old and bitter
feeling between the Portuguese and Brazilians soon dis-
44 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
played itself. The men attached to the Court cared little
for Brazil, but much for their own advancement and
titulary distinctions. To calm the storm that he saw aris-
ing, the Emperor began to pile decorations and the flow-
ers of knighthood upon the Brazilians. It created a mad
scramble after rank and oflfice, which seemed more desir-
able than industry. Every one aspired to become a
' * cavalheiro " or a "commendador," and sycophancy took
the place of honest achievement. In Latin America the
traveller wonders how there could come about amongst
certain classes the repulsion to labour, and the overwean-
ing attachment to the leisured life of the titled gentleman.
The student of this period of Portuguese rule can get a
key for its growth in Brazil.
The Emperor, seeking to stem the tide of popular
Brazilian disfavor rising against him, made knights of
business men, traders and coffee merchants, regardless of
distinguished services meriting such reward. A knight
thus set apart from the common herd by Royal favor
must of necessity abandon the menial career of a mer-
chant, henceforward subsisting upon previously acquired
fortune or turning to politics. This they did in large
numbers and one of Brazil's strong handicaps to national
progress was given sanction.
Yet, distinctions, which the Brazilian has always loved,
according to his nature prone to ceremonial and display,
could not stop the flood of independence which was in
these years rolling across the world. Not only France
but the English North American colonies, and neighbour-
ing Spanish-American provinces, at this time engaging in
successful revolutionary struggles for their freedom,
hastened the issue. The revolt of Pernambuco, where the
spirit of self respect and excellent colonising principles
were notable, occurred in 1817. A corrupt Court aggra-
vated the native people. The only printing press in the
country had been brought from Lisbon by the Emperor,
PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL 45
and its organ, the Royal Gazette, was closed to any one
who would speak against Government practices. The
Brazilian press has not yet lost the habit then so doroi-
nant of giving columns of its space to dry official edicts,
birthday odes, and flowery panegyrics.
The revolution which came in Portugal in 1821, when
the people demanded a Constitution, was synonymous
with one of the three bloodless political revolutions in
Brazil, and the result of the first one was the conferring
by King D. John VI upon his twenty-three-year-old son,
Dom Pedro, Prince-Royal, the office of Regent and Lieu-
tenant to His Majesty in the Kingdom of Brazil. When
the disheartened Portuguese Monarch, with his royal
family and nobility, embarked on a battleship for Por-
tugal, April 24th, 1821, he clasped his son in his arms and
exclaimed: ''Pedro, Brazil will, I fear, ere long separate
herself from Portugal; and if so, place the crown on
thine own head, rather than allow it to fall into the hands
of any adventurer."
IV
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE
"Independencia on morte" {The watchword of the Brazilian Revolution)
The new Prince Dom Pedro I, very soon after the de-
parture of his Royal father to Portugal, found oppor-
tunity to reveal the spirit that was in him. Liberal meas-
ures were in the air, and the oppressive attempts of the
Portuguese Cortes in Lisbon to humble Brazil could not
be subdued even by King John VI, who not only was fav-
ourably disposed toward the Brazilians, but also knew
that authoritative decrees were only intended to hasten
the independence from the mother-country which he had
predicted. The time spirit of the world at that time, the
silent, evolutionary processes of more than three centur-
ies in the big colonial country, and the taste of Constitu-
tion-making which the Brazilian Assembly had recently
enjoyed with the young Prince as a strong adherent, had
prepared the hour for the birth of independence.
The immediate cause of the action that once for all set
the new country free was the demand of the Lisbon Cor-
tes that the young Prince should be sent home to Por-
tugal, ostensibly to complete his education. The order
was too thinly veiled. It was meant to mean that Brazil
was to be placed again under the colonial vassalage of
Portugal. This set Brazil on fire. The Camara at Rio
de Janeiro, the Paulistas in the South, the powerful and
influential Brazilian statesmen like the famous Andradas,
the whole land, in short, with the exception of certain
Portuguese elements at Bahia and in other scattered lo-
de
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 47
calities, gained for once a united voice — its spirit rang
with the same ''give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death" watch-
word that fused another American nation into being, and
underneath were the kindling republican fires which this
same Northern Republic reiterated in the message of
Woodrow Wilson on the evening of April 2nd, 1917, —
*'The world must be made safe for democracy."
There have been many important crises in Brazil, but
no moment in all the country's career has yet been more
truly momentous or freighted with more tremendous fu-
ture destiny, than was the decision that severed at this
time this great division of the Western Hemisphere from
trans-Atlantic rule. It really marked the beginning of
expressed democracy in Brazil, for the ensuing sixty-
seven years of Imperial guidance of the Pedros was prob-
ably the mildest imperialism the world has ever wit-
nessed; so mild and beneficent as to form, as many be-
lieve, the best possible preparation for a Republic in fact,
which came in 1889, but which was one in reality many
years before. This Independence Day also marked one
of the clearest evidences of the underlying temper and
love for liberty which burns to-day in the breasts of these
people.
The young Prince-Royal Dom Pedro I chanced to be
at the city of Sao Paulo when the dispatches from Lis-
bon demanding his recall were received. His action then
was indicative of the man whose decisiveness was not one
of his frailties. It was on the memorable date for Brazil,
Sept. 7th, 1822. As the annals state: "Dom Pedro re-
ceived a bundle of dispatches from Portugal. He read
letter after letter — one particularly, two or three times,
and then destroyed it. No one ever saw it, nor did he
ever tell what it contained; but after a few minutes'
thought, he raised his hand and exclaimed, ' ' Independen-
cia ou morte!" ('^Independence or death!")
It was Brazil's Boston Tea Party in a coffee city.
48 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Dom Pedro, who soon was to be Brazil's first Emperor,
earned here, beside the small stream of Ypiranga in the
now great and prosperous State of the Paulistas, the
name with which the Brazilians are wont to speak of him
— ''0 Washington do Brazil."
The watchword was taken up by the people. Salutes
were fired. The glad news ran on the wings of the wind
throughout the land. Rio de Janeiro was illuminated.
The morning of the country's independent existence
dawned.
The Proclamation of Independence speech of the youth-
ful ruler who was crowned the Constitutional Emperor
and the Perpetual Defender of Brazil, in the Campo de
Santa Anna in Rio de Janeiro the following 12th of Oc-
tober, may with justice be afforded a place with the great
historic pronouncements of the New World ;
''Let no other shout issue from your lips but Union,"
said he. ''Let no other word be reiterated from the Ama-
zon to La Plata but 'Independence'; let all our provinces
be strongly chained in unanimity not to be broken by any
force ; let our prejudices be banished, substituting in their
place the love of the public good — Brazilians! Friends!
let us unite ourselves ; I am your companion, I am your
defender ; let us obtain as the only reward of all our toils
the honour, glory, and prosperity of Brazil; for the ac-
complishment of which I shall always be at your front
in the most dangerous places! Permit me to convince
you that your felicity depends on mine. It is my glory
to rule an upright, reliant and free people. Give me the
example of your virtues and of your union, and be assured
that I shall be worthy of you."
It was but natural that Portugal should make strenu-
ous objection to such open disobedience to the Crown.
She sent a large force of soldiers from Europe and an
army of 12,000 men under General Madeira gathered at
Bahia to resist the bold claims of the young independ-
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 49
ents. Dom Pedro cut off their supplies by land and with
the aid of two British sea-fighters, Lord Cochrane and
Commander Taylor, raised a fleet of eight ships and 300
gims, and though greatly out-numbered, dispersed the
Portuguese fleet, chasing it home across the Atlantic.
This was the last determined effort of Portugal to regain
her lost colony, and within three years from the declara-
tion of Brazilian liberty on the plains of the Ypiranga,
Lisbon had acknowledged an independent Brazil.
Dom Pedro I had brought unity and a renewed spirit
of self-respect to the Brazilian people. At first he was
immensely popular, but his connection with the Portu-
guese Crown established a few years after the Revolu-
tion as a price for Portugal's recognition of the new con-
ditions, together with the financial stringency in the land,
and distrust among his Ministers, presaged his downfall
after less than ten years of rule. The Emperor, who was
by no means lacking in courage and decision, delayed too
long to suit his subjects in giving the nation a liberal
Constitution. His Cisplatina war, by which Brazil lost
UrugTiay, while it helped to raise the first Brazilian army,
greatly depleted the already overstrained Government
Treasury, and the revolt of Pernambuco added to the na-
tional disfavour of the people regarding a ruler still
thought to be influenced by the Braganza family of mon-
archs.
The Emperor had descended from a long and illustrious
line of European rulers and kings. His wife was Leo-
poldina, an archduchess of Austria and in her veins ran
the blood of Maria Theresa, while it was her sister, Maria
Louisa, who was the bride of Napoleon. Dom Pedro him-
self, while he truly loved Brazil, with whom he had cast
whole-heartedly his lot, had established many useful re-
forms, and his proposed Constitution was remarkable for
its liberal sentiments in these times. It provided for
the Empire a Government that was ' ' Monarchical, heredi-
50 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tary, constitutional and representative." The religion
of the State was to be Roman Catholic, but all other be-
liefs were to be tolerated. It provided for judicial pro-
ceedings in public, the right of habeas corpus, and trial
by jury. The senators and representatives of the General
Assembly were to be chosen by electors as is the Presi-
dent of the United States, and the provincial legislators
were to be elected by universal suffrage; the presidents
of the provinces were to be appointed by the Emperor,
but the press was free and there was no proscription on
account of colour.
This Imperial Constitution, which was ratified by the
people March 25th, 1824, was doubtless the most liberal
of all the documents of its kind which up to that time had
been accepted by any South American people. It is the
Constitution which is yet in existence in Brazil as far as
many of its policies are concerned; the monarchical and
Imperial power being of course eliminated. Moreover
its spirit and intent have been so universally in line with
the ambitions of the Brazilians, that no nation of the
Americas outside of the United States has been more
truly democratic politically, or freer from disrupting and
tragic revolutions, during the last century, than has
Brazil.
If the course of affairs in this country is compared
with the conditions in Mexico for instance, where a Con-
stitution was enacted only a month previous to the adop-
tion of the Brazilian charter, the contrast is striking.
Mexico, with her like rich advantages of population, ter-
ritory and resources, has been a sad spectacle of unscru-
pulous demagogism and despoiled dominions, her Con-
stitution repeatedly overthrown, a country in which the
''rights of man" as regards the security of property have
been to a shocking degree unknown. Meanwhile the light
of freedom and justice that began to flame in these early
nineteenth century days in the morning sky of Brazil's
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 51
constitutionalism, has constantly brightened through the
changing vicissitudes of the years, and her present en-
lightenment and safety of her institutions speak well for
the stability upon which her modem civilization began in
those eventful days.
The transfer of Emperor-hood from Dom Pedro I to his
young son who became later Dom Pedro II, but who at
this time was only six years of age, marks a picturesque
and pathetic page in Brazilian history.
When in 1826, by the death of his father, Dom Pedro
II became by succession the King of Portugal, he be-
gan to utilise more than ever the militaiy aid of the
mother-country, and in this way as by other impolitic
acts aroused the slumbering antagonism of the Brazilians
to Portuguese interference. The three Andrada brothers
of w^ealth and intelligence were solidly arrayed against
him and by their life-long knowledge of and connection
with the affairs of Government, proved deadly foes. Al-
though removed from official connection with the Gov-
ernment by the Emperor, the Andradas still swayed the
minds of the Assembly, while through a Journal called
the Tmnoyo (named from an Indian tribe which was
the bitter enemy of the early Portuguese settlers) raked
the decks of Imperial policy and intimated that the Em-
peror's career would resemble that of Charles I of Eng-
land, if he did not speedily turn aside from his anti-
national course.
Affairs now were rapidly crashing down to serious
issues. There were many conflicts between Portuguese
troops and the populace. The Assembly, influenced by
the Andradas, declared itself in permanent session as a
challenge to His Majesty. But Dom Pedro I was no
vacillating Emperor. Mounting on his horse, at the head
of his cavalry, he rode to the Chamber, placed his can-
non in position and sent up one of his generals to order
the immediate dissolution of the Assembly. The Repub-
52 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
licans were taken by surprise, the session was broken up
and the three Andradas with other obstructionists of the
Emperor's policy were seized and placed on a ship and
deported to France.
Unfortunately for Pedro, the populace sentiment was
with the Assembly, and despite a lull in the hostilities
and the better spirit which had been engendered by
the Emperor's liberal Constitution, the democracy al-
ready half-bom would not be stilled. The impression
grew that the Emperor was still a Portuguese and not
a Brazilian at heart.
On April 6th, 1831, the axe fell. The Emperor had
dismissed some of the old Ministers and placed others
of his own choosing in their stead. The people of the
nation's Capital gathered in the famous Square of Campo
de Santa Anna, where many historic scenes Brazilian
have occurred, demanding the reinstatement of their
Ministers. Dom Pedro hearing of the ominous meeting
sent a magistrate to the Square to read to them his vin-
dication. This only added fuel to the fire, and the gath-
ering crowds increased the danger of the popular explo-
sion. Then the representatives sent by the people to the
palace to demand of him the return of the patriots, re-
ceived the obdurate and somewhat puzzling reply, *'I
will do everything for the people, but nothing by the
people!" As this answer was returned to the Campo,
the troops had begun to join the people; the Emperor's
battalion arrived at 11 o'clock that fateful evening and
were followed soon by the Imperial Guard which had
refused the summons of their ruler to come to the palace
for his protection.
Still the Emperor stood his ground. He declared that
he would suffer death rather than consent to the dicta-
tion of a mob. Evidently here was a ruler whom public
opinion could not easily blow around. Finally in his
necessity he sent for one Vergueiro, a patriot whose in-
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 53
tegrity and popularity were well known. He was not to
be found. It was two o'clock in the morning of April
Tth, 1831 — the messenger from the populace and the com-
bined assembly of troops pressed for a reply, reminding
His Majesty that the growing masses of waiting patriots
would not be patient much longer. The Emperor with
great dignity and firmness said: *'I shall certainly not
appoint the Ministry which they require: my honor and
the Constitution alike forbid it, and I would abdicate or
even suffer death, rather than consent to such a nomina-
tion." The adjutant turned to leave and carry the an-
swer to his general when Dom Pedro, as though strug-
gling with a great resolve, asked him to wait a moment.
He then sat down at his desk and wrote his final message
to his Brazilian subjects:
''Availing myself of the right which the Constitution
concedes to me, I declare that I have voluntarily abdi-
cated in favour of my dearly-beloved and esteemed son,
Dom Pedro de Alcantara."
Arising and addressing the messenger, the intrepid
and really great representative of the famous Bragan-
zas, the man whom the Brazilians literally ''stifled with
roses" only a few years since and who now was de-
serted by even the men he had taught and raised to
prominence, the Prince-Royal, the Washington of Brazil,
said — "Here is my abdication: may you be happy! I
shall retire to Europe, and leave the country that I loved
dearly and that I still love." Tears now choked his
voice and he turned away with his Empress to an adjoin-
ing room where their sorrow was unseen.
Six days later as the first Dom Pedro stood on the
decks of a British man-of-war, ready to sail away for-
ever from his child, his people and the Empire he had
helped to make free, looking for the last time upon the
unparalleled splendour of Rio's Bay, he thus let his full
heart speak in a letter of farewell to his son :
54 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
"My beloved son and my Emperor, very agreeable are the lines which
you wrote me. I was scarcely able to read them, becaiTse copious tears
impeded my sig-ht. Now that I am more composed, I write this to thank
you for your letter, and to declare that, as long as life shall last, affec-
tion for you will never be extinguished in my lacerated heart.
"To leave children, country, and friends is the greatest possible
sacrifice; but to bear away honour unsullied, — there can be no greater
glory. Ever remember your father; love your country and my country;
follow the counsel of those who have the care of your education; and
rest assured that the world will admire you, and that I will be filled
with gladness at having a son so worthy of the land of his birth. I
retire to Europe : it is necessary for the tranquillity of Brazil, and that
God may cause her to reach that degree of prosperity for which she is
eminently capable.
"Adieu, my very dear son ! Receive the blessing of your affectionate
father, who departs without the hope of ever seeing you again.
"D. Pedro de Alcantara.
"On board the Warspite frigate,
April 12th, 1831."
Thus on a scene not unmixed with sadness did the cur-
tain fall at the end of the first Imperial epoch in Brazil.
Of the 48 years of Brazilian history which followed,
to the hour when the military, the republican political
elements, and the people united in the conviction that the
time had come for Brazil to exemplify in her Govern-
ment the democratic sentiments long brewing, those fa-
miliar with the country are largely aware. It was the
fourth and last period of Brazil's preparation to become
a full-fledged Republic. The long colonial era of settle-
ment, long-distance officialdom and conflicts with other.
Powers looking covetously upon the riches of the giant
land; the brief reign of the Portuguese King, John VI,
with his title-loving adventurers; the notable and for-
ever historic decade when Brazil's first Emperor-Libera-
tor Dom Pedro I united the scattered fragments of a
dissentient people in a Constitutional Union of freedom
and equable laws; and then the benign and cultured re-
gime of Dom Pedro II, whose shadow hovers still visi-
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 55
ble above the country, and who departed as an old year
melts silently and inevitably into the new, not unla-
mented, on that memorable November evening in 1889.
Dom Pedro II was clearly one of the notabilities of his
generation. Through his lineage of blood he brought to
Brazil some of the most highly treasured inheritances
of the ancient European Houses of the Braganzas, the
Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. Aristocracy, chivalric dig-
nity, literary and scientific attainment, and a high-mind-
edness and a friendship for men — all belonged to him in
an unusual degree. From the sensational hour when
the power of law and custom was riven in twain in order
to lift him, a mere lad of fifteen years, to the steps of the
Imperial throne, even to the moment in the years of his
snow-white hair and beard when his ears heard but dimly
the cries of "Viva la Republica!" the Brazilians who
loved him had a habit of disconnecting him with their
troubles of State. They struck hard at their enemies,
both at home and abroad, but stood a protecting circle
about their Emperor. If in his later and declining years
he gave state-craft diminishing attention and made pil-
grimages to Europe and America while the lesser and
more political-minded remained at home to devise and
at times to intrigue, his return was welcomed with much
the same spirit as actuated their fathers in 1840, when
w^ith the ''boy Emperor" kneeling in the Brazilian
Assembly to take the auto de juramento investing him
with the prerogatives of his Imperial throne, they cried
with a nation's voice — ''Viva Senhor Dom Pedro II, Con-
stitutional Emperor and Perpetual Defender of
Brazil!!!"
On that early July morning too distant now for the
memory of many living Brazilians, it was said that the
shout of the populace that rolled after the youthful ruler
as he left the Assembly to proceed to the city palace was
"like the voice of the seas," and I think that few men
56 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
of Brazil will accuse me of hyperbole, when I say that
the sentiment that followed the aged Emperor as he left
forever the shores of his loved land nearly a half cen-
tury later, though inarticulate, was as deep as the seas
that bore him away.
For Brazil, as for the world at large, the reign of Dom
Pedro II was highly significant. It was packed with
events too numerous and too well known to be tabulated
here. It witnessed the inauguration of steam navigation
for all Brazil ; it included the Paraguayan War in which
the bravery and patriotism of the country was placed on
permanent record; it was darkened with the horrors of
slavery, and it also marked the bright day of its aboli-
tion. It was a period when industry and commerce, no
longer *' noosed and haltered," ran ahead. These years
embraced an epoch which North Americans can quite
fully understand if they know their own history — an
epoch in which Republican hopes and fears were often
so intermingled as to bring the nation at times to the
brink of despair. Yet all the time they were dawning
toward fulfillment. They were lodged deeply in the in-
exorable laws of American development. The wise and
amiable Dom Pedro had to go at last because the times
had marched on past him. The sun of monarchical gov-
ernment had set on the Western Continent. The New
Order in the free comity of American nations was al-
ready waiting for Brazil, the last great country to join
the sisterhood of Western republican states.
The veteran Brazilian statesman, Dr. Ruy Barbosa, at
the time of the fall of the Empire the Minister of Fi-
nance in the Provisional Government, depicts clearly the
reasons for the third notable revolution of Brazil :
''The most prominent ground of dissatisfaction with
the Empire was centralization, with the absence of any
real federal system. The people of Brazil had gradually
lost all interest in the Empire. The Emperor might have
THE BRAZILIAN EMPIRE 57
had amiable intentions, but the system of administration
was corrupt and incompetent. The provinces had no
rights as members of a confederation of states. They
longed for autonomy in local administration. The Em-
peror had grown old; his mind had failed him, and he
was suffering from an incurable disease. In his dotage,
Princess Isabel was the real head of the State. Sur-
rounded by Jesuits, she had no will of her own. Priests
were always about her, and clericalism was threatening
to become a direct menace to Brazilian liberty.
''The Empire had served its purpose and was out of
date. It retarded national progress. It was absolutely
necessary to assimilate the institutions of the country
with those of the liberal and progressive republics on
the American continent. Every thoughtful Brazilian had
been conscious that the revolution was imminent. The
military revolt would have failed if the country had not
been gradually preparing for a change of political order.
The revolution was a startling surprise to those who
were not familiar with the conditions of public thought ;
but all intelligent citizens had for a long time accepted
it as a foregone conclusion. When the military forces
set the example of declaring for the Republic the people
in all the provinces acquiesced in the movement with an
unanimity that armed the Provisional Government with
absolute authority. It was in its earliest aspects a mili-
tary revolt but the hearty support of all classes of Bra-
zilians in all the provinces converted it at once into an
irresistible national movement."
That Dom Pedro II played a role of far-reaching im-
portance in what has proven for Brazil the happy con-
summation of her long evolutionary, political struggles,
no one acquainted with the past or present history of the
country would deny. His integrity, as well as his intelli-
gence and his deeds, have given him a ''place in history."
58 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
The principles dominating his long political career are
given in the poem composed by himself :
"If I am piovis, element, just,
I'm only what I ought to be;
The sceptre is a weighty trust,
A great responsibility;
And he who rules with faithful hand.
With depth of thought and breadth of range,
The sacred laws should understand,
But must not at his pleasure change.
"The chair of justice is the throne :
Who takes it bows to higher laws;
The public good and not his own,
Demands his care in every cause.
Neglect of duty, — always wrong —
Detestable in young or old, —
By him whose place is high and strong,
Is magnified a thousandfold.
"When in the east the light of sun
Spreads o'er the earth the light of day.
All know the course that he will run,
Nor wonder at his light or way :
But if perchance the light that blazed
Is dimmed by shadows lying near.
The startled world looks on amazed,
And each one watches it with fear.
"I likewise, if I always give ^
To vice and virtue their rewards,
But do my duty thus to live;
No one his thanks to me accords.
But should I fail to act my part.
Or wrongly do, or leave undone,
Surprised, the people then would start
With fear, as at the shadow'd sun."
THE ORIENTALISM OP BRAZIL
No one familiar with the Orient remains long in any
portion of Latin America without being reminded of the
East. The signs of Orientalism are frequent in Brazil,
which in some respects is as Oriental as the Orient. Un-
doubtedly the tropical sunshine and the habits, customs
and manner of dress and life, which in equatorial re-
gions the world over is similar, has something to do
with this impression ; yet there are other good and suffi-
cient elements interlarded with the history and evolution
of the country and woven closely into the Brazilian an-
cestry, connecting the youngest American Republic with
the pervasive influence of age-long Eastern civilisation.
Brazil, first of all is Portuguese in stock, and Portugal
from the eighth to the middle of the thirteenth century
was ruled, in some part of her territory at least, by Mo-
hammedans. During these centuries the Iberian Penin-
sula was probably more thoroughly Arabised than was
any other portion of Europe. As the Hindus of the
present day reveal in many of their customs of religion
and life the impress of their Mogul conquerors, as the
Egyptian Christian Copts are still hardly distinguishable
from the dominant and predominating Moslems of the
Nile Valley, so the Spanish and the Portuguese, with
their South American posterity, present indications re-
peatedly of the inter-penetration from one of the most
powerful and contagious racial and religious forces the
world has knowTi. The sons of Portugal may have taken
many of their fighting ideals as well as their examples
59
60 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
of statecraft from their early Roman rulers ; the alliance
and friendship of Portugal with England from the thir-
teenth century have undoubtedly meant much to Portu-
guese commerce and navigation; but in order to under-
stand the historic background of Brazil one must needs
recall the fact that the /Vrabs conquered the Brazilian
mother-country, together with the Iberian Peninsula, in
the eighth century and Mohammedan Caliphs and Moors
had several hundred years in which to stamp upon this
section of Europe a type of civilisation distinctly Eastern.
The visitor from the North is quickly impressed with
the Latin American treatment of women. On the West
Coast of South America, especially, the partial seclusion
of the fair sex reminds one of Eastern customs, while
throughout Latin America the woman's world is confined
to the home in a degree unknown in the United States
or England. The multitude of movements for women
that stagger the North American statistician are still
unknown in Brazil. Public life is a man's world, and
not until recently have women been employed in business
offices. It is not customary for women or girls to appear
on the streets unattended by one who corresponds to
the Spanish duenna, and in the cafes and public restau-
rants women are usually conspicuous by their absence.
The Brazilian would hardly go to the length of saying, as
it is often stated in Peru, that if a young man is allowed
to see a young lady alone in her home, it should be for
the purpose of proposing marriage to her, yet the scrupu-
lous care with which the men of this country guard their
women folk, even from introductions to men who are
not of their elect circles, reveals customs singularly re-
mindful of the Orient. If certain of these ways of life
relative to women appear at first sight to the Northerner
as strange and medieval, the uncensored woman and girl-
life of the United States usually strikes the Brazilian as
savouring of the other extreme. One Brazilian said to
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 61
me : " What are you going to do for a home-life in your
big country, when all your women go into business or
reform movements, and have no time to keep house or
bear children?"
There is perhaps no portion of the life of South Ameri-
ca resembling more truly Oriental custom than that which
has to do with the family as a kind of clan, rather than
composed of individuals. The patriarchal life, lived un-
der a common roof-tree, is quite universal in South
America among the better families. Indeed it is not more
common in India or China than amongst these people
who are proud of their names, their antecedents, and the
purity of their blood. The sons bring their wives to the
father's home as is the custom in China, and here as in
the Orient, there is a kind of family communism that
many of the progressive South Americans at present
opine, as being inimical to the development of independ-
ent initiative on the part of the younger generation.
A family of my acquaintance in Argentina is more or
less typical of Latin American custom. The guest will
be invited to dinner, providing he is especially fortunate
as a foreigner in being admitted into the intimate family
circle, and instead of finding merely his host and his wife
to greet him, the immense house (in this case containing
over a hundred rooms) seems to swarm with men, women
and children bearing the same name. On the occasion of
my visit there were thirty-eight people who sat down at
dinner, and all of these had their abode under the same
roof tree, being the parents, children and grandchildren.
The family was virtually a clan sufficient in itself for its
social life and amusements. It is because of the enor-
mous family relationships that the seclusion of women is
no hardship here, and one hears frequently in South
America, as in the Orient, the woman 's answer as to her
reason for not making friends outside her circle of rela-
62 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIE COUNTRY
tives, *'0h, we have so many in the family, that I do not
need to go outside."
This patriarchal custom makes usually for a strong
and beautiful family life, and one seldom finds anywhere
a more delightful atmosphere than that existing in the
South American home. The devotion of the woman to
her household and children, as well as the reverence with
which the sons and daughters continue the memory of
their sires and grandsires, reminds one of the Far East
w^here filial piety is the supreme virtue. Among the
weaknesses of this system realised by many South Am-
ericans is the tendency to intermarry in a comparatively
closed circle, in order to keep the family property in-
tact, and also in certain cases, as in sections of Brazil, to
preserve the purity of the Portuguese blood.
The famous Li Hung Chang of China built his home, to
which he wished to retire in his old age, in Shanghai in-
stead of Canton, his home province. When asked why
he did such an unusual thing, contrary to Chinese custom,
he replied, ' ' I built my house as far as I could from my
ancestral home with the hope that my numerous poor
relations could not get the steamboat fare to come and
live with me."
Many a South American, if he speaks from his heart,
will reveal similar desires, as it is the custom here, as in
the Orient, for the members of a family less fortunate
in this world's goods, to seek out their prosperous rela-
tive and give him the pleasure of their company through
life. This is not simply requested as a favour, but is de-
manded as a right, and is seldom refused.
In a city of Brazil a prosperous physician died leaving
practically no property. When his widow was asked
why a man who received enormous fees for many years
should leave no wealth, she replied, ' ' How could he ? He
had forty people dependent upon him." The generosity
of the Brazilian not only extends to his relatives, but
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 63
his great-heartedness and loving nature are revealed in
the adoption of children who have been so unfortunate as
to lose their parents. Even in the poorest families there
are frequently one or more adopted children. We formed
the acquaintance of a family who had ten children of
their owai, and still had room in their heart and their
house for the adoption of four in addition.
As in the East, the houses are large and are filled with
innumerable servants, and these servants partake of the
character of their Eastern prototypes in their general
inefficiency, and also in their willingness to perform the
many small and menial acts of personal service which
the Brazilian requires, but which would hardly be ex-
pected of servants in the United States.
Another Oriental characteristic, which, it might be re-
marked in passing, is not confined on this continent to
either the Brazilians or the Spanish Americans, but
which is particularly noticeable among these Latin peo-
ples, is the love of display. At times this approaches
ostentation and the acceptance of veneer for reality.
There is a tendency to put a good front on everything
regardless of what may exist in the back-yard. Over-
ornamented houses where the colours of the spectrum are
exhausted in furnishing striking colour schemes ; the use
of jewelry by both men and women to an extent that sur-
prises even the Broadway habitue ; prodigal spending on
celebrations, flower-decorations, the luxury of lights in
the cities, superb office buildings of unique design where
in the North, plain utilitarian sky-scrapers would be
found; wonderful parks and plazas everywhere filled
with horticulture and statues ; and a penchant for dress
to be remarked among all classes. If it is true, as some
one has said, that the sense of being well-dressed gives
a feeling of tranquillity which religion is powerless to
bestow, the Brazilians should possess a repose rivalling
the Buddha at Kamakura. Surely they are among the
64 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
best-apparelled men and women to be found in any part
of the world. It should be noted that in this regard they
display a taste and a culture that is mindful of Paris,
rather than anything east of Suez.
In the matter of manners and etiquette, where the Bra-
zilian also excels, one finds Oriental suggestions. Like
the cultured Latin American generally, the Brazilian is
uniformly polite and his observance of form and punc-
tilio is hardly surpassed in a Japanese Imperial court.
As to the Easterner, being courteously pleasant is a kind
of ingrained trait. Social amenities like hat-lifting,
handshaking, seeing guests to the street, gift-making and
delightful speeches, calculated to give pleasure and sat-
isfaction to the recipient, are almost a sacrament. Like
the Oriental, the Latin American will rarely say an un-
pleasant thing, if he can think of any remark that is
agreeable. It has been stated that an Oriental will tell
an agreeable falsehood rather than a disagreeable truth.
At any rate he will please you if his intuition and imagi-
nation do not fail him. While no one would accuse the
Latin Americans of falsifying in order to be polite (as
far as the Brazilians are concerned, I gained the impres-
sion that their honesty both in business and social life
is quite up to the level of such virtues found in other
parts of the Western world), one finds a striking resem-
blance between them and the men of the Orient in this
attempt to discover what you would like to have them
say before they speak. The indirect method of approach
pleases them best. One of their writers has said: *'If
the American seeks the shortest road to a given end, the
Latin American looks for the prettiest." It becomes at
once apparent why the North American with his naked
directness and often bluntness of manner and speech fails
to be frequently a ''simpatico" person in these Republics.
A truer conception of the real difference in attitude
regarding this matter of being polite, on the part of the
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 65
Anglo-Saxon and Latin respectively, would obviate many
difficulties and embarrassments between North and South
Americans. In the realm of deportment, the American
can learn much from the Brazilian. There is still preva-
lent in sections of the United States the idea that direct-
ness of speech and action are invariably the accomplish-
ments of high integrity and probity, while politeness and
gentlemanhood are the shadows of insincerity. I have
known men who seemed to take pride in their rudeness
and the brutality of frankness. The desire to please or
to appreciate the point of view of another does not seem
to enter their consciousness; certainly these have no
such place in their scheme of life as in Latin America.
Agnes Repplier remarks : "In my youth I knew several
old gentlemen who might on their death beds have laid
their hands upon their hearts and have sworn that never
in their whole lives had they permitted any statement,
however insignificant, to pass uncontradicted in their
presence. They were authoritative old gentlemen, kind
husbands after their fashion and careful fathers ; but con-
versation at their dinner table was not for human de-
light." They were doubtless of that type, "pious and
disagreeable," sad remnant of the old Saxon heritage
expressed as to sentiment in the old English saying —
* ' What is the good of a family if one cannot be disagree-
able in the bosom of it?"
"So rugged was he that we thought him jiist,
So churlish was he that we deemed him true."
St. Francis de Sales, himself a Latin, drew quite a dif-
ferent line of ideal — "It is better to hold back a truth
than to speak it ungraciously," he said.
It is quite time that we in the colder and more practical
North begin to realise our deficiencies in the matter of
behaviour. It is quite time that we stop calling polite-
66 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ness a "thing on the surface," not meaning thereby to be
complimentary, for, as Whistler once answered this accu-
sation, "on the surface is a very good place for polite-
ness to be." As a matter of fact a man's outward atti-
tude, expressed in his general deportment, constitutes
usually his main chance to affect the sum total of the
human existence with which he comes into contact. Cour-
tesy, as we find it in Latin America and among Orientals,
is not a hollow thing. It is a part of a real culture. There
is a heart quality present. Henry James said, speaking
of French attendance, "Your waiter utters a greeting, be-
cause, after all, something human within him prompts
him. His instinct bids him say something, and his taste
recommends that it should be agreeable."
He who resides among the people of the Southern Re-
publics and is the recipient of their delicate and generous
favour, which is rarely marred by any suspicion of boor-
ishness and crudity of thought or action, is inclined to
recall what one of our most honoured New England writ-
ers once said — that he liked a self-made man, but that he
liked even better for steady companionship a man whom
an enlightened civilisation had helped in making. If
William Wyckham had insight in giving to the great Eng-
lish boy's school at Winchester the motto — "Manners
maketh men," — the Brazilian, in common with Latin
Americans generally, has a notable contribution to ren-
der other parts of the Western continent, where there is
less consciousness of the subtle potency of pleasing de-
portment.
Industrial initiative and interest in large constructive
modern enterprise involving practical talents, are traits
in which Brazilians are weak, together with Orientals,
especially the inhabitants of India. The mental ten-
dency of the Latin American, as a rule, is literary and
political rather than scientific and practical. It is well
known that the inhabitant of these lands dislikes figures
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 67
and statistics almost as much as does the East Indian.
Even Government statistics are usually taken with cer-
tain reservations by those who know the way in which
they are prepared.
Throughout South America one hears repeatedly in
almost identical words, the lament confronting the trav-
eller in virtually every section of the Near East, namely,
that the people are keen, often enthusiastic, to begin un-
dertakings, but are lacking in dogged perseverance in
carrying them through to completion. It was said that
among Coleridge's effects, at his death, there were in-
numerable manuscripts begun but never finished. Among
those of the Latin temperament which has more elements
of similarity with the East than with the Teutonic and
Saxon West, feelings hold a higher seat than cold logic,
and there is wanting the steady power of will that endures
opposition gladly and drives its way through difficulties.
One finds less frequently than farther North that obstacle
furnishes incentive to enlarged display of energy and de-
termination. This may be because the Latin American
in common with many of the people of the East does not
live to work as truly as does the North American espe-
cially, but rather looks upon labor as a necessity at times,
a passage to be endured on the way to enjoyments more
in keeping with the spirit and desires of a people to whom
pleasures of thought and environment bulk larger than
industrial efficiency or complicated scientific manage-
ment. It is a matter of easily ascertained history that
the larger enterprises involving material and administra-
tive abilities on a huge scale, undertakings requiring prac-
tical rather than theoretical talents, have been carried
through in this part of the world largely by foreigners, —
Germans, Englishmen, and Americans.
A South American writer has spoken of the deficiencies
of his countrymen in a manner more sweeping than would
seem to accord with the facts of awakening industrial
68 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIE COUNTEY
enterprise among Brazilians at least, but which contains
much of the true tendency — * ' The Latin American, a crea-
ture of dreams and a victim of neglect, brings together
all the conditions essential to a writer or a musician, and
he lacks initiative. Somewhat of a dilettante, he is not
well adapted to the period into which he is born."
The Bra^iilian's use of language, also, has suggestions
Oriental. He not only employs a large amount of lan-
guage, but he is also quite as hesitant as the Chinese,
for example, in coming to the point or in answering a
direct question in a direct way. There is a deluge of talk
with many gestures about the merest trifle. In rural
districts of the country, notably, if one stops to ask a
policeman a simple question concerning direction, he is
likely to find himself involved in a lengthy conversation,
pleasant enough but not necessarily relevant. I visited
a lecture room a few years ago in the city of Cairo and
was surprised by a student who held up his hand to at-
tract the teacher's attention. Upon being asked what
he wanted, the youth replied, ' ' Sir, I want to talk ! ' ' The
traveller in the Latin Eepublics is often conscious that
the native inhabitant is possessed with a similar desire.
He wants to talk. He likes to talk quite as much as the
loquacious Oriental. He is very good at talking too, and
although from the point of view of the more reserved
Teuton, he seems at times to overdo the business of
speech, one must confess that the South American's con-
versation is both fluent and graceful in diction. I have
never travelled in countries where it was so true that
most any one could get up and make a fine speech. The
flow of words is charming, although when, later, one is
separated from the magnetism of the vibrant gesticulat-
ing speaker, he is sometimes at a loss to know what all
the talk was about.
The young son of one of my friends went to hear a
famous preacher who talked steadily for one and one half
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 69
hours. On his return the father asked his son how he
liked the sermon. *'Fine!" answered the son. ''But
what did he talk about?" queried the father. At which
the boy replied, perhaps truly, ''He didn't say!" To
many foreigners the South Americans appear to use both
in their common conversations and also in their books
more words than are needed to express their meaning.
There is such ready facility of speech and writing that
one craves for the speakers and writers the virtues of
limitation and restraint. It is Oriental to use eloquence
and figures of speech, adorned with flowery expression,
to convey ideas and sentiment ; it is also decidedly Latin
American.
Educationally, there are many parts of Brazil that re-
mind one of the Orient by reason of the more ready use
of the memory than of the reason. It is easy for the
student of these lands to commit to memory, not so easy
for him to think for himself independently. This is even
more true in some other Southern Republics, — Bolivia
and Peru, for example. Practical or applied learning is
not naturally popular among these students. Literature,
drawing, the arts and government studies on the other
hand are easily grasped and much real excellence is ex-
hibited. The Brazilian is apt in the mastery of languages
other than his own, and in the cosmopolitanism which
this linguistic ability affords him, he easily surpasses the
American and the Englishman, who usually knows but
one lang-uage.
In India one finds to-day a large, very much too large,
race of la^^^ers, made up of the educated men who enter
this profession with the idea of using it as a stepping
stone for political and government position. The case
is not otherwise throughout South America, where law-
yers are legion. There are many parents who send their
sons to the universities and law schools to fit them for
the bar, regardless of whether or not these youths intend
70 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
to enter permanently the profession of law. Here, as in
many of the Oriental nations, law is the popular profes-
sion. Some say this is because of the distaste of the peo-
ple for business or commercial pursuits, law also leading
to government offices affording a comparatively easy gen-
tlemen's career; while others will tell you that it is be-
cause the South American temperament, like that of the
Easterner, carries one naturally to a profession wherein
he excels, because of the fundamental bent of his mind.
Probably both reasons are operative in South America
as well as in India.
As to the attitude toward time, the keeping of engage-
ments, etc., the Oriental traits are repeatedly revealed
in Brazil. In the first place the country to a large extent
is located in the tropics ; and in tropical climates no one
hurries except the newly arrived foreigner. But the free
use of time in Brazil is something more than tropical;
it is national.
Mr. James Russell Lowell said: "The Neapolitan's
laziness is that of a loafer ; the Roman's is that of a noble.
The poor Anglo-Saxon must count his hours and look
twice at his small change of quarters and minutes ; but the
Roman spends from a purse of Fortunatus." The Bra-
zilian's use of time is neither Neapolitan nor Anglo-
Saxon ; it is rather like that of the Roman gentleman, who
found time a vast commodity made particularly for the
service and not the slavery of man. The Brazilian does
not place small stress upon the keeping of engagements
because he is indolent ; the matter of saving minutes does
not seem to have occurred to him as particularly im-
pressive. He has for the most part spent his life in an
environment somewhat removed from the strident sounds
and rushing feet of great industrial cities. He has been
the inheritor of the spirit of the Portuguese and the
Moor, and in his great tropical country there has always
seemed to be ample time for the siesta and the indulgence
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 71
of friendship. One finds no suggestion in his manners
that it has ever crossed his mind that the world was going
to close to-morrow promptly at five o'clock. He is as
much of a spendthrift of time as he is of money. He
acts as though there were an unlimited supply of both
commodities.
To the foreigner, this tendency to delay, to be dila-
tory in answering letters, to come late to engagements
and in a hundred ways revealing a lofty indifference to
time values as they are reckoned in the United States,
at least, is sometimes a hardship difiicult to condone.
Foreign educators will tell you that it is difficult to get
either students or professors to hold rigidly to class
hours. At times the pupils are more desirous to learn
than the teachers are to teach. In one city I found the
students of one of the institutions on strike, their griev-
ance being that the professors, who were for the most part
professional men carrying on an outside business of their
own, not only did not arrive on time at their lectures, but
in many cases forgot them entirely.
As to dinner parties or social engagements, it is quite
generally expected that people will be late, even later than
in other countries outside of South America, quite as late
as is the attendance in Oriental cities. In the case of a
certain public official from the United States, who was
scheduled to lecture in a West Coast city, invitations to
the guests belonging to the country were issued for three
o'clock, and those to foreign inhabitants for four o'clock.
The arrangement proved to be a happy one and creditable
to the penetrating discernment of the committee, since
the guests all arrived at practically the same time, around
four o'clock.
This disregard of time is being overcome slowly in
Brazilian cities, particularly in the realm of business en-
gagements, because ot the stress of trade growing each
year, and also no doubt by reason of the contact with
72 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
foreign men of affairs who have brought from their home-
lands habits of promptness and despatch relative to busi-
ness matters.
The love of music, artistry of all kinds, and things liter-
ary, is general throughout Brazil. The strains of music
caught from a doorway by the passer-by frequently re-
mind one of the minor chords that thrill the Westerner
so strangely among the inhabitants of North Africa, East
India or in fact almost anywhere in the Orient. The
romance and poetry-loving of the East are found on
every side. There is Oriental colour and sentiment in the
modern Portuguese literature of Brazil which one day
will be discovered to contain the literary and mystic
beauty which it certainly possesses. The atmosphere of
this wonderful country beneath the Southern Cross forms
a natural habitat for the traits that, while they are Latin
are also of the East, in essence. That they are not prac-
tically Anglo-Saxon, and that they do not breathe with
the hard worked term *' efficiency" makes them no less
contributary to the abiding values of the human race.
As long as there is a place in the world for those talents
of spiritual and literary and artistic excellence, as long
as sentiment which had its rich original home in the East
rules the hearts of men, so long will the dwellers of the
earth, be they of the North or South, the East or the
West, be glad that there are places here and there on this
rolling planet where the goddess of Beauty and Music
and Poetry still dares to lift her head and utter un-
ashamed her messages to the finer side of humanity.
He who in his Northern isolation of cold business ac-
complishment takes it upon himself to rule out of useful-
ness traits and talents that are as immortal as the soul
of man itself, simply because these are not understood or
cared for especially, is not simply lacking in cosmopolitan
charity, but impoverished as to the deeper riches to which
all the wide world should be in part contributor and
THE ORIENTALISM OF BRAZIL 73
debtor. That some of the richest jewels of human ex-
istence shine in settings that are strange to us, makes
them, for that reason, no less real.
As the American and the Englishman turn more and
more to the charm and dignity of the tranquil, thoughtful
East, to get a breath of its priceless antiquity before mo-
dernity levels it to a mediocre present day utiUty, like-
wise are they beginning to find in such countries as Bra-
zil an Orientalism closer at home, and its fascination is
no less strong in that it furnishes an inevitable and re-
quired complement for the values that are distinctively
Anglo-Saxon.
VI
REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT
The conducting of Government by the will of the majority is the most
complicated of all human undertakings.
Viscount James Brtce.
An old riddle asks, ''Wliat is the most wonderful thing
the Creator of the world ever made!" The answer ran,
"The human face, since there are so many of them and
no two of them are alike."
A similar definition might be given of Eepublics ; there
are Republics and Republics, and no two of them are alike.
In the nature of the case they couldn't be alike, for the
nature of the material and the traditions with which they
begin are never the same. The United States is probably
the only form of republican government extant that be-
gan on the ground floor, so to speak. It was neither a
revamped monarchy nor an oligarchy reduced to demo-
cratic terms. It had no papal or clerical party claiming
at least half the authority with the state as did certain
European and South American nations. No high walls
of aristocracy or bureaucracy were present to be scaled
or thrown down. The general character and drift of the
principles of equality, freedom and individual rights were
already at hand in the minds and hearts of the people
when the Declaration of Independence came. Liberty-
loving principles were the only principles this Northern
Republic knew or wanted to know. The American Con-
stitution was simply the expression of the principles
which had actuated the early colonists and which their
descendants had accepted as naturally and inevitably as
74
EEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 75
children accept the governing rules of their parents'
home. Democracy was the environing atmosphere. It
was not superimposed on something else that previously
existed. There were few refractory elements to block
its progress ; as compared with certain other democracies
which have come since, the United States might be said
to have moved out upon its republican destiny as un-
trammelled and free from a clogging past experience as
a school boy coming out of his sequestered halls, con-
scious of no past, only sure that the present and the
future lay enticingly ready before him.
It is only with such thoughts near at hand that the
American can apprehend in any correct manner by way
of contrast at least the nature and the achievement of the
South American Republics, which are of comparatively
recent growth, and which have had to fight their way
through seas of inheritances, whose waves of old world
despotism and feudal oligarchy have rolled often moun-
tain high against their frail newly made and untried
barques. That they have survived utter shipwreck is the
chief wonder with which the student of their history is
filled, as he ponders the massive obstacles that have
strewn their path.
To say that many of these Latin Republics have not yet
attained to the right of being called Republics at all is
perhaps natural and easy judging them from standards
of democratic polities worked out with much labor during
many centuries. To say that they mistake written con-
stitutions for accomplished facts, and aspirations for
achievements, and theories for practice may also be true
in certain instances and from the same sage point of view
of foreign and superficial observation. The satire that
has been poured out on these South American nations in
their struggle for liberty and stable government, the pic-
turing of them as revolutionists in perpetuity, as savages
and painted Indians living in jungles, or subsisting on the
76 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
favour of foreigners, or missionaries, is as ridiculous as it
is untrue. The world in general is now quite ''fed up"
with all this unrelated hearsay. It is beginning to learn
in the words of the countryman that "many of those lies
ain't true." What Chili and Argentina and Brazil and
Uruguay, especially, have already swiftly accomplished,
as the years of nations go, is but an earnest and harbinger
of even greater things eye hath not seen nor ear heard
in the other South American nations, even now on the
threshold of visualisation. One needs but to watch the
discerning eyes of the trade experts to guess something
of the next century in Latin America. That trade and
wealth and an ever increasing owning civilisation will
assure there the stability of republican institutions is but
a correlation of all the national history that men know.
To speak then of Brazilian government or politics is to
narrate concerning a national government in transition,
still carrying along as inevitable baggage the heritage
of feudal oligarchy, the remnants of slavery existing less
than thirty years away, together with imperial traditions
whose shadows still hover above the heads of living Bra-
zilians, traditions as proud and courtly as was the gran-
deur of mediaeval Portugal whose king ruled his subjects
from a Brazilian throne.
Brazil's republican history began properly on the 15th
of November, 1889. She had during the first five years
two military men as heads of her provisional govern-
ment. Marshal da Fonseca and Marshal Floriano Peixoto.
This period was marked by the formation of the new
Constitution in February, 1891, modelled after the Consti-
tution of the United States. During her twenty-eight
years of existence as a Republic, Brazil has built her.
political structure upon and about this instrument; cer-
tain amendments have been made to adjust this govern-
ment compass more truly to national requirements, but
as a rule the theory as the mode of the Brazilian republi-
EEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 77
can regime follows closely that of the Northern Re-
public. That the constitutional authority has been nomi-
nal and partial at times is due not to a difference in ideals
so much as to the widely scattered inhabitants which have
militated against the formation of a strong and united
public opinion, and also to the great diversity of the popu-
lation in race and intelligence.
One of the most severe trials of this early republican
period came in 1892 when the revolution of the southern
state Rio Grande do Sul broke out and before its con-
clusion at the end of nearly three years involved both the
navj and the army. Monarchical influences were not ab-
sent and at one time when the bombardment of Rio de
Janeiro w^as commenced, serious consequences were pre-
vented only through the intervention of the foreign war
vessels lying at that time in the port. In the year 1894,
the first civil president, Dr. Prudente de Moraes, began
his administration, ended the civil war, and commenced
the work of rebuilding the new Brazil which has been
continued by five successive presidents to the present
time.
While there have been at times a breaking ont of the
elements of unrest, temperamental in an emotional people
and inherited from centuries of fighting men, the Govern-
ment has proved itself equal to the occasion, and it may
be truly said that to-day Brazil furnishes a theatre for
the peaceful pursuit of industry and human happiness
comparable with that of modem states in other parts of
the world. In spite of the fact that politics tend to re-
volve about personalities rather than principles, as is nat-
ural especially in those parts of the country where back-
ward and illiterate races have not yet risen to the stature
of competent and responsible citizenship, the spirit of
democracy is generally pervasive and there is a strong
national loyalty and patriotic pride.
Many important events and accomplishments have been
78 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
packed into the first three decades of Brazilian repre-
sentative government.
The boundary question, the hete noire of South Ameri-
can RepubHcs in their early free government history, has
been settled between Argentina and Brazil, thanks to the
arbitration offices of the United States. By the Treaty
of Berne, the territorial limits between French Guiana
and Brazil were established. A formidable and threat-
ening financial crisis, from 1898 to 1902, was safely
passed, though not before specie payments were sus-
pended and paper money withdrawn. The unique and al-
together notable showing of Brazil at the St. Louis Ex-
position in 1904, in her beautiful white Monroe Palace
which was copied at the Capital City of Rio de Janeiro,
heralded the country's resources and delicate dignity
in the northern part of the American continent. The
Third Pan-American Congress held in this building was
attended by 80 representatives of 20 nations, aiding in
demonstrating the universal inclinations to peace exist-
ing in the southern Republic, and also in revealing the
deep lying desire of the Brazilians to prove by their hos-
pitable modern spirit their worthiness to contribute their
share to international welfare.
The recent annals of Brazilian history show conclu-
sively that a republican form of government has been
capable of bringing in both constructive legislation and
economic and material reform after a fashion unknown in
the previous centuries of the nation's life. The Federal
Capital has been transformed in this awakening indus-
trial era from a fever-infested, rambling mediaeval town
into one of the most magnificent cities of the world. Col-
onisation on a sensible basis has been begun and nearly
every country of the Old World has begun to send its
people to this vast and still undiscovered and unexplored
continent of opportunity. A steady upbuilding of fed-
eral and municipal enterprises has occurred, and steam-
EEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 79
ship lines and railroads, light and power plants and dock-
works, manufactures, schools, libraries and charitable
institutions have come, with a gradual but certain ten-
dency on the part of Government and inhabitants to turn
their effort into practical channels, rather than spend it
upon fruitless political discussion and personal rivalries.
No one can study the developments in telegraph, tele-
phone and postal service, in the building of an army and
navy, in the growth of a free and intelligent press, in
the commercial contacts with Europe and the United
States and the growth of the ability of keen political
minds to grasp the higher principles of public interest,
without according to Brazil her full measure of praise
for deeds that more than compensate for her mistakes in
this her new game of nation-building on democratic foun-
dations. To be sure the country has been heavily in-
debted to foreign capital and foreign energy and busi-
ness experience in this period of construction, as has been
every one of the South American countries. Still Brazil
has been furnishing in government as well as in trade a
respectable share of able men and leaders. As one of her
oldest statesmen recently declared, "Ideas in politics and
business have no value apart from the men who can give
them life." If Cervantes was right in saying that a man
is the child of his own works, it is also right to keep ever
in mind that a nation never rises above the ideals and
acts of its greatest men.
In ' ' splendid names ' ' modern Republican Brazil is not
poor. The famous Baron Rio Branco, by his political
acumen as by his great humanity, stands out among the
prime ministers of modern times. Dr. Rny Barbosa, by
his scholarship, his eloquence and his public service to
Brazil, is to the Southern Republic what Webster was to
our own early history. Dr. Jose Carlos Rodrigues is the
Charles Dana of Brazil, the founder and for almost a
generation the publisher of one of the highest grade
80 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
newspapers in the Western Hemispliere. The political
service of his Jornal do Comercio has been and is in-
valuable. Judge Amaro Cavalcanti, the present mayor
of Rio de Janeiro, has had for many years a leading
part in the making of government, and his position as
advisor and a foremost citizen is remindful of the dis-
tinguished place Joseph Choate occupied for so long in
the United States. During his recent visit to the United
States, Dr. Lauro Miiller, who has held with distinction
the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs in Brazil, im-
pressed the American people with his ability and wide
interests, receiving a degree from Harvard University;
although his German-Brazilian parentage has deprived
him of office at present, his service to Brazil in many
public Government positions gives him a high place
among Brazilian statesmen. The list of notable names in
connection with Republican Brazil would include Benja-
min Constant, whose positivist movement helped shape
the initial days of the Republic, the celebrated veteran
Paulista statesman, Dr. Rodrigues Alves, former Presi-
dent of the Republic and President of the flourishing
State of Sao Paulo, together with scores of other names
of public men who have served the modern State with
unquestioned distinction and loyalty.
To present the weak side of Brazilian politics is not so
difficult a matter for one who has lived for any length of
time in the big Republic, since the Brazilians themselves,
like their neighbours of the North, are continually telling
you of the deficiencies of government, while both the
rostrum and the press ring with true democratic frank-
ness as to things that should be accomplished and the
things that should be left undone. If there is anything
that the Brazilian does not dare to say pro or con relative
to his lawmakers and politicians, we have failed to note
it. If one is inclined to believe that autocracy or any
form of old world diplomatic secrecy exists in present
REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 81
day Brazil, he should get some kind friend to translate
almost any edition of one of the Federal Capital's daily
newspapers, or better still be present in one of the Bra-
zilian cities when the democratic emotion of the Latin
American populace rises in its might to assert its in-
alienable rights.
But when any American, French or English democrat
assumes to throw stones at another attempt at democracy,
he is bound to have in mind the shortcomings of his own
nation as regarding government, and recall, as Clemen-
ceau wisely remarks, that ''nowhere are institutions
worked according to rule." It remains for the observer
to respectfully point out the conditions as he sees them
from a necessarily somewhat external point of view,
trusting that any mistakes of vision or analysis which
he may make will be alike conducive to thought and dis-
cussion, along with his more correct interpretations. In
other words the writer of nations other than his own must
be always praying the well-worn prayer of the western
cowboy — ''Don't shoot the organist; he is doing his
best!"
It will be recalled by some of the older inhabitants of
the United States, that when the dignified and scholarly
Dom Pedro visited our Republic, it was said that Brazil
was not only the best governed, but was also the only
orderly political entity in South America. When the
aged Emperor left Brazil in the year 1889, and the pro-
visional government, then instituted, marked the first step
in the new republican regime, the leaders following the
example of other Spanish American states, took as their
chart for the ship of state the North American Constitu-
tion almost exactly as it lay beneath the hands of our
early signers at Philadelphia.
An American student of political affairs has said that
the difference between the Brazilians and us in the United
States seems to be that "we have clarified our Constitu-
82 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tion by a five years' Civil War and certain Amendments,
and that the Brazilians have not." We find at present
that the Brazilian politicians are busy revising their Con-
stitution and introducing a new Civil Code, intended
especially to eliminate abuses and difficulties which have
gradually grown up in the realm of ' * State Rights. ' '
The Brazilian states are now virtually nations with
elected authorities and autonomous administrations.
Their financial policies are directed by their own Presi-
dents and ministers, under the control of Parliament.
These states possess their own systems of justice, public
education, control foreign loans and syndicates, and in
some cases maintain under the guise of police forces,
virtual armies. In Sao Paulo for instance one is amazed
at the vast numbers of policemen to be seen everywhere
— often two or three for a residence block in a city.
A somewhat delicate situation involving both politics
and economics exists in the matter of export duties which
are fixed by the states and vary considerably. The profits
from these export revenues are collected by each state
for its own needs, while the Federal Government collects
all import duties. There is a tendency on the part of the
states to tax capriciously new industries that show signs
of becoming profitable, and the whole system makes for a
decided lack of uniformity in export duties. The pro-
posed revision of the Constitution would modify these
conditions, if such men as Bulhoes and Cincinnato Braga
are successful in carrying out their ideas.
In a country where unproductive wealth is not taxed,
save as these export duties on agricultural products may
be considered as such a tax, every state budget is largely
dependent for its revenue upon its taxes levied on its ex-
ports. There is not only a double line of custom-houses
in Brazil — one facing outwards and one inwards — ^but
there are two species of contraband, that against the
Government by the smuggling in of foreign merchandise
REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 83
and another against the states, which are defrauded by
the smuggling of state products out of the countrj\ As
Brazil has no land frontiers across which products are
sent in any appreciable amount, the port supervision is
easy and with the exception of occasional smuggling
across the frontiers of Uruguay and Argentina, the leak-
age from this cause in exports is less than it might be
otherwise.
The Federal Government, or what is known in Brazil as
''The Union," has control of the federal army and navy,
all monetary questions, and fixes and applies the customs
duties on the imports of foreign merchandise. The Fed-
eral Government also manages the Postal service. The
Revolution which, without bloodshed, brought in the Re-
public, was followed by decentralisation of authority and
until recently the various states have been far too inde-
pendent and individual in their policies to make for the
best national administration. With the acquirement
from Bolivia of the Territory of Acre, one of the chief
rubber-producing regions, the Union has been increasing
its dignity and authority, for these revenues from the
Acre not only paid off the indemnity promised to Bolivia
in three years, but now make a notable addition to the
Union budget. The visitor to Brazil notices many indica-
tions of new loyalty to the Union. The army is especially
popular in these days. Many new companies of volun-
teers are being formed from young men in the various
business houses. I witnessed a numerous display of these
new recruits on the celebration of Brazil's Day of Inde-
pendence.
The fine boulevard of the Beira de Mar was packed
with Brazilians cheering the volunteers and listening to
the "Flag" speeches. The idea of a Republic, which is a
far less tangible thing for the average Brazilian to grasp
than was the person of a Monarch, is gradually taking
shape in the national consciousness, and one must expect
84 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
during the next decade a considerable growth of federal
sentiment, as the constitutional revisions modify the
conflict of laws which have existed between the federal
statutes and the various state codes. The drift at present
is toward "federalising" things in Brazil.
An indication of the need of this reform is suggested
in a word of a prominent official of Rio : * ' It is curious to
note that the Federal Government at each election falls
into the hands of a President and a group of his friends
who invariably represent one state in the Union, rather
than a party with a platform. To-day we are governed
by Mineiros (Minas Geraes men). Before that it was
Paulistas (Sao Paulo men), and so on. Under the
Empire it was a government of Cabinets which fluctuated
and changed, while the Sovereign remained fixed. ' '
There are three crying needs which await the interven-
tion or the supervision of the Union in Brazil: the ex-
tension through the states of a system of compulsory
education which many of the states cannot afford to in-
augurate ; the peopling of the land through a statesman-
like policy of national colonisation ; and the building of
roads in the widely separated rural districts. There
are some difficulties connected with the dividing of state
lands among immigrants as the domains of the Imperial
Government were divided among the states; the states
having neglected to take up this important matter, a
new law proposed to the central Government not long
ago gives the Union a chance to put in a nation-wide
system of colonisation.
If the national conscience grows with the prosperity of
the country of almost exhaustless resources, these re-
quirements will soon begin to be satisfied, and the result
will be a new Brazil.
Another phase of Republican politics in Brazil more
important at the opening of the Republic than at present,i
but still a force, is connected with the philosophy of Au-
EEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 85
guste Comte, the Positivist Movement. In tlie middle
of the nineteenth century a Brazilian generation, similar
in many of its aspects to that of France in the latter
eighteenth century, revived the literature of the earlier
period and read with avidity the encyclopedists and the
philosophers who were so largely responsible for the
tragedies of Paris in 1793. The doctrine of Comte seemed
to the Brazilians to be the remedy for the evils that were
brewing in the Latin American land.
This philosophy which took strong hold upon the mid-
dle classes, and through the influences largely of Benja-
min Constant spread in military circles, was actuated by
a high ideal for democracy and especially fought slavery
which was at the time bringing in complications with
England. I visited the Positivist church in Rio de Ja-
neiro, one of the two or three churches of this cult in
the world to-day, and had a long conversation with the
leader of the society. Dr. Texeira Mendes, who for thirty-
five years has preached Positivism in this edifice. The
church was draped in mourning and I learned that this
had been the case since the breaking out of the European
war. Across the heavily draped doorway were written
the words ''Order and Progress" — the motto given by
the Positivist to the new Republic when they designed
the Brazilian flag and placed their emblem upon it. In
the basement of the church I was shown the original
design of the national ensign, made by a member of this
order.
Although this church of "The Religion of Humanity"
has at present only about eighty members, Dr. Mendes
informed me that there were in Brazil several thou-
sand people who were more or less associated in sym-
pathy at least with this philosophy. Its main tenets re-
late to civic and social righteousness, and its high and
chivalrous attitude to woman, whose thorough and cul-
tured training these people consider as essential to the
86 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
future development of the human race, has undoubtedly
influenced thought and political progress to a greater de-
gree than is usually realised, even by Brazilians. At
present the faith seems to have a diminishing hold upon
the people at large, and its lack of what many would
call a vital religious principle makes its growth difficult
with deeply religious natures.
Although Brazilians, like other South Americans, have
a decided liking for politics, this Republic differs from
many of the Spanish American states in not having
strictly any well defined and permanent political parties.
In the time of the Empire there were the two old parties
— Liberal and Conservative — but these disappeared di-
rectly after the Revolution.
There are many political adversaries and there are
semblances of parties rising about strong personalities
at election times. Such was the case during a recent
election when Dr. Ruy Barbosa, the popular orator and
Brazilian writer, had a large following. But such groups
of men lack traditions and they seldom possess political
doctrines or platforms of constructive principles, and the
adherents soon disintegrate after the interest in election
has subsided. These transient parties usually get a cer-
tain popular following by exploiting the unpopularity
of some particular measure held up by their opponents,
or the representatives in power.
All male citizens above the age of 21 years are en-
titled to vote, but the high percentage of illiteracy, said
to be beyond 70 per cent, of the total population, reduces
the electorate while the partisan character of the officials
in power and their hold on the offices by reason of po-
litical favours granted, make elections more or less a
farce as far as the votes of the people are concerned.
There is a widespread indifference on the part of the
people at large relative to voting, the negroes having
little interest through their ignorance or peurility, and
REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 87
the immigrants often because of their uncertain resi-
dence in the country. The old Brazilian families who
live apart and are usually among the influential ruling
classes, do not look with much favour on the formation
of new political parties faithful to a set of principles.
All sorts of stories go the rounds regarding the mis-
carriage of the suffrage. It was not so long ago that
one of the ''ward-heelers," as we would have styled him
in the palmy Tammany days, actually ran off with the
ballot box in a certain Brazilian city, when there ensued a
merry chase by police, small boys and populace in the
neighboiirhood, which ended in the ballots being strewn
along the street and a justified contest of the vote on the
part of the defeated candidate. In another instance we
were told by a Brazilian that when he went to deposit his
ballot, the polls were locked though it was in the midst
of the regular voting hours, while a merchant in an inland
town informed me with no show of humour that he was
afraid to vote, since it furnished almost a certain fight,
and as he was not a strong man physically he did not
feel he was called upon to thus endanger his person. All
of which recalls to the older American, scenes and
*'unscenes," as the old darkey expressed it, in our own
Republic when election day was something like a ''Rum-
Romanism-and-Rebellion" carnival with marked bal-
lots and votes to the highest bidder.
That such events are becoming more and more rare in
Brazil, as they have largely disappeared in the United
States, swept away by the growing public sentiment that
the ballot is the free-man's most sovereign privilege and
responsibility, the leading Brazilians hope and believe.
The glare of publicity and a rapidly advancing modernity
are affecting the old easy political order as they are
changing aU old customs here. As the Brazilian gaucho
sings.
88 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
"The bagpipe has killed the old guitar
And the match has killed the tinder box.
The bombaeha has killed the xcriba
And the fashions of the cities have killed the old-fashioned talk."
Brazil has taken the step with several of the more
progressive of the Latin American Republics of separat-
ing from politics all religious and social problems, though
in northern parts of the nation there are some rather
complicated racial antagonisms connected with political
matters. The Constitution contains an article providing
for the settlement of international disputes by arbitra-
tion, and the trend of the political sentiment is usually
toward peace, despite the fact that close watch is kept
upon the political and military movements both of the
Spanish American neighbours and of the United States.
The Brazilian lawyers with their natural aptitude for
legal matters have worked out important measures which
could well receive the attention of other republics. One
example is the legislation requiring all business record
books to be registered, becoming official documents with
every page initialed and greatly expediting justice in
case of suits.
An important influence in political Brazil resides in the
old families who live somewhat isolatedly and because of
their wealth and social station become significant factors
in things of State. They correspond somewhat to the
old aristocratic families of our South thirty or forty
years ago, when the men of education and caste went
into politics as a body, and had not learned the advantage
of the later industrial life which has since revolutionised
the southern part of the United States. This type of
man in Brazil, be he planter, big absentee land-holder or
wealthy politician, partakes of the characteristics of the
old feudal baron, and is usually against the government
that politically opposes land and cattle interests. There
are indications that this constituency is beginning to feel
EEPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT 89
tlie new tide of utterly free and equal democracy grow-
ing in the country which is travelling ever toward the
French Cambon's slogan, '*War to the manor-house, and
peace to the hut."
The main cleavage in political principles seems to be,
at present, between those who would increase consider-
ably the central federal authority of the country, and
those who hold rigidly to the motto in the spirit of which
the nation was founded — ''The States Independent." In
the minds of the most thoughtful Brazilian statesmen,
the conviction is evident that the administration of the
countr}^ should be more truly centralised. The size of
the Republic, as well as the methods, often unscrupulous,
of political control exhibited by the officials of certain
states, calls for a firm central authority in the interests
of national unity as well as of national integrity.
That the Constitution is being slowly but surely
adapted to the diverse population, that it is being made
to ''march," must be the conclusion of those who study
Brazilian statecraft. The day of perfect government is
still a distant dream in Brazil, as it seems to be in other
parts of our war-wracked world. The nation which builds
its republicanism upon the basis and traditions of the
only empire the Western world has ever known, possesses
problems unique, and some of them more intricate of
solution than exist in any other South American repub-
lic. There will be many a crisis in the adjustment of
labour and legislation, many a threatening misunder-
standing between the states of this far-flung common-
wealth ; the experiences of France and the United States
wiU be undergone, with adaptations to a mixed popula-
tion in whose nostrils is the breath of both East and
West, and above whom wave the tropic palms.
But there is no other word for Brazil but democracy.
It is deeply lodged already in the hearts of the people.
It will come increasingly potent with time, and will en-
90 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
dure beneath the shadow of the Brazilian eagles as long
as time endures. In the prophetic words of Carlyle,
spoken over the republican beginnings of France:
"A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not
the old habits and beliefs of the constituted, then accurately their
rights, or better indeed their mights ; for these two, well understood, are
they not one and the same? The old habits of France are gone: her
new rights and mights are not yet ascertained, except in paper theorem ;
nor can be in any sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured
herself, in fell death grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of
madness, with principalities and powers, with the upper and the under,
internal and external ; with the earth and Tophet and the very Heaven !
Then will she know."
VII
A LEVIATHAN COUNTRY
A new world : a new fourth part of the globe.
Americus Vespucius, of the Southern Hemisphere.
Racial traditions and temperamental inheritances are
powerful forces in the moulding of any peoples ; not less
potent are its geographical location, its size and the ex-
tent of its natural resources, in the final determination
of a nation's character and career. Brazil from many-
points of view is a leviathan country, and her very size
demands a peculiar destiny.
Her sheer bigness is first of all impressive. Only four
other countries are greater in territory: Eussia, Great
Britain with her colonies, China, and the United States if
Alaska is included. Its 3,292,000 square miles of extent
include a coast line more than 5,000 miles in length, the
largest river in the world, the Amazon, which has a length
of 3,850 miles, 100 of its 200 branches being navigable;
and its colossal sweep of lands extending through all the
variety of temperate and tropical zones, roll from valley
and tableland up to green mountain summits that lift
their loftiest heads 10,000 feet above the level of the
sea.
It was evidently due to a limited knowledge of geog-
raphy, or ^'an historical accident," that the sturdy Portu-
guese discoverers received by the division of western
lands in the Bull of Pope Alexander VI, 1493, and a
treaty with Spain the following year, more than half of
South America, but this fact has already had momentous
91
92 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
result upon the shaping of Brazilian life and institutions.
Its full harvest of influence lies still in the future when
the present unrealised wealth of this gigantic section of
the earth 's surface shall have been completely discovered,
converted into territory fit for human habitation, and sub-
jected to industrial and agricultural expansion.
It is because of her range of national physical possi-
bility that this Southern Republic is destined to become
great with a greatness that only the richness of land
and water extent can give. It is a country that possesses
several hundred thousand square miles of unoccupied
territory, much of it utterly unexplored, thousands of
square leagues of forests which have never yet resounded
to the feet of civilised man, regions as extensive as half
of Europe in which the deposits of iron, manganese, and
minerals of almost every description await the approach
of a world's need. It is a country whose own inhabitants
hardly realise its alleged fastnesses of Amazon jungle
and tangled everglades, still the fiction of unexplored
dreams. Those who have dared to push their way to
the edges of this vast unknown have found in many places
a rich savannah country, with rolling hills and woods, a
fertile soil, and the future grazing land par excellence
of all the world. Such a country, with such unmeasured
sources of material aggrandisement, cannot, if it would,
retire from national greatness.
There are two distinctive features of Brazil's terri-
torial massiveness that differentiate her from any other
vast world domain. In all her sweep of lands north to
south, covering 29 degrees of latitude, as well as in her
wide east and west stretches over 39 degrees of longi-
tude, the country has no deserts, but on the other hand
contains by far the largest section of fertile and unused
land and river space to be found anywhere on the globe.
I have talked considerably with Mr. George H. Cherrie,
who has spent twenty-eight years in South and Central
A LEVIATHAN COUNTRY 93
America pursuing his nature studies, touring several
times in various directions through northwestern Brazil,
crossing the Amazon region from Peru, from the Orinoco,
and approaching it from the south with the Roosevelt
Expedition. It is impressive in behalf of this Republic's
future to hear him say that he found almost interminable
reaches of country lying back from the Amazon, thinly
wooded with gently rolling hills, capable under cultiva-
tion, which he witnessed, of raising three crops of corn
yearly, and destined in his opinion to be one day the
arena of the greatest cattle ranges known to man.
Shall Brazilians who have already learned how to elim-
inate a large proportion of tropical diseases from their
first settled coastal lands, and who are pushing inward
year by year their frontiers, in the generations ahead
be found dw^elling serenely on the banks of a greater
Nile, the conquerors of the Amazonian selvas, carving
their fortunes out of the rich soil of vegetable and river
deposits now awaiting seemingly only scientific energy
and the wand of the financier? That this vision, which
may seem a dream of fancy now, will become reality
through the aid of daring foreign pioneers, is no more
improbable than was the scaling of the Andes by rail-
ways, and the conversion of yellow fever districts into
flourishing industrial cities, fifty years ago. The world
is yet too young, and the fire of adventure and the
Pizarro spirit in the heart of man is still burning too
fiercely to allow such rich guerdon of eifort to lie un-
productive for many more generations. Northward and
westward the course of material empire is taking its
way in the great leviathan land. Already the cattle, min-
ing, railway and timber colonisers and prospectors are
edging upwards through Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Cath-
arina, Parana, and Sao Paulo, spreading their webs
of enterprise over the vast interior states of Matto
Grosso and Goyaz which contain an area of over two
94 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
million square kilometres, one fourth of all Brazil ; when
they reach one day the almost immeasurable Amazonas,
the giant of all Brazilian states, they will meet there the
rubber and sugar pioneers coming westward by river and
by railway from Para. Great inland cities will mark the
passage of the Amazonian forest; a Brazilian Chicago
perhaps in the virgin heart of South America, or a new
and vaster Rio de Janeiro, sitting in her queenly strength
half way between the southern oceans, whose scepter of
unequalled position and pre-eminence will be over all of
the Brazils. It is not without significance that the Fed-
eral Constitution of the twenty autonomous United
States of Brazil ordains that the future capital of the
Republic shall be built in the interior central districts.
Nor is it alone in the luxury of her prodigious land
and water areas, which this country of distances holds
in reserve for herself and all the world, that she finds
herself secure. Brazil is happy in a diversity of climate,
that makes possible in turn a diversity of product, equal
if not surpassing that to be found in any other land. No
kind of cultivation ranging between the temperate and
torrid zones is alien to her possibility.
I know that it is common enough for persons in
Europe, as in North America, to think and to speak
casually of Brazil as a land of red-hot tropics, naked
Indians and steaming jungles. And it is needless to
deny that the Northerner, who may, by chance, land in
equatorial Brazil even in winter (which in this land is
the reverse of our northern summer), sympathises often
with Mark Twain's definition of winter in India. He said,
as it will be remembered, that winter in East India was
merely a relative term used to denote the difference be-
tween weather that would melt a brass door-knob and
weatlier that would make it only mushy. There are times
when the traveller, be he in Singapore or Java or the
Amazon country, in fact anywhere around the equator,
A LEVIATHAN COUNTRY 95
save in the Ecuadorian or Peruvian Andes, is inclined
to the belief that he is about to be dissolved into his
primal elements and stream away. The writer has not
been the first Northerner who, beneath the grilling heat
of a Brazilian summer, has felt that no poetry fitted more
perfectly his feelings than the Kiplingesque stanzas —
"Where the longitude's mean, and the latitude's low,
Where the hot winds of summer perennially blow,
Where the mercui-y chokes the thermometer's throat
And the dust is as thick as the hair on a goat;
Where one's mouth is as dry as a mummy accurst —
There lieth the Land of Perpetual Thirst."
Notwithstanding all that may be said about Brazil's
tropics, it is to be noted that a greater part of the Re-
public occupies elevated plateaus, and contains the great-
est hydrographic system in the world. The mean tem-
perature for Rio de Janeiro has been about 70 degrees
Fahrenheit for the last forty years, and sunstrokes are
virtually unknown in any part of the wide domain.
At the same time one should remember that you can-
not grow bananas and rubber on an icefield, and that
many of the products which have come to be world neces-
sities, as well as some of the most delicious sensations
of eye and ear and brain, are experienced in the tierra
caliente, the land of exuberant fertility, where, as Pres-
cott says with exquisite delicacy, "fruits and flowers
chase one another in unbroken cycle through the year;
where the gales are loaded with perfumes till the senses
ache at their sweetness: and the groves are filled with
many-coloured birds and insects whose enamelled wings
glisten like diamonds in the bright sun of the tropics."
It may also be intimated in passing that out of the
tropics, out of the places of siesta and silence and sun-
shine, have come many of the idealists, poets, mystics and
religionists, whom the world holds dear, and that Brazil,
96 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
like India, has been called a land of ideas rather than
one of industry — only of late seeming to realise in com-
mon with her Oriental sister in the zone of the ''After-
noon life" that to be practical and enterprising, as well
as thoughtful and romantic, is also the privilege of her
climatic diversity.
The variety of her productivity is amazing. In the
entire Amazon valley the land furnishes, not rubber only,
but also ivory, nuts, woods, tobacco, hides, cacao (a boom
crop), while there are signs at present of an enormous
advance in cotton, promising to be as important to the
north as the cattle boom is becoming to the south of
Brazil. Many of the tropical fruits of this Amazon re-
gion go to Argentina, as do the yerba mate, and much of
the pine woods of the state of Parana.
In the central portions, there is found also some rub-
ber, some cacao, and coffee, but the section is particularly
notable for its deposits of gold, diamonds, manganese
(the latter being one of the swamping exports), sugar,
fibres, hard woods, and a large trade in hides. Really,
only ''the wash on the surface," as the experts say, has
been made in the great diamond fields of Minas Geraes
and Bahia, though one large concern is now doing some
careful prospecting work. Regarding petroleum in this
central region, one is met with the remark, "The pros-
pectors do not tell all they know." There are no iron
and manganese deposits like those in Brazil to be found
anywhere on earth, save possibly in the Ural Mountains,
from which export has been delayed, as it is said for
the sake of valorisation.
The south of the country is at present the New West,
the fusing ground of colonists, and the home of agricul-
ture, lumbering, fruit raising, coffee growing, and enter-
ing at present one of the greatest boom periods the coun-
try has ever known in the cattle business. In journeys
that took me for many thousands of miles through this
A LEVIATHAN COUNTRY 97
sonthem hemisphere of Brazil, my astonishment at the
wealth of natural resources and the possibility of the
country for virtually every kind of agriculture and enter-
prise known to-day to our own great West, led me to
ask the question again and again, "What has caused the
delay in taking advantage of the thousands of rolling
acres of practical development?" The answers were
various, — the distance and isolation and the lack of
proper roads and steamship lines; the Brazilian's desire
to preserve his national material birthright and his nat-
ural suspicion of the too large entrance of foreigners;
and the answer perhaps most common, the need of capital
and energetic leadership.
It may aid one's conception of the vastness of the fu-
ture for this southern and temperate section of Brazil to
realise that the four states of the Brazilian southland,
together with the lower end of Matto Grosso, included
within the temperate latitudes and having climate not un-
like that of California, contain an area greater than one-
third of the entire United States of North America, or
more land capable of cultivation than is included in the
combined areas of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho,
Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Ari-
zona, and New Mexico. It is also almost staggering to
think of the great State of Amazonas and its 732,000
square miles of territory, more than the sixth part of
Europe, and embracing more land and water than one-
third of the United States, treated to the effort and enter-
prise that has been spent on the valley of the Mississippi.
The cry of Brazil for many years to come must be
''Give us men to match our country!" If the popula-
tion of Brazil were as dense as that of Belgium at the
beginning of the European war, its territory would con-
tain more human beings than exist at present on the
entire face of the earth. It is estimated that the coun-
98 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
try's 24,000,000 could be, with justice to the resources,
increased at least eightfold.
*'We need men — labour, labour, labour, — that is the
cry of all these sparsely populated South Americas,"
writes one of the best informed foreign residents whom
I met in Brazil. "Immigration should be encouraged,"
he continues, "but this can only be done if you find a
class of immigrants who will not assume the strut of con-
querors; and to make them come you must give them
roads — good roads — not foreign concession railroads,
but cheap and good highroad and waterway, so that every
little farmer may learn that a crop is worth growing,
because he can carry it somewhere and sell it. The lack
of roads here is the crying evil. Make your small man
prosperous and he will gain self-respect; then he will
demand for his children the public school education which
he himself has lacked. Functionarism, the great curse of
administration here as in other countries of Latin Amer-
ica, would be largely done away if you encouraged tlirift
and self-respect with the governed. I till my field and
want to sell my crops unhindered, and I want my son
not to be a pensioner on the State, but to inherit my
field, and by thrift to increase it. If this were the pre-
vailing spirit the horde of functionaries would fall away.
The easy and free intercommunication between the in-
terior and the coast, and between the several states,
seems to be the remedy for much of the evil."
The concluding observations which this astute student
of affairs. South American as well as Brazilian, are so
relevant both to the matter of utilising on the part of
Brazil her leviathan country and also as to the part the
United States might take in this great adventure, that
I beg leave to quote his frankly expressed conviction:
"I have often thought," he says, "that the saving of
these countries of South and Central America lies in
the hands of the people of the United States, if we but
A LEVIATHAN COUNTRY 99
knew it, and realised the moral responsibility, as well as
the political convenience.
''Had one-half the capital that has flowed into the
United States from Europe in the munitions business
since the war began been invested in Latin American
port-works, railroads, highroad building, and general
public utilities, we should not only have made a good
financial investment for the future, but also have sealed
the political compact of Pan-Americanism far better than
by invoking 'Monroe Doctrines.'
"It may not yet be too late. But to accomplish this,
some strong current of public opinion should be created
in the United States. It will not be enough to present
the investment itself as a financial possibility — our coun-
try should be made aware that if we do not help these
people, somebody else will. Who that somebody else
may be is problematical — very probably it will be that
European nation, or coalition of nations, which dislikes
us most."
The above statement of my South American friend is
as timely as it is true and prophetic, and in no Republic
of them all is the opportunity more enticing to foreign
interest than here in this virgin continent of Brazil,
standing now on the broad frontiers of her vast estate.
VIII
EDUCATION
The Sejiools are the most unmistakable thermometer of any social
structure. Clemenceau.
Among the first impressions of the traveller in Brazil,
especially if he be an American accustomed to compul-
sory education for his youth, is the presence of young
children on the street and about the homes during school
hours. Although one will be told that certain of the
states of this Southern Republic have laws compelling
the children to attend school, these laws are not general,
and because of many obstacles, such as the wide dis-
tances between towns and sparsely settled districts and
the lack of funds for education, public sentiment does not
appear to be strong for their enforcement. It is reported
that there are upwards of 13,000 schools with an at-
tendance of 750,000 pupils in Brazil, but one gains the
impression from travel in ariouE sections that the ma-
jority of these students are in the professional institu-
tions, like law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, or attend-
ing the more newly developed schools of Commerce,
Architecture, Arts and Crafts and special or private
schools, corresponding more to the high school grade
as it exists in the United States.
It is common to see intelligent and finely dressed men
wearing on their forefinger a huge, pretentious-looking
ring, usually some coloured stone surrounded by dia-
monds, which is an emblem signifying that the wearer is
a member of one of the learned professions, the colour of
100
EDUCATION 101
the stone designating whether it is medical, law or
pharmacy. This does not mean necessarily that all of the
gentlemen thus bedecked are practicing these profes-
sions. In Brazil, as in other Latin American countries,
it has long been the mark of social standing and prestige
to be associated with a learned calling. As in India, the
profession of law especially has been generally popular,
and intimately associated with political and governmental
office. In these countries a professional degree and higher
educational training for such degrees have been closely
allied with public life, and not dissevered as they have
been so often in the United States, from matters of state
and political preferment.
In Brazil there is no university, as the term is under-
stood in Europe and North America, the professional
schools by their longer courses extending over five and
six years, being the institutions of liberal culture, and
the preparatory schools, which also include certain col-
legiate subjects, being immediate stepping stones thereto.
Although there are signs of convictions that Brazil
should have one or more really great universities, as
yet her youth receive the chief amount of their liberal
training in the schools which, with us, are usually con-
sidered to aim particularly at specialised callings, and
for the purpose of fitting youth along somewhat narrow
channels for the chosen lines of their career.
There are furthermore no such schools in Brazil de-
nominated in the United States as graduate schools,
where advanced students may engage in research and
special training to become high class teachers, or ex-
perts along lines of academic, scientific, or journalistic
excellence. For such training Brazilian young men have
been accustomed to go to Europe, especially for law and
medical advance studies, or to the United States for
engineering, commerce, and pedagogical training. The
numbers of such students who are going northward has
102 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
been increasing' rapidly of late and in nearly every one
of a score of our larger universities there will be found
from a dozen to thirty young men from Latin American
countries. Although there is a decided predilection on
the part of Brazilian students for French culture, it is
significant that the new and ever increasing tendency for
social, industrial and scientific progress in the country
has turned a larger stream of youth towards the United
States in recent years. There are at present four times
as many South American students studying in institu-
tions of the United States as there are in France.
It is in the realm of elementary education that Brazil
is particularly weak to-day. This is revealed in part by
the somewhat astonishing percentage of illiteracy, which
is estimated to be not less than 70 per cent, of the entire
population. To be sure Brazil has a somewhat more com-
plex problem than many of the South American states,
because of the numbers of her negro and Indian popula-
tion, especially in the north and in the interior of her
extensive domain. But there has been and still continues
to be a national apathy regarding general education of
the lower orders particularly. As a matter of fact, those
who are at the head of political affairs (and here in
Brazil the Government is almost universally behind edu-
cation both as to its direction and to the furnishing of
the revenues), have been more interested since the com-
ing of the Republic in other things than in education.
One official in an inland city soberly excused the mu-
nicipal authorities when accused of not furnishing
money for a much-needed high school building by say-
ing, ''How could we build a new school house, when we
had only enough money to build the theatre?'* It is
always a nice question and one that will be debated prob-
ably for some time to come, whether rudimentary educa-
tion is the forerunner of economic and industrial civili-
sation, or whether a new nation should first busy itself
EDUCATION 103
in becoming materially competent and self-respecting,
and then give itself to the development of its educational
system. One hears the argument that if you give people
good roads, ways of communication and the method of
economic prosperity, they will demand education. Others
are alike earnest in arguing that if you give the people
education they will demand roads and municipal and
rural improvements. If the example of the United States
is of any value, these opinions should not diverge but
coalesce, and educational and industrial progress go
hand in hand in the development of Republics.
That there is no such general shock at illiteracy in this
part of the world as in the North is evident. As one
Brazilian housewife expressed it, ''What would we do
for servants if we educated all the common people!"
Nevertheless it would seem that a dash of education here
and there would help the same housewife, for, according
to her own statement, her negro cook could neither read,
write, tell the time of day by the clock, nor count money.
When we asked how she managed to do her work her
mistress promptly replied, "I don't hire her to do any
of these things. I hire her to cook. She is a good cook,
she never expects to be anything but a cook ; she is per-
fectly satisfied. Education gives foolish ambitions to the
working people. Why educate them?'^
This may seem a somewhat bald, frank statement of
the case, and probably it would not reflect the views of
the majority of the educated Brazilians to-day, yet it is
a view which is plainly held in many parts of the country,
and if we are not mistaken it reflects an attitude of mind
which for more than one century has been more or less
common in certain parts of Europe, and not entirely
absent from the minds of a certain type of industrialist
in the United States.
It is seemingly possible to get accustomed to illiteracy
though it is often embarrassing to a foreigner. One day
104 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
by chance I dropped my mail in the street, and going to
the bank to which the mail was addressed, in the hope
that it might have been returned, I received the follow-
ing answer from the clerk:
''There are three chances for you and seven against
you, that your mail Avill be returned. If one of the thirty
per cent, of the population who can read and write picks
up your letters you will get them, for the Brazilians are
honest, but if one of the 70 per cent, who can't read finds
your mail he will probably either open it through curi-
osity, or throw it in the first ash-can."
In the matter of education as in other things, Brazil
must be judged not simply by her present but also by her
past. She was not founded or colonised by a race of
men who as a prerequisite for civilisation placed a red
school house by the side of the church. The early Portu-
guese discoverers and the aristocratic nobles, and mon-
archial officials who followed in their train, held medieval
views regarding education as about other matters, and
probably their general attitude was not so much differ-
ent from that of the Brazilian housewife quoted above.
Years of slavery and a lack of labour to develop a new
country were not influences intended either for the de-
velopment of democracy or for the widespread dissemi-
nation of equal educational rights among the common
people.
The heritage which Brazil received from Portugal
educationally was neither worthy of the mother countiy
nor conducive to the enlightenment of the early colonists.
For generations Brazil was a closed port to the commer-
cial world. She was also shut up to ignorance for many
years by the Portuguese who had their eyes riveted on
the country's natural wealth, deeming the gold, silver,
diamonds, and woods of the country to be the extent of
their interest or responsibility in a new and undeveloped
land.
EDUCATION 105
**The Portuguese Government," writes an historian
of an early period, ''did what it could to impede the
progress of its new possession. It hindered commerce,
stifled industry, and even prohibited the treatment of
metals, cutting of precious stones, installation of print-
ing presses, publication of works, and circulation of
newspapers — everj'thing, in fact, likely to contribute to
the material and moral development of the people. It be-
lieved in keeping them in entire ignorance of the wealth
of their own land."
The first two centuries after Brazil was discovered
would have marked an educational blank, had it not been
for the Jesuits who were the educational pioneers of the
country, scattering the seeds of enlightenment wherever
they went, starting schools and seminaries, and being
impeded meanwhile at every step by a government that
would shut the eyes of the people from knowledge, while
it robbed the land of its treasure to fill the depleted cof-
fers of Portugal. In the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury the Jesuits, who in addition to their educational
interests were probably the most astute politicians that
South America has ever seen, were expelled from Brazil.
They were succeeded by Benedictines, Carmelites and
Franciscans, who in turn originated the monastic schools,
but departed in many respects from the enlightening sys-
tem of education used by the Jesuits. One meets Bra-
zilians to-day who are of the opinion that the country
sufiFered a far-reaching calamity, both in the quality of
its teachers and also in its priesthood, when these Jesuit
forerunners of civilisation were driven from Brazil.
After fifty years of checkered history in the various
attempts to establish educational institutions in differ-
ent places, the Prince Regent Dom Joao, soon after his
arrival in Brazil in 1808, inaugurated a new period of
literary and educational progress in his systems of pri-
mary and secondary training, started the school for
106 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
cadets in the Benedictine Monastery at Rio de Janeiro,
and also established the first printing works of the coun-
try in the same city. This latter was an important event,
as it made possible the use of printed texts in the place
of the manuscripts employed by the Jesuits. Brazilian
education now began in earnest, and professional and
military schools sprung up in different places and were
helped by the Regent, who in 1821 brought the public
treasury to the aid of the day schools. Brazil was still
relatively a benighted country, and many prejudices had
to be overcome. Many of the people would not allow
their children to study French because, since Napoleon ^s
invasion of Portugal, French had been regarded as an
impious and libertine language. Nevertheless educa-
tionalists worked hard in this period and when the dec-
laration of Brazilian independence came in 1822 there
was at least a foundation, more or less chaotic, of school
instruction.
The modem phase of Brazilian education did not begin
until the year 1878, under the leadership of the Minister
of Education, Leoncio de Carvalho, when public instruc-
tion was completely revolutionised. The advent of the
Republic in 1889 brought many educational reforms, such
as pedagogical schools, the establishment of an educa-
tional review, and the placing of the professional schools
on a firmer foundation. Much money was spent on edu-
cation in the early years of the Republic, more in fact
than was spent for education in many of the countries of
Europe. Unfortunately compulsory education was not
established. Good teachers were not forthcoming. Great
distances between schools in the rural districts made
then, as at present, regular attendance upon school exer-
cise difficult. The Governors of states, in too many
cases, used their power of educational appointments in
a political manner. As far as one can judge there were
never present such excessive and unscrupulous uses of
EDUCATION 107
political power, educationally, as have been found and
still continue to exist in certain South American Repub-
lics, but politics was inevitably stronger than the public
desire to educate. The tendency of the students to turn
to law and literary studies rather than to technical and
practical education, was evident. The obsession of the
whole nation in political matters placed a handicap upon
general education and the Brazilians of to-day lament
that educational training throughout the entire country
comprises far too little attention to the present day prac-
tical needs of the nation.
A country with twenty-four millions of inhabitants,
without a real university devoted to higher liberal cul-
ture, with no general or national law prescribing com-
pulsory instruction, and giving only secondary attention
to the systematic establishment and maintenance of scien-
tific, agricultural, conunercial and graduate schools, can
scarcely be said to have solved adequately its educational
problems.
There are, however, present signs of advance along
many educational lines. A law was passed in 1911 re-
forming usages in higher education. This law made the
value of degrees in the modern schools equal to those of
the oldest institutions; in fact, every holder of a B. A.
degree in Brazil is likely to be addressed as "Dr.," and
the old elaborate educational ritual accompanying the
cap and gown doctorates has been annulled, the graduate
receiving the simple certificate after finishing his par-
ticular course of study.
"All degrees have been abolished," writes one of the
Brazilian educators, speaking of the higher honourary
titles, "as unsuited to a democratic society."
Although the larger institutions are almost invariably
state institutions, maintained and directed by the gov-
ernment, there is no federal monopoly of schools, since
any state may start schools for law, medicine or en-
108 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
gineering, and the certificate of graduation has equal
force in all parts of the Republic. If the school receives
government aid, the curriculum must conform to certain
standards laid down by Brazilian law regarding studies,
length of course, and also the appointment of teachers.
In state institutions the teachers are appointed by the
government, from a list submitted by the faculty. Al-
though the executive has veto power upon appointments
and school administration, this is seldom utilised and
academic freedom rarely meets with interference. The
secondary schools are independent, and a separate ex-
amination is required to enter the professional schools.
The study of law is by far the most general and pop-
ular of the courses of higher education, though not more
than 20 per cent, of those studying law are said to follow
the pursuit of lawyers. The law certificate is not only an
open sesame to the aspirant for political or journalistic
fame, but it is also an open door to '^ society." The
course in law is richer and more comprehensive than
that in our professional schools, including international
law, political science, the history and philosophy of law,
and giving special attention to Roman law and the civili-
sation behind it. This latter emphasis makes up in a
measure for the lack of classical instruction in higher
Brazilian education. Although ancient languages are
often conspicuous by their absence in the curriculum,
modern languages are given a large place, especially
English, French and German.
The breadth of the professional school curriculum is
revealed by the inclusion of such liberal or university
studies as psychology, history, economics, finance and
sociology, while in the medical schools, in addition to
the usual subjects taught, there are general courses in
botany, zoology and physics, and the engineering institu-
tions give a general training in the physical sciences. It
is doubtless owing to this fact of liberal education in
EDUCATION 109
the professional schools that South America has pro-
duced so many eminent lawyers. It must not be consid-
ered therefore that Brazil is necessarily poverty-stricken
in higher academic, historical and philosophical studies
simply because she has no university called by the name.
A Brazilian educator speaking of the higher training
says:
"The faculty is a gentleman's school. It gives the
general culture that a well-to-do citizen feels is the most
useful. It confers social and political prestige, it is the
doorway to State service and to positions in the Consular
and Diplomatic corps."
The investigator will be told in Brazil that the schools
of medicine are in no sense behind the law schools in
this matter of general culture, and some claim that they
give the best type of training of all the professional in-
stitutions, and that the doctors, in spite of their leaning
to the theoretical side professionally, are, as a rule, the
most highly educated men of the country.
The State of Sao Paulo doubtless takes the lead edu-
cationally. Its Mackenzie College, its fine agricultural
college, its normal and law schools, and both its primary
and higher education, are worthy to be compared with
that of many modern states in North America.
The new interest being taken in engineering, revealed
in the flourishing engineering clubs, as well as in the
schools for engineers now being enlarged and established
at considerable expense in several of the more progres-
sive states, is a promising sign of the times.
There are fifty-five military schools of varying grades
in the different states of the Union, and a decided awak-
ening is seen in these institutions at the present time.
The European war has sent a decided thrill through all
of the institutionalism of Brazil. Volunteers and mili-
tary cadets are seen frequently marching in the streets
of larger cities and towns. I inspected with some thor-
110 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
oughness the Colegio Militar in Rio de Janeiro, an in-
stitution closely associated with the name of Benjamin
Constant, one of the former instructors. The Colegio
is beautifully situated on one of the hills that make up
this city, occupying for its administrative work an old
baronial palace, formerly owned by a prominent Bra-
zilian. There are six hundred students being prepared
here under military instruction resembling that afforded
at West Point. Certain of these students do not find their
way into the army, as the institution provides a cur-
riculum attractive in its broader course of study and
fitted for general preparatory training. Excellent, well-
lighted and well-ventilated class rooms, up-to-date lab-
oratories, athletic and parade fields, swimming pool and
modern apparatus, together with an efficient staff of in-
structors selected from departments of the Brazilian
army, combine to make this school a fitting example of
what the educators of Brazil can accomplish in prepara-
tory education.
The country is also well supplied with special schools.
The thirst for study along particular lines impresses the
visitor as he looks through the institutions, many of them
of private foundation, where such studies as drawing,
painting, music, and arts and crafts, are being pursued
zealously by the young Brazilians. The artistic branches
of learning are especially emphasised and are enjoying
great popularity.
In the beautiful building occupying a prominent corner
of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro, I attended
the anniversary exercises of the School of Arts and
Crafts — a night school having an attendance of more
than one thousand pupils. The huge building on this oc-
casion was filled to overflowing with the students, their
parents and friends. Music, drawing, cartoon-making,
and eloquent speeches on subjects relating to the instruc-
tion of the school comprised the programme. The pres-
EDUCATION 111
ence of alert intelligence and no small degree of spe-
cialised ability was evident in the work of these pupils
who obtain their education absolutely free of charge.
The society which owns and promotes this million dollar
property receives yearly a certain appropriation from
the government, but Brazilians contribute by subscrip-
tion the larger part of the revenue needed to carry on
the work.
As to foreign missionary schools, Mackenzie College,
located at Sao Paulo, originally under Presbyterian aus-
pices, but now non-sectarian, is probably the leading in-
stitution in South America representative of the founda-
tion of foreign missions. This institution has trained a
large number of the modern technical workers of the
country, and its scientific instruction is much more promi-
nent than is usual in the colleges of the United States.
There are twenty-seven young women among the four
hundred or more students, and it has an affiliated Ameri-
can school located a short distance away, called Eschola
Americana, which enrolls more than five hundred pupils,
of whom 124 are girls. It is a cosmopolitan student body
in every sense of the word, there being in the combined
enrollment of the two schools under the college auspices
514 Brazilians, 150 Italians, 47 Portuguese, 45 Germans,
34 North Americans, 28 English, 15 French, and 39 mem-
bers of other nationalities. The College by its broad-
spirited and efficient work commands the thorough sym-
pathy of the government educational officials and it is
practically self-supporting from its tuition fees. The
college has also been an important factor in the arousal
of interest in intercollegiate sports, as well as in bring-
ing together students from other Brazilian institutions
in fraternal and social associations. The attitude of the
Government was revealed towards this institution when
at the death of its president Dr. H. M. Lane in 1912, a
112 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
public acknowledgment was given both in the Legislature
and the Senate.
The union of the Northern and Southern Presbyterians
in a theological seminary at Campinas is said to be the
best developed institution for Protestant ministerial
training in South America, while the Southern Baptist
college in Rio de Janeiro, the mission school work at
Bello Horizonto, and the work of the Episcopal Church
in South Brazil, are all developed largely along North
American lines. The work of the Young Men's Chris-
tian Association in Brazil, by its night classes, is mak-
ing certain contribution to the general educational life
of several of the larger cities, and the Methodist institu-
tion at Uruguayana, in southwestern Brazil, enrolls up-
wards of 200 boys whom it gives a high school training
preparing many of them for entrance to Mackenzie Col-
lege. The mission schools have been especially successful
in the southern states of the country and the kindergarten
work established in Sao Paulo in 1882 has been a notable
contribution.
The effectiveness of educational missions in Brazil, as
in other parts of the world, depends largely upon the
character and training of the teachers sent to carry on
the schools. Too often in the past the same mistake has
been made as in starting trade. The wrong people have
been sent. People ignorant of the country, narrow in
mental and spiritual grasp, and beset with religious
prejudices, have failed of the largest usefulness, as they
would fail at home. One Latin American teacher is re-
ported to have received the following letter from a dis-
tinguished educator of the United States, to whom he had
applied for a teacher : ''Our men go to China. There is
only one man who might go to you. He is rather un-
couth and awkward. He reminds me of a great awkward
Newfoundland pup, but I think he would just fit into your
work." An American who has done valiant work to-
EDUCATION 113
wards the new and coming day of better education in
Brazil, writes of receiving frequent letters of late from
women scliool-teacliers living in various rural sections
of the United States, saying they want to come to Brazil
and teach. *^In Heaven's name, teach — what!" he writes.
He continues in expounding the feelings that one finds
among more than one foreign educator in South Amer-
ica, who has attempted to develop the material sent to
him, and fit it to meet the high demands of teaching in-
telligent Latin Americans: '*! have a hard time ex-
plaining to them that the measure of their success here
would be exactly that of a young Portuguese lady in sim-
ilar circumstances who wanted to go from Lisbon to
the United States, with the vague idea that she could
* teach.' They have not the language (some of them 'have
studied some Spanish' and think that that will do in
Brazil where the people speak Portuguese) ^ never in
their lives have these would-be foreign teachers faced a
breakfast that did not have eggs and buckwheat cakes in
it ; never have they seen a foreigner at close range ; their
world is Kokonk, or Waco, or Pembertonville — and that
is all. I don't blame them. But what I wonder at is the
psychological phenomenon. ' '
No one of any breadth of mind and hospitality to good
works can fail to admire the devoted zeal with which
educational missionaries from the United States have
girdled the earth with their teaching messages. Those
who are properly equipped and have sufficient common-
sense and breadth of mind to succeed as teachers at home
have chosen one of the speediest and most efficient ave-
nues of approach to the intelligences of foreigners when
they enlist in the educational work carried on by many of
our capable missionary boards. But a country like Bra-
zil, as all Latin America in fact, where the Roman faith is
as truly the national religion as Mohammedanism is in
Egypt, or Hinduism is in India, and where the tempera-
114 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ment of tlie keenly sensitive Latin is even more suscep-
tible to the mental or religious or social approach, is the
last place to send the remnants of American instruction
or instructors, while the "uncouth and awkward" teacher
is as out of place here as is the narrow religious in-
tellectual. The advice which President King of Oberlin
College is reported to have given to the delegates at the
Congress of Christian Work in Latin America, held at
Panama in 1916, is as wholesome as it is strategic, rela-
tive to education by foreign missionaries in Brazil: "If
ever we are to reach these intellectual leaders, we must
use the modern approach. ... I came back sick at
heart from the Orient, ' ' says Dr. King, ' *■ partly because I
found in India and Japan many excellent and godly mis-
sionaries who were standing square across the path of
educated Hindus, Japanese and Chinese. They were say-
ing virtually, ' You cannot have anything to do with evo-
liition and historical criticism and be a Christian.' Well,
a great German said years ago, ^The wounds of knowl-
edge can be healed only by knowledge,' and we must
make the approach to these men with a little different
conception of the relation of religion to the modern and
the intellectual world. I do not know anything in the in-
tellectual realm that forbids a man's being in the deepest
and most real sense of the word an honest and consistent
follower of Jesus Christ." It is men of this type and
range of mind who, if we have properly adjudged the
Brazilian, would be welcomed by the intellectuals of the
country, who are not so indifferent, as they are some-
times pictured, to religion, especially when it is "mixed
with brains."
As to the students themselves, we found them unusu-
ally intelligent, and like Brazilians in general, invariably
good-mannered. Principals say that they have little
trouble in discipline. Many of the well-to-do send their
youth to private schools. The education of girls is back-
EDUCATION 115
ward, as in most South American countries. Co-educa-
tion is not general. The Catholic seminary and fitting
school is lacking in thoroughness, inclined to give the
young ladies a dilettante smattering of polite studies,
and the curriculum, while strong in doctrinal religion, is
weak in modern scientific studies. French books are used
as text-books in many institutions, and the libraries are
much richer in books of languages, other than the na-
tional tongue, than are our North American reading
rooms for students.
Religion has little or no place in the Government
schools, and a separate Church and State has brought
about a clearly divided line between secular and theolog-
ical, or religious, instruction. Teachers affirm that at
least 90 per cent, of the students in the state schools are
non-religious and that the other 10 per cent, are nominally
Catholic. In Brazil, as in Argentina, the Church has but
a slender hold upon Government-school students. I did
not discover the same amount of rationalism or antagon-
ism to the prevailing faith of the country, as exists in the
higher institutions of the Argentine Republic. The Ger-
man system of packing a considerable portion of the
year's work into the months immediately preceding ex-
aminations is more or less prevalent, as is the lecture
method of instruction. The memoriter tendency is along
the line of least resistance, and the training of students
to think for themselves is no more common here than it
is in other countries. Some think that it is less em-
phasised in all of Latin America than in some other parts
of the world ; it is easy to affirm this, but perhaps hard to
substantiate. Lecturing is so much easier and so much
less expensive of energy and of the "drawing out" abil-
ity, than the art of teaching young men and women by
question and discussion to really obtain some opinions of
their own, that I find professors in all nations quite ready
to lecture hour after hour to students who obediently and
116 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
automatically 'Hake notes," which they seldom examine
after the examination period has been safely passed.
The chief task laid at present before Brazilian educa-
tors seems to be the training of the minds and hands of
the country's youth, to apply in practice the knowledge
they secure in the class-room. These young men are to
be called upon to produce their titles to the huge Brazil-
ian estate now beginning to be discovered. Sane polit-
ical ability and training are needed, but there are already
two law schools for every institution intended to fit men
to lead in the development of the country's land and
trade. As James Russell Lowell once said, "Govern-
ment cannot be carried on by declamation." Some one
must provide the industrial and commercial sinews of
the Government's strength. Detached education, theoret-
ical rather than intelligently applied learning, — these are
the loose rivets in the Brazilian educational armour. Tra-
ditions of feudahsm have made commerce and business
application contemptible in other places of the earth, but
in Latin America these plaster casts of medieval Eu-
rope, have not as yet been entirely removed. In Brazil
the educational institutions are not lacking in the profi-
ciency of higher generalisation, in the absorption of rules,
in subjectiveness ; they are threatened rather by the dan-
ger of inadequate foundation in scientific practice and ex-
perimentation — too much law and library, too little lab-
oratory and field work.
An enormous section of country and a considerable
population are still beyond the hearing of the teacher's
voice. Economic conditions bar many. Backward states
must get government and federal aid. Better means of
inter-communication, now on the way, will leave less ex-
cuse for indifference to education. Political leaders, in-
terested in the game of statecraft which they know, are
the guiding, nominal heads of educational enterprise
which they do not know. Trained educators and teachers
EDUCATION 117
are sorely needed. Compulsory attendance on primary
instruction should come as rapidly as money and schools
and instructors can be found. Public opinion needs to
be stimulated to find these without unnecessary delay.
In many parts of the land, I found awakening interest
in press and public discussion concerning federal aid for
nation-wide education. Students returning from abroad
bring new visions and fresh convictions. The projected
exchange professorships with the United States and
European countries will light new fires. Better financial
times are quite certain to aid in turning the efforts of a
naturally patriotic and idealistic people toward the fit-
ting of their youth to go in and possess the renascent
Brazil. A country with such resources and such intel-
ligence in its ruling classes cannot long brook the fact
that so great a portion of its population, through illiter-
acy, are unable by their votes or their influence to help
make the Brazilian world ''safe for democracy." Good
schools aim at good government, as well as good citizen-
ship generally, for Brazil. Ignorance is without latitude
and longitude. It is everywhere the foe to republics.
Knowledge, widespread and free as sunlight, is every-
where the surest lamp to the free nation's feet.
IX
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE
I ASKED an American resident in Brazil why we heard
so little from foreign travellers and writers regarding
Brazilian homes. He answered, ' ' There are at least seven
reasons why they don't talk about Brazilian homes; the
first is because they never get inside of one, and the six
other reasons don't count."
This answer was at least concise, and probably not
without truth, but I should be inclined to add that if any
half-way decent foreigner failed to get an invitation to
a Brazilian home, it was partly because he did not remain
long enough in the country even to meet a Brazilian.
North Americans, as well as many Europeans, are wont
to give themselves a few fleeting weeks, and sometimes
but a few days to *'do" Brazil, a kind of ' ' ten-minutes-
for-the-Louvre-and-on-to-the-Luxemburg" sight seeing
trip, which would scarcely be sufficient to form an inti-
mate home acquaintance with men who speak another
language, and have inherited and hold somewhat strict
ideas about introducing strangers to their women-folk.
Any experiences which the writer enjoyed along this line,
he attributes to the fact of a somewhat leisurely sojourn
in this country affording opportunities for unhurried in-
terviews with many Brazilians, whose courtesy and gen-
erous hospitality abide in memory among the choicest
delights of South American travels. As a matter of fact,
I remained in Brazil five months longer than I expected
to do, when arriving, and if there are people more kindly
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 119
thoughtful and delightful as hosts, I, at least, have failed
to discover them in my wanderings.
After all, how does a nation stand revealed more truly
than in its homes? Its public appearances are frequently
deceptive. It is what it is, at home.
A few years ago, we heard and read a good deal about
France as degenerating, or at least becoming a static pol-
ity and civilisation. Men had thoughtlessly taken the
scintillating night-life of Parisian Boulevards for France.
They had left out of account the tens of thousands of
happy and frugal firesides in hundreds of small towns or
tiny hamlets, dotting the gardens and fields of rural
France, each one representative of hard working lives
of peasantry and middle-class, each one potently sig-
nificant of that matchless national spirit which ''knows
how to die," as did the French-Revolution fathers, for
the "rights of man." It's not always safe to judge a
nation by a single city, and forget the rural homes.
American globe-trotters make the "Grand "World
Tour," if not in eighty days, in less than as many weeks,
which furnishes only a chance to whirl through the large
cities and to see the regulation "sights" awaiting the
regulation adjectives, and the down-pour of American
dollars. We secure our ideas of Japanese men and wo-
men from the seat of the rolling "rickshaw," and from
the movies and red-light districts of Tokyo. From such
angles of vision it may be easy to make wholesale criti-
cisms of the morals of Japanese women, as some writers
and travellers seem to delight to do, or compare unfavour-
ably the Japanese, the "little browTi men," with the
heads of households we have known in many an American
commonwealth. But let the traveller go to the quaint and
artistic Nippon homes that breathe the breath of sobriety
and homely loves beneath the cherry^ blossoms here, there,
everywhere, throughout the Sunrise Kingdom; let him
walk through the narrow streets of the mountain villages
120 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
after nightfall and look througli the thin rice-paper
shojis to find Japan. He will see large families, the aged
grandfather at the seat of honour, and about him his
sturdy sons and grandchildren; he will hear the glad
laughter of children, and the strumming of the samisen,
and in that shadow picture about the tea braziers, he will
see in truer light the strength and promise of the nation.
A few years ago, I chanced to take passage from Cal-
cutta on the same steamer with one of my countrymen
who had been spending some time in India, and, to use
his words, was ''awfully disappointed with the people."
''What do you find about them to dislike?" I asked.
' ' They are so utterly stupid, ' ' he replied, ' ' so lacking in
ordinary intelligence." He then went on to enumerate at
length his tribulations with his Indian "boy," his gharry
drivers, and dwelt on the vileness of the hotels. When in
answer to my question as to whether he had been a guest
in any real Indian home, he replied in the negative, say-
ing that he imagined they were even more impossible
than the servants he had met ; I ventured to remind him,
that almost in hailing distance of the hotel where his
troubles had been so numerous and from which he judged
the population of 315,000,000, there had been only the
night previous in the beautiful home of the Tagores a
family gathering according to custom, where several hun-
dred of the bearers of that name, artists, writers, poets,
sculptors and musicians, there assembled; this home
would have given him a different view point from which
to study the intelligence of this nation. What defence
has a nation against such superficial detractors ? As Mr.
Lowell remarks in his essay on the "Condescension of
Foreigners," "An umbrella is of no avail against a
Scotch mist."
Let us go, then, to the Brazilian home. It is the nation
in microcosm. In its almost endless variety, it furnishes
one of the best ways to understand a people more highly
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 121
diversified in race, custom, tradition and individualities
than any other South American nation.
The Latin races are said to be lacking in home-making
qualities, as compared with English or Teutonic peoples.
Moreover the Portuguese, who gave Brazil formative
principles, were more truly the copyists of Roman civili-
sation than any otlier European stock, and the Romans
were famous for their slight attention to the home. Yet
Portugal has been ever a land of homes, and her New
World Brazilian daughter has inherited the instinct. It
is a land placing great emphasis on family life. Un-
doubtedly the Lusitanians are indebted largely to the
Moors for this trait, for there was engrafted upon the
Latin stock during the long Arabising of the Iberian
Peninsula, not only the Oriental family regard and ex-
clusiveness, but also many other Eastern habits of
thought and life. Certain it is that Portugal's South
American descendants have always guarded with jealous
eyes their private abodes. Many of their happiest hours
are spent within the home-circles, and no customs seem-
ingly are held more highly in cherished esteem than are
home attachments and family associations.
There is always a danger, in writing of a subject like
Brazilian home life, for the narrator to over-generalise.
Home and family life is, like the civilisation generally,
diverse, and it is necessary to define the strata of life
one is talking about if an attempt is made to find univer-
sal characteristics. There is the home of the seringuero
or rubber gatherer, in the lonely fastness of the Amazon
wilderness; and the tepee of the still savage Indian of
the forest jungle. The fisher-folk, a considerable clan
scattered along the Brazilian coast from the extreme
north to the Argentine boundary, have a life distinctive,
bringing their hauls of fish ashore in frail-looking boats
and in light-hearted talk and song sit about their rude
huts at twilight to sup on a bit of farinha, a drop of
122 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
native whiskey, and some of the Brazilian dried beef —
to the accompaniment of the violao. Fishing, attended
for them with perpetual peril, partaking of their hard-
earned spoil at night beneath the swaying of the cocoanut
palms, a dash of romance and singing — this is the sum
total of life and home for these children of the tropical
seas. For hours I have sat and watched their labour and
their happiness, so far removed from the "streets where
man gathers inland," where no enticements could lure
them. Some day a Brazilian poet will sing of these Bra-
zilian men who go down to the sea in boats, as Sarojini
Naidu has sung of their brothers afar, the Caromandel
Fishers —
"Sweet is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango
grove,
And sweet are the sands at the fall of the moon with the sounds of the
voices we love,
But sweeter, Brother, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the
wild foam's glee:
Row, brothers, row to the blue of the verge, where the low sky mates
with the sea."
Should one be just to the many-sided home and social
life of this gigantic country, he must need write also of
the occupations of the gaucho, or Brazilian cowboy, liv-
ing his daring and picturesque existence in a world apart
on the Southern interior plains ; then there is the impor-
tant section of Brazilian society best seen in its original
home in the State of Minas — the fazendeiro, or caipira,
as he is sometimes called, the country magnate whose
wealth is his broad plantations, and who lives also more
or less isolated with his family, constituting their own
kingdom, independent and free and hospitable as was
any of our old South-land planters, or any medieval bar-
onial lord. It is this land-holder-class that makes a strong
appeal to young and old Brazil alike. This king of the
land and horses and wide distances fascinates and calls
m 13
X 5
BRAZILIAN PIOME LIFE 123
forth something inherent in the Brazilian character. The
country is first of all an agricultural domain of colossal
area, and the fazendeiro still holds in his hand the na-
tion 's key. Of him one has said, * ' Such authority as he
knows has vanished, perhaps, from the gi'eater part of
the world ; but in Brazil it rules unquestioned, forming a
powerful bond between the soil and its owner. In his
solitude the land owner indulges his law of intellectual
culture; he inclines toward philosophy; he possesses a
certain natural eloquence. This Brazilian aristocracy
enjoys political as well as social power. They form the
structure, the framework of all party politics ; they are its
strength, its very life ; it is they who govern and admin-
ister Brazil." One is confronted here with the remnants
of a feudal oligarchy, with the culture and refinement
belonging to it in the middle ages of Europe, but with the
striking difference that this older and influential Brazil-
ian social order is being voluntarily changed and mixed
with a complex variety of mass population, slowly but
surely forming a democratic society, in which the spirit of
republicanism and equality is stronger even than the
spirit of the national religion.
The racial diversity revealed in Brazilian society is as
pronounced as is the variety of its geographical groups.
A study of the home life is a study in ethnology. The
original Portuguese stock is found in all phases of transi-
tion from unadulterated purity through partial and com-
plete mixtures with native Indian and Negro and fusion
with foreign nations, Italian, French, German, English,
Spanish and American. The Brazil of to-day is a melting
pot of races and nationalities as heterogeneous as it is
distracting to the chance traveller. On beginning to ask
questions, one finds himself entangled in an intricate
maze of fusions between Portuguese and Brazilian-Por-
tuguese, foreigners and Brazilian-foreigners, Brazilians
who are Brazilians, and Brazilians who are ethnologically
124 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
caboclos, or mastizos, or sertaos; or Brazilians who
locally or historically are Paulistas, German-Brazilians,
Dutch-Brazilians, pure-blooded Indians, or sons and
daughters of a half a dozen foreign races or nations, who
are Brazilians because they were born in Brazil. The vis-
itor, freshly landed, and plunged suddenly into this di-
verting congeries of human, national and racial amalga-
mation, is inclined to sympathise with the probable
enlightenment of Colonel Roosevelt who is reported to
have inquired of a sea captain concerning the population
of a certain West Indian Island, when the old sea dog
replied: ''Well, there are some Spanish, a few French,
some Portugee, a few Dutchmen, and about ten other
nationalities that God Almighty never intended."
The amazing wonder of all (especially to a North Am-
erican less familiar with European races, and holding
decided views concerning colour lines, etc.) is the manner
in which this country is slowly, and apparently with har-
mony and democratic social and racial relations, evolv-
ing a distinct Brazilian type. The salient characteristics
of what is becoming to be known as the true Brazilian
character include the aristocratic culture and high intel-
ligence of the old family Portuguese stock, at once Latin
and Moorish by inheritance, the exaltation, daring and
passion of a vigorous Aborigines blood, softened by the
affectionate, emotional strain of the African especially
in North Brazil, — the whole shot through with the typical
modernity and enterprise that marriage and general con-
tact with European races have afforded. With such ele-
ments, the national home life of Brazil is being com-
pounded. Knowing its ingredients, one is not surprised
to find in its members at the summit of society the quali-
ties of imagination, intuition, courtesy, alertness of mind,
sentiment, a conservatism that is Eastern, a love of
beauty that is Latin, and a tropical hospitality and sim-
plicity as generous and charming as Brazilian sunshine.
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 125
Any concrete description of a home of the better class
is a biography of the life and characteristics of the Bra-
zilian woman — the wife and mother. Domestic existence
is peculiarly her sphere of action and influence, and from
this throne of home life she rules, and also shines. This
has been more or less inevitable in a country where, for
many generations, women have had no part in the outside
life of business, politics or social movements, but have
been immured behind domestic walls almost as carefully
as are the women of the East. In the larger centres, and
especially in the Federal Capital, twentieth century in-
fluences are opening the doors of the somewhat outworn
household cage, and women are seen in public places, on
the avenues, at the opera and the theatre, and in motor
cars (where by the way, the Brazilian senhoras and sen-
horitas, with their dark hair, beautiful Paris-made
clothes, which are not more beautiful than their eyes, are
among the most fascinating moving-pictures of the tropi-
cal city). These women of the class aristocratic are also
familiar with Paris, Genoa and Lisbon to which they make
frequent voyages with their husbands, bringing home the
latest thing in styles, both for dress and the ornamenta-
tion of their homes. Such women, like all the feminines
of these parts, take readily to language, which they have
learned at an early age (the only satisfactory way really
to acquire foreign tongues) and it is common for the
linguist to be able to converse with the intelligent, witty
lady of the higher circles in French, Italian, Spanish,
and often in English, in addition to the native Portu-
guese. It has been stated by writers, who are perhaps
more gallant than strictly truthful, that the Latin Amer-
ican women are more intellectual and well-informed gen-
erally than the men. Be that as it may, one finds many
scores of homes throughout the country where the grade
of culture, the knowledge of Portuguese and French lit-
erature, the acquaintance with art and music, and the
126 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
inherited love for the Beautiful, expressed variously in
the collections of rare bric-a-brac, choice paintings, well
modulated arrangement of flowers, and the presence of
colour, betoken a type of civilisation difficult to surpass
in any country. This elevated grade of appreciation and
culture is said to be limited to perhaps a few hundred
families of wealth and old traditions, — a somewhat de-
tached and segregated aristocracy of intellect and train-
ing existing at the apex of Brazilian society ; below there
is as yet no great middle class of population, to relieve
an abrupt descent to the more mediocre and even illiterate
proletariat, which forms the democratic sub-stratum of
the nation. While this is probably the case, stated broad-
ly, my observation leads me to believe that there is at
present a distinctly marked middle class in the process of
formation made up of the new wealth and progress of the
awakened commercial Brazil, and that throughout the en-
tire social order there are evident the traits of gentility
and sentiment, woven inextricably into the Portuguese-
Moorish-Brazilian nature. It is significant, moreover,
for the future of this country, that the ideals which the
people have enthroned in their hearts at least, are those
informing the refined and tasteful apostles of culture,
who are the leaders in political and social matters, rather
than the lower aims of milreis and militarism, which have
all too potent influence in some other nations.
Brazilian women are not only nice to look at, and in-
telligent conversationalists; they are furthermore "the
mothers of men." It is a land of large families, eight
or ten children being no exceptional thing in a Brazilian
home. The upbringing of children is not attended with
any superfluous modern fads, and eugenics, twilight sleep,
birth control, together with other reforms of our North-
ern ** efficiency" civilisation, are as yet unknown. It may
be only a matter of time when Brazil, like the United
States, will begin to copy Germany in this machine-made
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 127
existence, and a race of non-domestic females simply de-
voted to some '^ cause" will be joining a lot of non-domes-
tic men who had rather go reforming than make homes,
and the old land of the Pedros will ring with snif ragette
speeches and sterilised drinking cups. If in the distant
future these transformations occur, it is to be hoped that
the Brazilian home, now so distinctive and filled with fam-
ily reunions, will not be exchanged for our huge filing-
cabinet-apartment houses, in which the simple pleasures
of family life are made difficult and often impossible.
The home again reminds of the East in the presence
of the parental authority, and the reverential attitude
of children to their elders. The boy kisses his father's
hand as he enters the room, and this custom of sons is
continued through life, the father of a grown-up family
never omitting to bend his head over his aged father's
or mother's hand at meeting, as respectfully as does his
boy above his own. Household duties occupy the atten-
tion of Brazilian women more than is usual in the North,
the husband being the responsible host to do the honours
to the guest. The women have their trials with negro ser-
vants, and from sheer necessity for independence per-
haps, they are usually proficient in the ability to cook, and
to grace their ample tables with special dishes of their
own making.
Although, as has been hinted, the ladies in the elite
classes of the two largest cosmopolitan centres, Rio de
Janeiro and Sao Paulo, are now rapidly taking on Euro-
pean customs, in general the old traditions prevail, mak-
ing it impossible for ladies, young or old, to receive male
callers alone, to dance at balls after marriage with any
men other than their husbands, or to be seen on the street
or at public functions without escort. The woman of the
home lives a circumscribed life, that would seem tame
enough to her North American sisters. Mothers are
known chiefly through their children, and like the women
128 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
of the Orient, seem quite as eager as the men to maintain
the cherished feminine isolation. There are probably no
women more virtuous or faithful to their marriage vows
in any nation than the women of Brazil.
Life generally in the country, strange as it may seem,
is lived less in the open, than in many northern cities.
Women have not yet entered to any great extent the out-
door arena of athletics. The public participation in ath-
letics, and the swimming contests in which women of for-
eign nationalities engage at the new foreign Country
Clubs, seem somewhat shocking to the national feminine
sense. Salt water or sea bathing is popular, and the
Brazilians with their entire families may be seen in
many sections at a sinfully early hour of the day
proceeding to the beaches. The Flumenenses are partic-
ularly favoured since in many cases their homes border
on the smooth shining waters of the Bay, while many of
the less-favoured classes spend their summers opposite
in old picturesque Nictheroy, where there are many boat-
ing clubs and water privileges. Sunday excursions, horse
races, foot-ball matches and regattas, are attended large-
ly, as the Brazilians in many senses as to their customs
are simply old European races transplanted, and among
these the use of the Continental Sunday as an active holi-
day is everywhere general.
There are fewer social problems than with us in the
United States ; if they have them, the people do not seem
to know it. Life flows along comparatively easily; the
climate prohibits over-strenuousness, and there are no
sanitariums for broken nerves. The Government is com-
paratively free from serious outbreaks, and no revolution
of any importance has occurred in the country for many
years. There are few if any labor strikes to record;
divorces are prohibited by the religion of the land and are
rarely known. Bachelors also are so rare as to be almost
suspicious characters which may be a veiled compliment
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 129
to the charms, as well as to the capacity, of Brazilian
women as home-makers. The Brazilians are an ab-
stemious people, and their coffee-drinking, which is more
or less a perpetual function with many, corresponds to
the beer habit in Germany; it is not more injurious to
nerves as the Brazilians prepare it, and certainly is not
as conducive to the equatorial expansion of the individual
as is the Teuton's beer-garden.
Allegiance to home and family life is prominently re-
vealed in the numerous anniversaries. To experience a
birthday anniversary in Brazil is an important matter, a
certain excuse for a family gathering, sometimes a ban-
quet (which is a rare event in the country as compared
with the incessant "dinners" in North America) honour-
ing a distinguished personage, and space in the daily
papers recording at great length the names of those who
sent congratulations, or were present at the important
natal-day festival. This may be due in part to the great
stress laid on friendships in this land, and the length
people go to making and cementing them. As every one
knows, if he has tried to do business in Latin America, or
get favours of any kind, friendship is no ''glittering gen-
erality" south of Panama. During my sojourn in Brazil,
I recall particularly in this connection a complimentary
dinner given to a distinguished Brazilian diplomat, au-
thor and prominent member of the Brazilian Academy
of Letters. There were present seventy of the gentle-
man's friends and admirers. There was a profusion of
flower decorations as always at such functions here ; even
the tables were rimmed with Brazilian roses. In spite
of the proverbial ''excitability" of the Latin tempera-
ment, there were no emotional outbursts, nor any "He's
a Jolly Good Fellow" songs and wild cheers. There was
a natural restraint, which in some other countries might
be taken for lack of interest. Everything from the read-
ing of telegrams (eveiy one sends telegrams in Brazil
130 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
when congratulations or social events are in progress)
to the partaking of the five kinds of wine served, was
done decently and in perfect order. Good form and gen-
tlemanly decorum, no loud talking or undue excitement
anywhere. After the congratulatory addresses had been
made by a number of eminent men, government officials
and well-known scholars, some in French, others in the
national tongue, both of which were evidently understood
equally well by all the guests, the gentleman in whose
honour the banquet was given rose, and with utter sim-
plicity spoke substantially as follows:
"I have tried to serve my country in diplomacy; in
that I have not been eminently successful. I have done
some literary work; but there are many other younger
and more truly successful writers than I have been. I
have also tried to make friends. Although I may have
failed in the first two mentioned ambitions of my career,
this gathering has convinced me beyond any doubt that
I have succeeded in friendship. Therefore I am to-night
exceedingly happy and content. ' '
This was no speech to the '' galleries. " No one could
have heard it and felt the reflection of it upon the hearers,
without being convinced of its perfect sincerity. It rep-
resented an ambition and a triumphant result bulking
large in the hearts and aims of Brazilians. If Emerson
was right in his estimation of values, other nations may
go to school to Brazil: the sage of Concord said, ''Life
is simply a means for expressing a sentiment."
Men's clubs for social purposes are notable in Brazil,
and even in the smaller cities and towns the visitor will
be given guest's cards to buildings extremely well-ap-
pointed, and conducted with due orderliness. I found
nothing in Brazil to compare in ornateness or social
standing with the Jockey Club of Buenos Aires, or in fra-
ternal atmosphere with the Union Club in Santiago, Chile.
The Brazilian clubs are known for their balls where all
BRAZILIAN HOME LIFE 131
officialdom and society appear, and also as a rule for the
possession of first-class gamester facilities. There is
a lamentable absence of books and readers, and even the
old and revered Club dos Diarios in Rio de Janeiro, with
its 700 or more members, and its yearly income of $250,-
000, does not maintain a restaurant, and is usually quite
deserted at night. The Brazilians are not club-men as
are the English or the North Americans. One misses
the wann atmosphere of cosiness and the lack of conver-
sational circles around issues of public and civic interests.
There is slight reminder of the kind of club described by
Dr. Holmes, filled with dozens of ** ringing intelligences,"
each answering to some chord of the macrocosm, a place
for isolated thought or conversation, where ''you see wis-
dom in slippers and science in a short jacket." Perhaps
this is because family life still furnishes here wide op-
portunities for discussion with relatives and friends,
claiming the majority of the masculine element after
business is over.
THE TRIUMPH OP THE ENGINEER
Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em
Watched imharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that
screen 'em —
Saw the plant to feed a people up — and waiting for the power !
Kipling.
Dr. Frederick Stark Pearson, who together with his
wife were lost in the Lusitania disaster, has been called
by many of his own engineering brotherhood, the world's
greatest engineer. He certainly possessed in his un-
usual genius the talents and capacities in extraordinary
combination, of versatility, of intellect, the creative imag-
ination of a poet as well as of a scientist, and pre-vision.
He was an engineer of construction and a master of op-
portunity. If Caesar dammed the rivers of Spain for
the purpose of war, that he might destroy his enemies.
Dr. Pearson threw his concrete blockades across the riv-
ers of many countries, in order that human welfare and
the civilised life of men might be safeguarded and ad-
vanced.
His work was particularly that of the pioneering engin-
eer and his daring and defiance of obstacle, that ''two-
o 'clock-in-the-moming courage," breathed of Napoleon's
famous dictum: *' Obstacles are just things to be over-
come. ' * He was no more awed by financial obstacles than
by technical ones ; in his world-vision he drew on the re-
sources not simply of the country of his birth, but he
commanded money from Great Britain, France, Belgium,
132
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 133
and other countries, while his own money flowed like
water from his hands in the interest of his wide projects.
Any business reverse to him was but the passing of a
chance cloud in the horizon of his unquenchable hopes;
he ''took his medicine," as his associates said, then with
a calm smile went doggedly on in the steady prosecution
of his work.
The accomplislmaents of this notable world's engineer
are too well known, as regards American engineering at
least, to require more than passing suggestion here. The
West End Street Railway of Boston is one of his monu-
ments, and we all know how after the successful electri-
fication of the street car system of Boston, which was
attended at that time with so many new and difficult en-
gineering problems, Pearson came to Brooklyn, intro-
ducing electric street cars in that city and erecting, ac-
cording to his own design, the most advanced and largest
power plant then known on the continent. New York
City is also indebted to him for its underground conduit
or trolley system which remains to-day virtually as he
left it, while the big 96th Street power house which in
1896 was the contribution of his engineering ability di-
rectly to the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, was
for years a model for other city engineers both at home
and abroad. The Pearson electrical enterprises are to-
day found in Providence, in Montreal, in Toronto, in
Winnipeg, and many other American cities, while his
planning and oversight of the hydraulic installation and
the electrical development at Niagara Falls, by which a
plant of 160,000 horse power was made to supply electric
light and power to the city of Toronto, 100 miles distant,
was alone enough to bring him fame.
The man who carried through in Boston the really
first great system of electric traction the world, up to that
time, had ever seen, was destined before his untimely end
to be the instigator of similar undertakings in Mexico,
134 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
South America and Spain. In Mexico the traveller will
be shown the extensive engineering works furnishing the
City of Mexico with light and power, and here as in Sao
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as also in the Spanish city of
Barcelona (where the water power of the Ebro river was
utilised for the supply of electric lights, tramways and
general power) to the inquiry as to the originator and
moving spirit in the enterprise, the same name will be
heard — '*F. S. Pearson." The significance of his work
in Brazil is suggested by one who knew the conditions un-
der which Dr. Pearson laboured there : * ' in place of sev-
eral lines of mule cars, an antiquated gas plant and a
telephone service where one could walk to the one he
desired to talk with quicker than to telephone, Rio de
Janeiro now enjoys the highest type of modern electric
railway service unexcelled anywhere in the United States
or Europe, an electric lighting system which makes it the
best-lighted city in the world, a new and modern gas
plant, and a regular Bell telephone service which is now
being extended over the United States of Brazil."
It was not single-handed and alone that Dr. Pearson
thus sent out his lines to the end of the earth ; he added
to his own ceaseless energy the human enginery and abil-
ity of a devoted band of associates, and his loyalty and
devotion to his staffs of fellow workers marked a dis-
tinctive trait of his successful career. Many of the mem-
bers of his engineering family he took with him from city
to city and from country to country, and the remark
which an old lady made concerning Ex-President Garfield
after his death, could be made regarding him — **he was
very human."
Perhaps the foremost characteristic of the engineer
whose life and work are interwoven closely with the lat-
ter-day progress of the country we are now studying, was
his vision, always unfalteringly wide and ever growing.
He saw things * * in the big. ' ' During my travels in Brazil,
THE MAIN CAR STATION IX THE OLD MULE-TRAMWAY DAYS
PRESENT CAR STATION AND MAIN OFFICE OF THE "RIO DE JANEIRO TRAM-
WAY, LIGHT AND POWER CO., LTD."
THE OLD RIO OF IMPERIAL DAYS
THE NEW RIO OF THE REPUBLIC
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 135
I was riding one day on horseback in company with one
of the men who worked with Pearson in Massachusetts
and was with him almost from the first in the extensive
Brazilian enterprises. ''He was ready to 'scrap' any-
thing and everything," he said, "anything not the best
and the biggest for his large schemes went on the scrap
heap. It was expensive business, but in the end it made
for larger economy." A fellow engineer in the United
States who had known Dr. Pearson for more than a
quarter of a century, speaks thus of him :
"He was always leading his profession in the demands which he
made upon the manufacturers for increase of size of engine dynamo or
transformer, for the highest practical efficiency, for the highest operat-
ing pressure; in fact, he was always pushing everything and everybody
to the limit, and yet his judgment was so well balanced that I cannot
remember a single instance of failure of any of his engineering works
in any important part."
Surely he was among the world's greatest Light-bring-
ers of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the
dawn of the twentieth; history of industrial enterprises
will give the engineer, Frederick Pearson, a prominent
niche. His best eulogy is his work. As the old Latin
line puts it —
**If you want his monument, look about you!"
It was in the year 1900, that Pearson and a band of his
financial supporters first turned their eyes toward Bra-
zil. It was still at that time the Old Brazil of Imperial
days respecting especially the style of transportation
in the cities, lighting, and modern telephone conveniences.
Whether by chance or calculation, however, the coming of
the northern engineers synchronised almost exactly with
the period of that modern municipal reform which has
swept of late certain of the larger centres of Brazilian
population into the first rank of the progressive cities of
136 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
the world. The Tramway Light and Power Companies,
which American engineers, backed by Canadian, Eng-
lish, French and Belgian capital, brought to the two chief
cities of the Republic, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, in
those days of city industrial regeneration were among the
most essential and timely factors, as the Brazilians them-
selves are among the first to acknowledge.
Those who to-day behold the three-car tramways in
the city of the Cariocans, equipped with every modern
device for comfort and safety, carrying daily the thous-
ands of inhabitants of the Federal Capital through the
busy streets and far out, ten miles and more, around the
obstructing leafy loveliness of the City's palm-crowned
hills, even to the most distant suburban edges of her ex-
panding life, can scarcely realise how suddenly this trans-
formation has occurred, or how efficient has been the man-
ner of its achievement. It was only a little more than a
decade since the visitor to Rio de Janeiro found himself
jolted along over the narrow and un-macadamed streets
in rattling mule-cars, and when he passed the mule barns,
there were emitted upon the moist tropical air odours
that were neither incense nor perfumes. It was a dis-
tinction perhaps but not with appreciable difference, to
his olfactories at least, from those somewhat earlier Bra-
zilian days, before the city had arisen in her sanitary
might, when the lover of Brazil nights, strolling out upon
what is now the lovely Avenue Beira Mar, "moving in
meditation, fancy free," was suddenly confronted by the
'Higers," or slaves who conveyed each night to the
water's edge the accumulated sewage of the city, where
the next tide swept it out to sea.
There is a story connected with these open-sewer and
mule-stable days, which the Brazilians, whose humorous
sense often surpasses their pride in times now dead and
gone, are wont sometimes to relate. An inhabitant of
the Flumenensian city of these somewhat unprogressive
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 137
and smelly daj's, while on a visit to Paris became very
ill. All restoratives were applied in vain, until a French
physician well acquainted with the Capital of Brazil was
called in for consultation. He decided almost immedi-
ately that it was impossible to expect the recovery of the
patient unless he could breathe again his own, his native
air. As the sick man could not return to Rio, the phy-
sician prescribed that immediately there should be con-
cocted in the sick-chamber a compound of the most "vil-
lainous smells." According to the story, the invalid re-
covered almost instantaneously.
It was not because such conditions were especially fav-
oured, but because south, as well as north of the equator,
habit is inclined to be second nature. As Paul Laurence
Dunbar said in one of his dialect poems :
"We done get into ways
We jus' can't help pursu'in."
In the old Inca city of the Andes in Peru one of the
town officers told me that for some time they had had
money in the municipal treasury for sanitation (and I
do not recall any place on the face of the planet where
the immediate use of funds for this purpose was more in-
sistent) but the inhabitants hesitated to vote it for this
purpose, falling back on the time worn plea that their
fathers had lived thus, why shouldn't they? We all re-
member the play called "Milestones" which had much
vogue in London, New York and other cities because of
its true reflection of human traits; it revealed the pio-
neers of one generation becoming the conservatives of
the next, scouting the schemes of their sons which seemed
to them to be risky and too foolhardy for trial.
It was with such forces of adherence to the established
and the customary, that the first promoters of electric
energy had to deal in Brazil. The common answer to
138 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
the project of electric tramways in the Federal Capital,
was *'nao pode" (you can't do it). The idea that cars
almost as large and heavy again as those which the mules
were tugging, with their great loads of humanity, could
be made to go ''of themselves" with the impotent-look-
ing assistance of a small wire, seemed too preposterous
for credence. If the promoters had been dependent upon
the Brazilian populace for capital to start their far-reach-
ing enterprises, the day for the electrification of these
cities would have been postponed to a much later date.
As it was, it took nearly five years from the time the ideas
began to take shape, to the granting by the Federal Gov-
ernment, May 30th, 1905, rights to operate in Brazil
to ' ' The Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power Com-
pany, Limited"; this company had been incorporated
June 11th of the previous year under the laws of the
Dominion of Canada. The date was a notable one for the
country as well as for the foreign company which received
then privileges "to acquire and operate street railways,
telephones and telegraphs, and for the exploitation of
light, heat, force, by any energy, animal, steam, pneuma-
tic, electric or mechanical in the Republic subject to the
laws of the United States of Brazil. ' '
Already the Brazilians of the City of Sao Paulo had
made beginnings in electric matters, the first service for
the distribution of electric light being inaugurated by the
"Companhia Agua & Luz Do Estado de Sao Paulo," dur-
ing the year 1891, the generation being by steam at first
with a 50 K.W. capacity. In 1900, the capacity of this
plant was 300 K.W. The next step was the electric tram-
ways and the record shows that on July 8th, 1897, the
municipality of the Paulista Capital City signed a con-
tract with the company with Brazilian name for the in-
stallation of electric tramways, and on the 28th of Sep-
tember, 1899, a contract for the distribution of electric
current for light and power. In the same year these priv-
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 139
ileges were purchased by the ^'Sao Paulo Tramway Light
and Power Company Limited," which has always been in
close affiliation with the Rio de Janeiro Company.
The first electric car in Sao Paulo was inaugTirated on
the 7th of May, 1900, the installation of Parnahyba, for
the supply of electric current, generated hydraulically
occurring in the ensuing year.
The preliminary personal investigation of Dr. Pearson
in this region, and the legal assistance given him by Mr.
Alexander Mackenzie, later the President of the Canadian
Company which was to work in Brazil, together with the
many difficulties encountered, forms an interesting page
in the history of foreign development of industrial effort
in South America. The mule lines naturally fought the
innovators, and for a time it kept the new electric com-
pany busy repairing the tracks that were torn up by the
opposing faction of the *'mule" regime. The large for-
mer experience in such undertakings in other places in
the North, and capital, for the lack of which the Brazil-
ian Company found it necessary to sell its rights, finally
won, and when the notable day in 1900 came when the
first electric car made its trial trip in this fair city of the
Paulistas, the whole city turned out to celebrate.
The President of the State, Dr. Rodrigues Alves,
opened the throttle of the engine ; Ex-President of Brazil
Dr. Prudente de Moraes was in the power house ; Dr. An-
tonio Prado, Mayor of the City, closed the line circuit
breaker that protected the line, while a half dozen other
Brazilian notabilities, each took some part in opening
and closing switches; while the manager, Mr. R. C.
Brown, a staid Boston man, with his assistants, superin-
tended and ''watched that nobody got a shock." At 1 :30
P.M. on that fair May day in 1900, accompanied with the
"Vivas" of a vast crowd of spectators, the first electric-
ally promoted car of an organised system moved out of
the power house beneath Brazilian skies, cari-ying its
140 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
full quota of passengers made up of the leading men of
South Brazil, The first great electric tramway service
in all South America was inaugurated, and the rejoicing
Paulistas, by banqueting and "free rides to the pubHc"
during the memorable day, made plain their appreciation
of the significance of the event.
Seventeen years have since rolled their progressive
span over the forward-moving life of the Brazilian coffee
state and the chief city of this great southern Union of
commonwealths. The history told briefly and electric-
ally is epitomised in the following recent note made by
an industrial specialist:
' ' The State of Sao Paulo is rich in powerful waterfalls,
which accounts for its large increase and developments
of electric plants, giving light and power to about 150
cities and localities, and to the chief farms and manufac-
turing industries of the whole territory. It is calculated
that the hydraulic power in the state is 3,000,000 H.P.,
of which 250,000 H.P. have been developed for indus-
trial uses. The most important power plant is that of
the * Sao Paulo Tramway, Light and Power Co. ' at Par-
nahyba, twenty-two miles from the city of Sao Paulo. It
is owned by a Canadian Company, operating the street
car lines of the Capital of the state, and supplying prac-
tically all of the light and power used in the city. ' '
It is said that the Brazilian, like the Latin American
generally, is not practical, that as Kipling might say, he
is "without decimals in his brain." It is probably true
that the ceremonialism and tendency to delay in making
business decisions, often bring frenzy to the minds of
men from northern countries accustomed to prompt and
rapid methods. One also hears that the Brazilian is a
man who puts great stress upon the present at the ex-
pense often of the future enterprise, and that the pleas-
ure-ground of life is more to him than the practice-
ground. Still, he who follows the manner in which Brazil-
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 141
ians have welcomed and co-operated in modern under-
takings during the comparatively brief period of their
republican civilisation (which in a manner different from
any other polity gives the world a chance to see the real
character of a people) will be slow to call the inhabitants
of this Republic either a non-progressive or a non-indus-
trial people. They have given huge concessions in order
to attract men and money to their undeveloped country.
They have resembled the Japanese in the commendable
trait of not allowing foolish national pride to stand in
the way of accepting means and methods which have
brought success in other parts of the world. Though
naturally conservative, and for generations isolated
from other nations by geographical, as well as by trans-
portation limitations, they have recently revealed a mo-
dernity of feeling and action, especially along industrial
and material lines, that is as amazing as it is promising
for the future of Brazil.
There are few better examples in the country of this
Brazilian progressiveness and ready adaptability than
that given in the study of the successful Light and Power
Companies whose engineers have simply been the leaders
in the two important cities of the country, while the work-
ing out of many intricate details and most of the labour,
have been accomplished by Brazilians themselves.
In the Capital, for example, where the large task
exists of furnishing electric energy to supply a city and
surrounding district of nearly a million and a half of
inhabitants, the Company having the work in hand em-
ploys 6,773 men, all but a small handful of managers
(for the most part Americans) being Brazilians. In the
big gas works of the Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and
Power Company, Ltd., the two foremen who take the re-
sponsible positions are both graduate engineers from
Brazilian institutions, one of them from an engineering
school in the Capital City, and the other from Mackenzie
142 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
College in Sao Paulo. Three thousand men of the coun-
try run the 1,181 electric tramways as motor-men and con-
ductors; conveying yearly upwards of 190,000,000 pas-
sengers; 869 Brazilians manufacture the gas which sup-
plies 21,424 consumers in the City of Rio de Janeiro;
there are 278 telephone girls, nearly all Brazilians, who
attend the calls from 11,811 telephones installed in busi-
ness houses and private residences ; while in the electric
power and light division we find 583 men who have been
trained to the efficient and highly responsible task of serv-
ing 42,382 electric light consumers, and 2,216 users of
electric power.
Such figures, so easy to narrate, speak of tremendous
achievement crowded into a period of time hardly more
than a decade, for it was only in 1906, on the 24th of
November, that the Company which has served the Cap-
ital City of the Brazils so competently passed its first
current from a temporary power plant 50 miles away in
the Brazilian mountains, along its transmission line to
Rio de Janeiro. Such facts also speak eloquently, not
alone for the capacity of the Brazilian for training to
serve with efficiency in one of the most intricate and tech-
nical enterprises of the age, but they give, or should give,
an abundant degree of confidence to foreign enterprises
to consider this country as one of the great opportuni-
ties of the century for large and intelligently directed in-
dustrial development.
It cannot be impressed too forcibly, however, that the
foreigner or the foreign firm, be the line that of engineer-
ing, railroading, making dock works or digging mines,
looking toward Brazil as a field for action, must ever
have in mind a high qualitative leadership, if any per-
manent success is anticipated. The words of Mr. W. T.
Nolting, whose extensi-'-e experience in the Philippines
in connection with the United States Government has
fitted him peculiarly for his responsible post as Agent
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 143
for the Receiver of the Brazil Railway Company, speak-
ing to this point, said :
"Here in Brazil, we want to do things from the top
down, rather than from the bottom up. The trouble with
business in Brazil has been often that we have sent small
agents and small men down here, men who are not only
ignorant of the field and the language, but who also are
without grasp and vision."
In the study of the Light and Power Companies of Rio
de Janerio and Sao Paulo, one comes to the conclusion
that the instinct and intelligence with which Dr. Pearson
and others in the beginning of the enterprise, selected the
men who were to pioneer the work, formed a potent rea-
son for its present triumph. This is evidenced in every
branch and never more clearly than in the case of the
present Vice President, Mr. F. A. Huntress, who has been
the managing head of the enterpise in Brazil almost from
the beginning. The unexpected and often exceedingly
trying exigencies of a work so extensive and responsible
as the lighting and transportation of a great city involves ;
the many delicate negotiations with highly intelligent and
cultured Government officials ; and that which is perhaps
quite as important for success as all else, the ability of
choosing and handling large bodies of men for industrial
purposes — these are tasks requiring a high order of
ability.
That such proficiency has not been absent at any stage
of the development, is abundantly apparent. It was my
privilege, when in Rio de Janeiro, to visit the large gas
works which are carried on by this enterprise under the
name "Societe Anonyme du Gaz de Rio de Janeiro."
This is a virtually new plant reconstructed in 1911, cov-
ering an acreage of 136,000 square meters, and manu-
facturing daily 110,000 cubic meters of gas for the use of
the Federal Capital and District. It is interesting to
note that this Federal District because of the configura-
144 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tion of the land and mountains is enormous, spreading
over a territory more than double the area of Chicago
or Philadelphia, and nearly one third larger than Greater
New York.
This entirely modern piece of work, than which there
are few if any superior examples of the kind in any
country, serves as a reserve power plant in ease the main
electric power of the company should be disabled. It
also gives the city 22,080 gas lamps, furnishes 23,305
gas appliances for domestic and industrial uses, incident-
ally produces 175 tons of coke daily, manufactures 70,000
tons of creoline a month for disinfectant purposes, and
utilises its graphite as a by-product of its flourishing en-
terprise. The plant uses three hundred tons of coal
daily, and in these times coal costs from $16.00 to $20.00
per ton in this section. Mechanical and automatic proc-
esses have taken the place of manual labour to such an
extent that, despite large increase of business, eighty
men are doing more work than was accomplished in the
old days with six hundred labourers. "A reduction of
men-days," said the manager, ''is the object of all mod-
ern industrial enterprises." The men who feed the big
retorts receive nine milreis a day (about $2.25) and are
among the well paid workmen in the city. The ordinary
day labourer's rate in Rio de Janeiro is three milreis or
about seventy-five cents. There are no trade unions in
Brazil, and one is told that the workmen would not toler-
ate a union of this kind at the present time. There are,
however. Benefit and Protective Societies for workmen.
Strikes have been so infrequent as to be practically negli-
gible.
Yet there is little doubt but that the problem of labour,
to open and to develop her vast rich country in all its
hidden parts, is one requiring Brazil's best and earliest
study. Lying above her beautiful Federal Capital, form-
ed by the strange configuration of mountains, is what the
THE TRIUMPH OF THE ENGINEER 145
Cariocans call ''the Sleeping Giant" — Gavea forms the
head, Corcovada furnishes the trunk and legs and Pao d*
Assucar the feet. It is significant of the still drowsy,
dormant streng-th of the land taken as a whole. At pres-
ent the Giant is lacking human feet and human hands.
''Population" is one of the slogans of the awakening
Brazil. The Portuguese, fresh from the old country, to-
gether ^vith the strong Brazilian negro, make good day-
labourers, but there are not enough. The Italian, the Po-
lack, the German and the Hollandaise are assisting in the
breaking of new lands for colonies, and the Brazilian
whose training and inclination leads him to political,
medical, engineering, mercantile or clerical pursuits is
proving a match for any other nationality on his home
ground. But the country could stand a tide of immigra-
tion on a large scale, keeping in mind the United States,
and learning from her failures as well as from her suc-
cesses along this line.
The Rio de Janeiro Light and Power Company is offer-
ing opportunity as a training school for young Brazilians,
not only in its divisions of tramways, power stations and
lighting plants, but also in the reorganisation and pro-
motion of a municipal telephone system which has made
remarkable strides in the past seven years of supervision
by this concern. With an entirely modern system based
on the telephone experience and method in the United
States, the Company has 57,864 miles of single and dis-
tributing wires, with the control of a submarine cable
to Nictheroy across the Bay, and "long distance" lines
w^ith Petropolis, Sao Paulo and other sections. It has
sent Brazilian girls to the United States to study and
equip themselves for becoming chief operators at the
four large exchanges; they returned as the pioneer "tele-
phone girls" of Brazil, and in their turn have trained
others who all together are handling 160,000 calls daily
in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The company provides
146 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
rest rooms, restaurants and reading facilities for its "Ex-
change" girls when they are off duty, not forgetting the
essential Brazilian coffee which is served to the employ-
ees free of charge.
Thus we have some sidelights upon the story of one of
Brazil's largest private * 'foreign" enterprises. It is a
romance of big business through ducts and car-tracks,
through tunnels and wire ganglions, transformers and
gas-pipes. Brazil's romance in the past has been con-
nected often with navigators and emperors, with many
a famous name of State, and with lines of nobility worthy
of national pride. Now she has entered the age of the
engineer and the industrialist, no less worthy of honour
and historic fame because they labour more quietly and
often "behind the mountains.^'
An old Chinese proverb runs: "Industries are the
roots, while culture and statecraft are the flowers of a
nation. " It is the man with blue-prints and sextant who
is now leading this monstrous, potentially-undiscovered
country to the fundamental natural and industrial sources
of her wealth and greatness. There are many foreigners
who are joining with some of the finest of Brazil's sons to
follow the "whisper" that leads them "beyond the
ranges." Among these and a multitude that are yet to
come there will be sure citizenship, in the world of engi-
neering pioneers, for the wizard of electrical construc-
tion, Frederick Pearson, and that competent fraternity of
light and power promoters who, in the great cities of
Brazil, have followed in his train.
XI
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY
We have been told that if we would know a people, we
must know their songs. Taking perhaps undue liberty
with this immortal saying, I would announce that if you
would truly know a people you must study their tram-
car behaviour.
This statement is made with a perfectly clear conscious-
ness that I am about to draw a somewhat invidious com-
parison between the great city in which it is my honor to
reside, and that fair tropical metropolis known as Rio de
Janeiro.
Not long ago it fell to my lot to conduct the highly
cultured foreign Minister to the United States of an un-
named European nation, from the Grand Central to my
home in Riverdale, The diplomat had recently arrived
in the country and having heard a great deal of our
wonderful modern system of underground railways, he
asked particularly that he might travel up-town that
evening on the subway. I sugested that an automobile
might be more comfortable at that hour (it was six
o'clock) adding persuasively, and with a natural desire
to have the first impressions of my distinguished guest
favourable ones, that the subway cars were inclined to be
somewhat crowded at this particular time of night. My
diplomacy was most painfully ill-timed, for His Excel-
lency immediately responded — "Ah, that decides it. I
wish to see the people of this great city quite as much as
the subway. The study of faces is a hobby with me. It
is in fact my pet method of learning quickly the character
147
148 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
of a city." And with an official air he started toward the
big letters '' Subway Entrance," while his conductor fol-
lowed perforce, not without misgivings.
For some intangible reason, best divined by the init-
iated uptown passengers, I felt that my friendship was
about to be shattered forever with this notability, and
that furthermore the polished exterior of at least one
diplomat from Southern Europe was soon to be partially
if not utterly demolished. The outcome was even more
tragic than I had dared to anticipate. The platforms
were unusually jammed with muscular crowding human-
ity. It was like going to death as to a festival. We hesi-
tated. Again I suggested as firmly as I thought my sec-
ondary rank permitted, the automobile, or at least ad-
vocated waiting for the next train. My companion,
though small in stature, had a fiery spirit and Spartan-
like he demurred, and at the same moment we were swept
into the vortex. It was now a matter of the survival of
the fittest. In the joint endeavour to protect my guest
and at the same time retain his hand-bag which I was
clutching convulsively and which doubtless was filled with
important State documents if not his speech which he
was to deliver that evening, we became detached. His
Excellency, whom I recognised by his shining top hat
which had suffered, was firmly wedged into a cavity be-
tween two cars where the roar of the train and the cold
winter blasts added perceptibly to both his fright and
discomfort. I tried to catch his eye to reassure him a
bit, but he was pre-occupied in his attempts to dodge the
quill of a lady's hat which threatened to blot out his eye-
sight. At the Seventy-second Street Station we were all
swept precipitately out on the platform, while the guard
thundered in His Excellency's ear, "Let 'em out!" By
dint of rapid foot-work I managed to reach my guest
who in his unexpected egress has lost his hat, and was
partially stunned by being mashed against a subway
A FULL-GROWN COFFEE PLANT
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 149
pillar. He seized me as a drowning man clutches at a
life-saver, and when his breath came again he exclaimed,
*'Mon Dieu, what barbarity! In the language of your
countrjTnen, 'nevaire again'!"
It is hardly fair perhaps to place this incident over
against the Latin American obsequiousness encountered
on Rio de Janeiro's tramways (who knows what will hap-
pen when the southern Capital has five million instead
of one million street-railway passengers!) One is in-
clined to surmise, however, that the Brazilians, with their
penchant for chivalric decorum, would refrain from going
to their offices at all, rather than subject their neat per-
sons to such ruffling and humiliating returns therefrom.
As a matter of fact the tramways in this southern city
which carry in their 1,200 cars upwards of 200,000,000
passengers yearly, are among the agencies of which the
people are justly proud. In spite of the 3,000 or more
automobiles in the Federal Capital, every one likes to
ride on the tramways, not only because of the efficiency
with which they are managed, but also because they go
everyAvhere, carrying one through scenery that is worth
sight-seeing prices no matter in wliich direction one is
being transported.
One reason possibly for the excellence of this tramway
service lies in the fact of its modernity, by which the best
experience in such systems of transportation all over the
world has here been incorporated. It was only a little
over a decade ago, since 1906, that The Rio de Janeiro
Tramway Company, having bought out the ancient mule-
car system, sent its first electrically-driven tram cars
through the streets of the Capital City. It is, in fact,
in the memory of living Brazilians that the antique look-
ing and acting omnibuses, or ''gondolas" as they were
popularly called, were being driven with their loads of
Cariocans through the narrow passageways of the old Im-
perial city behind galloping mules. In the year 1857, the
150 THE BRAZILIANS AND^THEIR COUNTRY
Rev. J. C. Fletcher, in his excellent picture of old-time
conditions, furnishes the following account of city trans-
portation in Rio de Janeiro :
"The Brazilian omnibus is very much like its prototype in all parts
of the world, with this single and very important exception : — it is not
elastic. A New York or Philadelphia omnibus is proverbially 'never
full'; but the same kind of vehicle in Rio can be filled, and when once
complete, the conductor closes the door, cries 'Vamos embora' (Let us
be off), the driver flourishes his long thong and sets his four-mule team
into a gallop. Away we go, rattling across gutters as if there were
none, and rushing through narrow streets as though negro water-
carriers had no existence. It is curious to behold the heavy-laden slaves
clearing the streets and dodging into open shop-doors as an omnibus
api3ears in sight. Few accidents occur; and, when they do, prompt
reparation is made. . . . The streets, with their diminutive sidewalks,
are so narrow that in many of them only one vehicle can pass at a
time; . . . narrow ruas which doubtless had their origin in the desire
to procure shade."
All these have long since disappeared, together with
the mule-cars which came later, and co-incident with the
recent remaking of the city there came a network of elec-
tric tramways threading the metropolis in every direc-
tion and worthy of favourable comparison with any sys-
tem of its kind in any part of the world. The unified
system now owned and operated by The Rio de Janeiro
Light and Power Cbmpany, Limited, embraces more
than 200 miles of trackage, gives employment to 2,922
men who work on the tramways, and the total number of
miles that the various kinds of cars run yearly is con-
siderably over 24,000,000.
As the summer climate is virtually continuous in Rio
de Janeiro throughout the year (the thermometer show-
ing an average temperature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit for
the last 40 years) the tramways consist entirely of open
cars, and the system involves one or two "trailer" cars,
attached to the main passenger car; these "trailers" are
used not only for passengers, but there are specials for
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 151
workmen and servants who wish to travel, carrying their
burdens of baggage or produce along with them. For the
latter purpose, the tramways provide wide spaces between
the seats, where ample room is furnished for bags of Bra-
zilian beans (the staple food for the lower classes espe-
cially), for market baskets, huge bunches of pine-apples,
trunks and hand-baggage, in fact for anything of moder-
ate size wliich the Cariocan wishes to transport. The
trailers for this purpose are usually second-class cars,
and half prices are charged for day-labourers, whose
soiled working garments do not consort with the fault-
lessly dressed Brazilian men and women.
This feature is worthy of emulation on the part of tlie
street car companies of the United States. Let him
speak who has been forced to ride for an half hour or
more by the side of a frugal East-Side housewife, taking
home her Sunday supply of garlic, onions, or perchance
the cheese that alas, neither cheers nor inebriates. The
protest also of the down-trodden passenger should be
heard regarding the feeling of his pedal extremities,
which he has been obliged to drape or straddle about a
huge suit-case, or a milliner's hat-box, of the size of a
bushel-basket, while the owner looks meditatively the
other way or reads his paper with a nonchalance that
would deceive a detective as to the rightful owner of the
obstructing impedimenta. Such sufferers w^ould find
Brazil a traveller's elysium of uninsulted nostrils and un-
benumbed legs. The slogan in the Rio de Janeiro tram-
ways is ' ' No bundles allowed " ! If, by chance, a foreign-
er, accustomed to follow the first law of wise tourists,
never to get separated from his baggage, drags along
after him into the tram-car his London bag or American
suitcase, the conductor appears at his side instanter with
smiles and bows, and before the traveller is scarcely
aware, his baggage is safely riding upon the back plat-
152 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
form or on the ''trailer/' while he pays a small additional
fare for the same.
The rates of fare are reasonable, beginning at 100 reis,
about 2l^ cents, for short distances, and increasing as
one goes to the far-away termini of the roads which are
situated from eight to ten miles on the periphery of the
far-extending city. The service of these street-railways
in relieving the congested parts of the city, and creating
the possibility of new residence districts along the Atlan-
tic sea shore and far up on the green sides of the hills,
which overlook in splendid panoramas the city and the
sea, has been noteworthy.
When it comes to courtesy, the politeness of the Rio
tramway conductors and officials generally, is imme-
diately impressed upon the visitor from the northern
13art of the hemisphere. It would make a conductor of a
Broadway car grow faint at the mere mention of it. Try
to imagine anywhere in the "States" a trolley-car func-
tionary touching his cap as a sign of respect when re-
ceiving your nickel. One day the writer saw the con-
ductor of a Rio tram-car stop his car to wait for an
elderly lady whom he chanced to see leaving her resi-
dence somewhat too tardily to catch the train; the lady
was at least three fourths of a square away, and when she
reached the car, this aider and abettor of public con-
veyance stepped down, helped the old lady mount the
steps, starting his train only after he had made sure that
she was comfortably seated. Meanwhile, what of the
waiting passengers? In this case there were by count be-
tween fifty and sixty in the main car, and the two trailers
behind it. "We noted their expressions; there was no
sign of impatience on any face as far as we could see.
Every one seemed to take the action as a matter of
course. ' * Surely the conductor was in duty bound to con-
sider a lady's convenience," the countenances seemed
to say.
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 153
A misunderstanding concerning the right fare takes the
form of a polite conversation rather than an angry argu-
ment, and one rarely misses the presence of unfailing
civility on the part of both the conductor and the con-
ducted. It is a further reminder of the leisurely and ur-
bane life germane to life in the Brazilian tropics. ''Never
to be too busy to be respectful!" is the unwritten rule;
not ''business is business," regardless of affability as
too often in more utilitarian countries, but business along
with courtesy and good form, and always to be polite
about it in any case.
The tram-cars of Rio are usually well-filled but not
crowded and rarely jammed, since the prescribed number
of seats being taken, there is no chance to stand, save on
the back platform ; the late comers wait for the next car
or take a "taxi." The arrangement of the cars is like
our open tramways in North America in summer time.
Smoking is allowed on all but the first three seats, but
the Cariocans who apparently smoke less, at least in
public, than do the Americans or Europeans, rarely ob-
trude their cigarette smoke obnoxiously in public con-
veyances.
The politeness of man to man is especially noticeable
throughout the country. The lifting of hats, the constant
handshaking, and the unique affectionate embrace com-
mon among men when meeting, all over Latin America,
sometimes described a bit vulgarly by foreigners as
"back-slapping salutations" are the regular habits of
street etiquette. When a gentleman must perforce pass
in front of you in boarding a car in order to secure his
seat, he invariably touches his hat saying "com licenca"
(with your permission) and is answered in like motion
by the man whose knees or polished shoes he may have
endangered in his passage. During a considerable use
of tramways in this Republic, I do not recall a single iu-
154 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
stance of rowdyism, or rudeness or loud haggling over
fares.
With all their formalities the Brazilian passenger list
of the tramways is the most democratic possible. Brazil
has been putting off rapidly her old Imperial distinc-
tions, and an ordinary street car in the Federal Capital
furnishes as heterogeneous and kaleidoscopic effect as
the top of a Parisian omnibus. More of the latter in
fact, as the black, the mulatto, the mameluco and the octo-
roon are all here along with the white inhabitant. The
foreign Ambassador may find his seat alongside the
ebony black hotel porter, and the wife of the Minister
may be sitting beside her negress laundry woman. The
almost total disregard for colour lines in this part of the
world, where the colour of children does not always match
that of their parents, was brought home to an American
lady recently who chanced to be sitting by two black
children on a car when the conductor coming for his col-
lections, first received the lady's fare, and then address-
ing her said — "The fares for the children, Senhora," and
seeing the northern lady look a bit confused he added,
''Aren't those children yours?"
As the tramways weave about through the narrow
streets of the older parts of the city, one gets passing
visions of Brazilian life. There are small houses so flat
on the tops that one might imagine some ocean typhoon
had blown off sheer the upper story. They bear all the
colours of the rainbow, pink and brilliant blue predomi-
nating, with occasionally a violet colour or a green one
to furnish contrast. There are no verandas, but every
window in this quarter is full of heads, interested be-
holders of the happenings of the street. In the more
fashionable sections it is considered somewhat infra dig
to lean out of the windows, but among the poorer classes
it seems to constitute the chief amusement of the women
especially, to rest their elbows upon the window sill and
SEEING EIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 155
converse with or watch their neighbours. This they do
by the hour, "getting corns on their elbows," as one
visitor vividly expressed it. This process, which the
American would probably style *' rubbering," forms a
custom so delectable that one is told by real estate deal-
ers that a house in full view of the tram-car line rents
for considerably more than one less fortunately placed.
Wlien nothing better offers, the pretty daughter of the
household may watch the trams go by, and perchance at-
tract an admirer by her freshly powdered face and elabo-
rately dressed hair.
It may be well in many cases that the passing glance
does not reveal the fact that the black-eyed senhorita, who
looks so charming from the window may be dressed for
show-window purposes, and that the pretty white blouse
may be a dressing jacket, and her feet clad only in heel-
less slippers such as are worn by the Brazilian middle
class in their homes. The inhabitants, like the homes
in these streets, should be seen from the front. They are
both arranged with this intent. It was not without cer-
tain penetration that some Brazilian house-builders, who
work all kinds of stucco designs on the fronts of these
diminutive houses, are called "architectural cake-f rost-
ers." It seems temperamental in these parts to wish to
make a good surface impression (and this is not limited
to Brazilians) ; and many a person will appear in public
in rich clothing and flashing jewelry, although they have
but one good room in the house, and may be obliged to
eat black beans and mandioca for dinner.
In spite of the changing scenes of perpetual interest
in the streets of this city, there is something far more
fascinating to the tramway tourist than the well-man-
aged cars, the passengers, or the people in their homes
along the way. The natural surroundings of Rio de
Janeiro make it by far the most fascinating of all the
world's cities. As Lord Bryce remarks in his "Impres-
156 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
sions," '*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 de-
lightful."
The tramways of Rio take you through gardens of fruit
and foliage as luxuriant as can be found in California,
Calcutta or the Kew Gardens of London; they afford
views of a harbour and Bay which make the traveller for-
get even the Japanese Miajima and her artistic torriis ;
while neither Naples nor Edinburgh, Hongkong nor
San Francisco can ever hope to equal the tropical splen-
dour of this environment. The nature-lover may spend
his patrimony, turning his purse into his eyes, in order
to behold the Himalayas in all of their Northern-India
beauty, or spend his superlatives upon the majesty of
the Yosemite Valley and Arizona's Grand Cailon; yet
this mountain-locked Brazilian bay, which seems as one
looks down upon it caught and held in the sunshine amidst
the green bizarre-shaped shafts of mountain summits
with their dripping tangled jungle growths — the forests,
the city, the granite islands with their waving palms
rambling in yellow sunlight over her hills, beyond the
sparkling sea and above the giant wall of the Serra do
Mar coast range — these taken together are without rival
or counterpart. Here, as amid the changing lights and
shadows of the Syrian mountains that are round about
Jerusalem, the Hebrew singer might proclaim:
"The heavens declare the glory of God,
And the firmament sheweth His handiwork."
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 157
It has been said that one learns more from a little see-
ing than from reading many books. I only wish that I
could adequately portray what eye pictures these rides
about Rio de Janeiro stamp upon one's memory.
There are two great central stations from which the
tramw^ays start to cover widely extended areas. One is
at the Hotel Avenida, which has been for years to tourists
at least a kind of Boston Common, or Place de 1 'Opera,
from which sight-seeing and geographical city calcula-
tions begin and end. This big brick-coloured hotel is the
pivot of a never-ending swirling circle of tram-cars start-
ing here for the various routes leading to the southern
portions of the city. In New York we say to the sight-
seer, * ' Get on top of a Fifth Avenue bus and ride to the
end of the line." In Rio, they tell you: ''Go to the
Avenida Central and take any car and stay on it."
I followed this latter direction on the night we arrived
in the city of the Flumenenses. It w^as a five-mile ride
of continuous night-beauty in the tropics, in and out along
the famous modern boulevards, Beira Mar, Flamengo
(so named because of the birds that frequented this par-
ticular part of the bay), circling the half arc of Botafogo,
at once a sea-speedway and an electrically lighted gar-
den, until we reached the shadows below Pao d'Assucar;
here we had our first vision of that barren sentinel, driven
up more than thirteen hundred feet into the sky and in
its silhouette resembling a huge granite tooth. Here
came the vision also of that dancing light of Sugar Loaf's
aerial car like a lofty fire-fly, as it floats along its invisi-
ble wire, carrying its passengers across the dizzy height
to the top of this mountain, where Rio and its Bay look
like a phantom city seen in dreams.
Your tramway leaves the sea-shore to dodge into fine
wide streets, set on either side with rich Brazilian homes
— no half-houses these — but palatial looking amidst their
palms with high ornamented fences in front. For a mo-
158 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ment your car is caught into a skein of other tramways
that centre in front of the Largo do Machado Park
with its tropical vestments through which the outline of
the Church of San Francisco, the worshipping place of
Rio de Janeiro's aristocracy, is faintly seen. It was here
as the tram-train rolled along before the entrance of the
fashionable Avenue de Larangeiras, that I caught my
first transient glimpse of Corcovado, which seemed to be
springing directly out of this residence-district of the
city's well-to-do. In my year of crowded experiences in
South America, this first five-cent tram-ride in the city
beneath the Southern Cross is associated most satisfac-
torily in retrospect with palm-filled esplanades, with
plazas crowded with luxuriant foliage and bronze statues
of Portuguese knights, with visions of curving beaches
singing softly with incoming tides, and mixed with the
odour of tropical flowers, the gently stirring breath of the
Trade winds, salt with many seas.
By taking other cars one follows for a time the course
described above, then passing through a tunnel in the
mountains finds himself skirting the ocean side through
Ipanema and Copacabana residential sections, the beach
as fine as that at Atlantic City and marked by costly
dwellings, which from this point have broad prospects
over the defile through which ocean liners steam into
Guanabara Bay ; beyond to the right is the vista of open
sea. Here the '^league-long rollers" are always thunder-
ing in, and the long stretches of white sand are dotted the
year around with children in their "sand-clothes" and
ocean bathers. There is a common and popular custom
among Brazilians of early morning bathing, which is en-
joyed to the full within the limits of the quiet bay, and
especially on the Nictheroy side, where many Cariocans
spend their holidays in the warmest months, during De-
cember, January and February.
There is perhaps no more quaint or picturesque trip
SEEING RIO DE JANEIRO BY TRAMWAY 159
to be taken than the tram service starting at the Largo
de Carioca and climbing to Sylvestre on the moun-
tain side. The crossing of the famous old aqueduct
through which Rio used to get its water carries one high
above the houses of the immediate neighbourhood, and
afterwards ^\'inds about the leafy hills amid pleasant
villas with ever recurring snap-shot views of the city
lying below. It is in connection with this route that the
nature-admirer can take the Corcovado Railway, one of
the most fascinating of all mountain railroads, two and
one third miles in length, carrjdng one through primeval
forests which seem little changed since the foot of man
was first heard sounding in this Brazilian wilderness of
exuberant growths. The road takes the sight-seer up the
steep mountain side 2,180 feet, landing him only about
130 feet below the precipitous smmnit of the world-re-
nowned "Hunchback" or Corcovado peak. Near the
summit there has been constructed an hotel whose situa-
tion and far vision of the valleys and distant sea form
one of the permanent memories of all travellers. There
are superb mountain trails from this point following for
a time along an old moss-grown aqueduct, then far up
into the thick forest the home of orchids, tropical plants
and gleaming-coloured butterflies.
The forest lover is here always '* knee-deep in June":
in George Barley's lines,
"Green haunts, and deep enquiring lanes,
Wind through the trunks their grassy trains. . . .
Millions of blossonis, fruits and gems,
Bend with rich weight the massy stems;
Millions of restless dizzy things,
With ruby tufts and rainbow wings,
Speckle the eye-refreshing shades,
Burn through the air, or swim the glades;
As if the tremulous leaves were tongues,
Millions of voices, sounds, and songs,
160 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Breathe from the aching trees that sigh,
Near sick of their own melody."
Still these are not the only tramway privileges in Rio,
for another system, starting from the famous Square
Quinze de Novembro, is almost as interesting, penetrat-
ing the central, northern and western portions of the city
in some cases to the length of nine miles of continuous
travel. From this point one starts for the Zoological
Gardens, the new port works of which the Federal City
is justly proud, the Jockey and Derby Club race-tracks,
where Cariocans flock to the horse-races on Sunday after-
noons, the National Museum situated in the beautiful gar-
dens once the home of the Emperor; the Government
Ministries, and the ride particularly notable up the moun-
tain side to Alto da Boa Vista, 1178 feet above sea-level,
set like a green jewel in the side of the Tijuca range. He
who connects his tramway journey with the forty mile
automobile drive about Tijuca will be ready to say in
the words of the old Mogul Emperor of his palace in
Agra — ''If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is
here ! ' '
It is through such matchless scenery that the Rio de
Janeiro tramways carry more than a half a million pas-
sengers daily. No one wonders that the enterprise which
stands in Portuguese to the Cariocans as "A Light"
has brought forth admiration and appreciation. As far
as it would seem possible during the last decade, it has
brought to the inhabitants of the fair city by the sea, both
men and methods to match her mountains.
XII
ELECTRIC ENERGY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL
It is related that some years ago, an employee of Mr.
Thomas Edison entered by chance at an early hour the
Edison laboratory, and there found the great inventor
alone and uttering aloud this petition :
"0, Mysterious Electric Force, give me, I pray, to-day your secret !
Tell me to-day what I wish to know !"
The goddess of electrical energy, if there be one, seems
to have heard and answered the famous magician's
prayer, for wherever one may go to-day even to the utter-
most parts of the earth, the incandescent lamp is there
before him, and the name ''Edison" is a household
word. In sequestered villages far up in the hills of the
Sunrise Kingdom, I have seen this tiny and familiar in-
candescent shining through the rice-paper shojis of the
Japanese peasant's tiny house; and in the fastnesses of
the Jura mountains in North Africa, I have been amazed
to find among otherwise century-late traditions this
bright herald of modem invention, gleaming in a Kabyle
hut. It may almost be said that wherever there is power
in the watercourses of the hills, there is to-day, not only
the possibility but the presence of that illuminating and
industrial energy which has transformed so largely civi-
lisation in the present generation.
It has been said that the two great interests of hu-
manity are usefulness and beauty. Electric energy is
peculiarly the servant par excellence of both. I know of
161
162 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
no place on the planet where this is better demonstrated
than in Brazil, especially in the Federal Capital of that
great Republic, where much of its present day industrial-
ism, its transportation, its power plants, its telephones
and its blaze of evening splendour shining out forty-five
miles seaward, has its hydraulic spring far up in the
Brazilian hills.
In the year 1905, there was practically not an electric
light in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and in 1907 there were
only two or three small individual plants for private
business houses. To-day there are 8,759 public street
electric arc lights, 1,126 incandescent public street and
836,269 private electric lamps, in this, without doubt, the
best electrically lighted city in the world. One may
imagine something of the illumination of this Capital
when it is stated that along the Avenue of Rio Branco to
the end of Botafogo, a distance of only about four miles,
there are 477 great electric arc lamps which together with
other lesser lights, turn the tropical nights of Rio de
Janeiro boulevards almost into day. New York City
with its matchless ''White Way" and all its wealth of
electric night beauty arouses wonder; but Rio de Ja-
neiro's existence can be seen on the brightening horizon,
at a distance four times farther at sea than the lights of
the northern Metropolis are visible. The large terminal
station, and the three sub-stations, where the high 80,000
voltage from the hydraulic mountain station is trans-
formed for various city uses, are impressive by reason
of their modern technical perfection; they also reveal
the immense adventure of capital and efficiency with
which the Rio de Janeiro Tramway, Light and Power
Company has so successfully undertaken to furnish elec-
tric energy for a million and a half of population, occu-
pying the Federal District of Brazil.
It is because of the knowledge of the large service thus
rendered in making this Capital of a country, comprising
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 163
more than half of all South America, so truly notable,
that visitors to Brazil are eager to see with their own
eyes the piece of hydraulic engineering situated on the
tropical rivers in the foot-hills of the Serras.
He who is fortunate enough to receive an invitation
to visif Lages" (the popular term to denote the Rio das
Lages, the river Lages, meaning *'big rocks") begins his
journey from the Federal City, on the Central Railroad
of Brazil. He has before him a fifty mile ride to the lake
in the mountains whose relation to Rio de Janeiro is vital
to that city in proiDortion as light, motor power, gas
plants, telephones and electric force generally applied,
are vital to twentieth-century happiness and necessity.
Whatever direction may be taken in leaving this unique
city, the impression is gained that this is the angle from
which Rio shows its most attractive face. Like certain
well-painted portraits, she seems always to wear an ex-
pression meant particularly for you. The trip to Lages
is no exception. At first the train winds about the pic-
turesque Cidade Nova, whose green hillsides are dotted
by the small one-room houses of Rio's inhabitants of
slender means. The palms, the roofs of red tile and the
bright sunshine remind one of Algiers.
As the train moves upward on the main road toward
Sao Paulo, the perspective widens. You are on the ankles
of that great mountain range, extending from latitude 5
degrees south to latitude 30 degrees south, and which
breaks down abruptly on the east to the Atlantic, and
more gently on the west toward the great undulating
plateau of Central Brazil. This plateau is approximately
800 miles long and 300 miles in width, and it contains
some of the richest hopes of the country. These Brazil-
ian mountains range from 2,000 to 3,000 feet in height,
though some are higher, notably the loftiest summit,
Italiaya, southwest of Rio de Janeiro about 50 miles,
which is a tropical mountain 10,000 feet in elevation. No
164 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
more richly wooded or verdant mountain scenery is to
be found in any tropical zone than greets the traveller,
as his eye wanders over these sunlit slopes that melt
down into wide valleys or seas of vivid blue.
It is into this section, which is a part of the oldest re-
gion, geologically, of the South American Continent,
older even than the vast volcanoes of the Andes, that we
are setting our faces now as we leave on our left Cor-
covada, looming with intimate impressiveness, and also
Tijuca with the rain clouds hanging like soft grey gar-
lands about her head. ''When Tijuca has her cap on"
(when her head is cloud-capped), the Flumenenses say,
"it is going to rain."
The suburban stations are quickly passed and you are
ascending into the Brazil of your old geography, where
the trees are flower-covered and vine-entwined; — and
there are beginning to be signs of the country that the
Brazilians call the "Matto," meaning a half-way station
between the jungle and the plain.
When Belem is reached the traveller is thirty-eight and
one half miles from the Federal Capital, and he now turns
from the main Brazil Central Railroad to take a branch
railway called the Ramal de Paracamby. With every mile
of progress henceforth, rural Brazil becomes more and
more tangible. The heavy jungle growth on either side
of the train, creepers, ferns, shrubs and a hundred para-
sitic forms, are the beds of exuberant vegetation and for-
estry of which no one knows even the names, all filled
with equatorial wonder and the sense of remoteness. A
torrential flood of mountain rain is emptied upon you
from the overhanging cloud, and you remember that you
are in the land where the average yearly rainfall is over
59 inches, and where tropical sunshine, quickly exchanged
for tropical showers, makes the provision of rain-clothes
a wise provision. Before the car-windows can be closed,
torrents pour in upon one seemingly in buckets-full ; very
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 165
soon we have passed out of it and find ourselves again
beneath sunny skies at the Lages station 42 miles from
Rio de Janeiro. Here we take the Company's private
railway which carries us in a constant climb for 13i/^
miles through healthy uplands and luxuriant foliage to
the big power house, the greatest d>mamo in all Brazil
for the conversion of water power into electric currents.
Far back in the sixteenth century the hardy and astute
Portuguese navigators and explorers seemed to have sur-
mised, as they revealed in their thrilling annals of dis-
covery, that Brazil was a land of mighty rivers and al-
most limitless natural wealth, securely locked away in
her mountain fastnesses. Yet they could not be expected
to have dreamed even of this twentieth century hydraulic,
half -human power station set here in the heart of Bra-
zilian rivers, lakes and water-falls, for their subjection
and utilisation in the interests of mankind.
But, leaving for a time the Power Station, we proceed,
still mounting skyward, and this time almost literally,
for we are drawn up a steep incline which at its steepest
grade is fifty-seven per cent., a quick rise of more than
one thousand feet in a car operated by three hundred
horse power motor and steel rope — wondering mean-
while where we had placed our accident insurance policy.
Thus picturesquely we are brought into the midst of the
Lages property belonging to that Light and Power Com-
pany. During the short span of ten years this Company
has developed here among Brazilian mountains and
streams, a territory composed of 33,116 acres, situated,
for the most part, more than 1,300 feet above the level
of the Atlantic Ocean, from which it is utilising daily
1,000,000 cubic metres, or tons, of water to make electric
energy for a population dwelling more than fifty miles
distant on the fair shores of Guanabara Bay.
The history of this development forms a notable chap-
166 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ter in the romantic story of modern progress in the new
Brazil.
As has been stated, this enterprise owes its conception
to the vision and energy of American engineers. The
task of fixing on a site for a big dam which would store
up the water power locked within these hills and flowing
away in several rivers, was not easy. It required many
months of investigation and prospecting. On the 30th of
November, 1905, the work was begun, concessions having
been obtained from the Government for a considerable
territory along the Lages River. During the time the
large dam in the river was under construction, a tempo-
rary plant was inaugurated, using a water-fall imme-
diately below the point where the dam was being built.
There was also a steam plant in Rio de Janeiro which
was being used to furnish power to run the tramways,
while these hydraulic works were being completed. It
was a work of no small magnitude, far greater than the
construction which had been previously conducted with
such success in Sao Paulo. Between fourteen hundred
and fifteen hundred men were employed in the construc-
tion. When on the fourteenth of February, 1908, the per-
manent Lages Station began to furnish the hydraulic
power for the City of Rio de Janeiro and its suburbs, a
new epoch was marked in the progress of this Metropolis.
Dr. F. S. Pearson's dream had become a reality, and al-
though his eyes were not destined to see the present
accomplishment which is expanding with every passing
year, Brazilian history will not fail to award him his de-
served meed of praise.
It was after this hydraulic development had been pro-
viding the sinews of electric force for nine years or more
to the new Rio de Janeiro that my visit was made,
affording not only the opportunity of studying a section
of the greatest private enterj)rise in the country, but also
the privilege of seeing a bit of Brazilian rural life which
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 1G7
often gives a truer index than the cities to the future of
a nation.
Subsequent to our arrival at the summit of the steep
incline, to which reference has been made, we drove for
a mile and a half along roads which seemed to be cut out
of the sheer side of the hills, through scenic views of
extraordinary beauty. We were now en route to the
Company's ''fazenda," the home of Mr. and Mrs.
Thomas Bevan, the keepers of the light and power at
Lages, whose hospitality is as free and openhanded as
that for which the Brazilian planter's home has been
notable through the years.
The "fazenda," or farm, on wiiich the superintendent
lives, is an old Brazilian country seat which was made
the headquarters of this division of the light and power
work at the time the construction activities were begun.
The farm house is situated on a hill that overlooks well-
kept gardens and is surrounded by trees and flowering
shrubbery all of which grow with rich luxuriance in this
favoured land. There are long rows of little houses, mak-
ing a right angle with the ' ' f azenda, ' ' and which formerly
was the slave-quarter of this Brazilian country house,
but which are now used for the homes of the employees,
and shops and stables accompanying the work of a
large estate. For ten years, Lages has afforded labour
for hundreds of men who are kept busy in the great pow-
er-house, at the reservoirs, and in connection with the
important and responsible task of guarding the motive
energy which supplies electric facilities to the new Rio
de Janeiro.
One of the first things to attract the visitor's attention
at Lages, are the great pipe lines through which the water
is carried from the reservoir first to the valve house and
then to the power plant. These vast water-canals that
run over hill and valley consist of nine high pressure
pipe lines, each 2,198 feet in length, making a total of
168 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
19,782 feet. The low pressure pipe lines, two in num-
ber, are eight feet in diameter; each one is 5,524 feet in
leng-th. The total length of the pipe lines between the
reservoir and the power house is 7,722 feet, and the total
feet of steel canals in use is 30,831 feet, or approximately
six miles. The water of the Brazilian lakes is thus
poured into the great hydraulic power house through a
massive system of high and low pressure pipes, into the
construction of which there has gone 15,600,000 pounds of
steel.
The eight foot pipe line leads to a large receiver in the
valve house and from this receiver the high pressure
pipe lines are tapped to the individual units. Every pre-
caution is taken against possible shut down. There are
valves on all pipes which can be operated hydraulically,
or by hand, and these can be operated from the power
house electrically in case of emergency. The valve sys-
tem is such that any line can be shut down for repairs
or for inspection without interfering with the general
operation of the station.
The lines are thoroughly protected against excessive
pressure due to surging, which may be caused by short
circuits on the transmission line or from other causes, by
relief pipes on the hill side, as well as by an automatic
relief valve on each unit in the power house. Each unit
has a Venturi meter installed which measures the water
passing through each pipe. No one can examine this
highly expensive and carefully constructed system of
water-carrying tubes without being filled with respect for
the manner in which almost every conceivable emergency
has been anticipated. In fact, the entire hydraulic de-
velopment at Lages forms a remarkable example of pro-
ficient foresight.
This foresight and efficiency are abundantly evident in
the Lages power house, a huge steel and concrete build-
ing 321 feet long, 95 feet wide and 111 feet in height,
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 169
which transmits electric current to Rio de Janeiro
through its transformers at 88,000 volts.
The visitor finds himself launched in this building into
a vast congeries of turbines, generators, regulators, ex-
citers, auxiliary pumps, switch boards and transformers
— aU of the latest pattern and impressive of the tremen-
dous power lying behind them in the distant mountains.
The power house is constructed for a capacity of 100,-
000 II. P. The turbines are of the impulse type, mounted
on vertical shafts, developing power from jets of water
directed tangentially against buckets attached to the rim
of a wheel. To the same vertical shaft is attached the
generator.
There are six 9,000 H. P. Escher Wyss impulse tur-
bines, and two 20,000 H. P. Escher Wyss turbines, all of
the same type, made in Zurich. There are four exciters
of 1,350 H. P. capacity.
The distribution system of the power house is divided
into four sections connected by a loop bus system. Any
one or two sections may be cut out and the others con-
nected by a suitable switching system. This makes it
almost impossible to shut the station down completely.
Every precaution is taken to avoid a shut down, and very
few power houses in any part of the world can equal
the record of 1916, when power was not off the trans-
mission line once during the year.
It was interesting to note that all electrical apparatus
in the power house was of American make. This is by
far the largest and most complete hydraulic power house
in South America.
From the power house to the Lages reservoir or lake,
is a distance by way of pipe lines of 2,353 metres or
about 9,000 feet. After a horseback ride of nearly two
miles from the power house, one turns around a sharp
bend in the road and comes face to face with a great half
circle of glistening water, which on the day I visited the
170 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
reservoir was rolling over the dam at 43 centimetres or
17 inches in depth above the spillway.
This dam, which is the form of an arch and one of the
most remarkable pieces of work at Lages, is 115 feet
high, 720 feet in length and is keyed into the solid rock
both at the bottom and also at considerable depth on the
two hillsides which form the walls of the outlet of the
lake.
The elevation of the base of the dam above sea level
is 370 metres or 1,213 feet ; the elevation of the spillway
or high water mark is 404 metres or 1,325 feet ; and the
capacity between the elevations is 210,000,000 cubic
metres, or 7,415,940,000 cubic feet of water.
This dam converts the Lages river into a lake twenty-
one and one-half miles in length, a most beautiful sheet of
water with a total area of seven and seven-tenths square
miles.
The reservoir occupies the valleys of Lages, the Pedras,
and the Araras rivers, whose waters it commands, as
well as the new tunnel which conveys the Pirahy River
waters.
After a sail in the Company's launch for about twenty
miles through the graceful curves of this artificial body
of water, we exchanged the launch for horses with which
we were to make our way through the valley and over
the mountains pierced by the Pirahy tunnel, to the source
of this tunnel near the small town of Rio Claro. This is
at a point not far from the great notch in the lofty Serra
Coast Range through which one passes to enter the State
of Sao Paulo. The view from the top of the range of
hills, beneath which the Pirahy tunnel has been con-
structed, is unforgetable, and is peculiarly impressive of
the vast undertaking which has brought waters of the
Pirahy and other smaller streams into direct and ready
use as a reserve power for the Lages water supply.
Shortly before our visit there had been a heavy flood
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 171
dne to the heavy summer rains in the mountains. The
country roads were buried at frequent intervals beneath
the red Brazilian clay which the landslides from the
steep hills had brought down, carrying trees, rocks and
shrubs with them. In some cases one noted that these
slides had been accelerated during the heavy rains by
crevices caused by ant runs which perforate the soil and
require constant watchfulness in these regions. Work-
men were busy all along the way clearing the roads, build-
ing new bridges, and resetting the telephone poles in
order that constant and ready communication may be
kept between every part of these widely extended sta-
tions. Those who have not visited these mountain regions
can hardly appreciate how quickly the rivers are over-
flowed by the sudden deluge that flows down from the
loftier ranges. During our visit an hour's rain in one
of these parts registered a fall of two and one half inches,
and during the rainy season the entire force of men, ex-
tending along a range of 50 miles, must be ready to give
attention both night and day to the guardianship of the
complicated chain of arrangements which serve the Capi-
tal city of the Brazils with its all-important light and
power. At every hour of the day and night each section
of this vast waterway is in direct telephonic communi-
cation with the manager's offices in the city of Rio which
provides for the instant attention to every possible emer-
gency. I was impressed with the sense of responsibility
which seemed to rest upon every man along the line. As
^he superintendent of Lages said, ''Eternal vigilance is
the price of safety and efficiency when one is dealing with
Nature, which in the tropics is so erratic."
One has ample opportunity in this horse back trip of
10 miles from the head of the Lages Lake to the begin-
ning of the famous Pirahy tunnel, not only to observe the
condition of the rural Brazilian countiy side, but also
to study the people to whom the company gives land for
172 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
colonisation purposes and for whose welfare it has ex-
ercised a beneficent influence.
This section for the most part is out of touch with rail-
roads and cities and the Brazilians who have built their
houses on the company's property and who are support-
ing themselves almost entirely by the produce of these
lands, are exceedingly primitive. We found steep hills
cultivated to their tops and reminding us of the table
lands of Peru and the terraced cultivation of the moun-
tain sides of Japan. Here one finds hill sides waving
with corn and mandioca, which, with the ever present
Brazilian beans and rice, furnish the staple food of the
people of this section. There is also rice in the bottom
lands and coffee grows readily in this fertile soil. The
harnessing of the streams seems to be contagious in this
region and even the humblest cultivator has built a water
wheel fashioned in a crude way to run a small mill which
grinds his coffee, corn and mandioca.
The houses are made of mud mixed with coarse grass,
*'Sape," and palm leaves thatched with the coarse
"Sape" grass or occasionally with tiles, and existence
is a fairly simple problem in this semitropical section.
Within the mud floored homes one finds only the simple
necessities, a few chairs and a rough table, and a primi-
tive looking stove often with no chimney, while the mem-
bers of the family sleep on boards with mattresses placed
upon them made from rushes. The man of the house
raises a little tobacco, dries it and prepares it himself,
and the traveller will see him at evening time sitting
outside his little hut, smoking his home-made cigarette,
the cover of which is made out of corn husk. This smok-
ing concoction would hardly please the taste of the more
critical city dweller, but here in the Brazilian ''Matto"
where there are no lights or "Movies" for evening re-
creation, the native cigarette smoked by a circle of
friends outside the doors of the thatched cottages, with
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 173
a possible glass of ^^aguardente," the native whiskey
made out of cane juice distilled, becomes the main source
of pleasure and relaxation. Although this water-coloured
native whiskey is far from innocuous if drunk to excess,
it must be added that intemperance is not the vice of the
Brazilian. Even these out of the way inhabitants prefer
to use such money as they can acquire in the purchase of
lottery tickets which are brought to their doors by the
itinerant lottery man.
Happiness, or at least contentment, seems to reign su-
preme in these neighbourhoods, although the entire
wealth of the inhabitants consists simply of a mud shack
and the crops which the Light and Power Company have
allowed them to glean from the company's land. They
are evidently an unambitious people, these Brazilian
mountain dwellers, but why should they work in land
where the ever present summer time limits the need of
clothing, and where fruits are obtained for the picking,
and wild plants whose roots make excellent flour, to-
gether with the beloved black beans, which form the staff
of life, are grown with slight expenditure of labour?
Farm machineiy is still unknown and virtually undesired.
The corn is planted on the hillsides by dropping it on the
ground and worked into the earth with the toes. Feet
were made before machinery in mountain Brazil.
It was in the midst of these rural conditions that the
Light and Power Company began in 1911 the Pirahy
Tunnel, which is one of the longest and the biggest tun-
nels for hydraulic purposes in the world. The work on
this tunnel was begun Nov. 1st, 1911, and the tunnel was
completed Sept. 27th, 1913. The next day, Sept. 28th,
1913, the water was turned in and the water power of
the Company was thereby doubled.
One needs to travel through this hilly region to realise
the magnitude of this undertaking which consisted of
boring through the solid granite rock for five and a quar-
174 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ter miles. The width of tlie tunnel is 12 feet and ten
inches, and its height 13 feet and two inches; its height
and width are uniform throughout its entire length. A
track is laid through it and there is a weir at the outlet
for measuring the amount of water flowing from the
tunnel. Its full capacity is thirty metres a second. The
day in which I visited this tunnel the water was pouring
through it at the rate of 1,000 cubic feet a second, and
this water supply pours along the bed of a stream for
two miles into the Lages Lake. There are gates at the
head of the tunnel which can be closed at the time of
flood or whenever this additional water supply is not
desired in the lower portion of the valley.
The seasons vary greatly in Brazil relative to the
amount of rainfall. The Lages reservoir usually sup-
plies enough water to furnish the required power needed
by the Company in its large enterprises of supplying
Rio de Janeiro with electrical power for tramways, elec-
tric light, telephones, etc., but the Pirahy tunnel provides
against possible drouth and assures abundantly the Fed-
eral Capital's hydraulic power.
The building of this tunnel beneath the high hills of the
divide was a stupendous undertaking. Four shafts were
sunk at intervals along the course of the tunnel, which
with the two mouths gave ten faces upon which ten
gangs of men were working at once.
The total length of the tunnel is 27,659 feet, and its
area is 151.7 square feet; its capacity is 1,194 cubic feet
per second and its elevation above sea level at the outlet
is 1,378 feet, the elevation of the mountain divide through
which the tunnel is driven being 2,379 feet.
The history of such enterprises is more than the narra-
tion of the tunneling of hills and statistics of pounds of
steel. It is the story of human endeavour and in a sense
the biography of a few intrepid men.
The story of the Light and Power Company at Lages
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 175
can not be fully told without mention of the gallant fight
which was carried on in 1909, and still continues, against
malarial fever. The Company was obliged to combat not
simply the malaria bearing mosquito, but also the more
or less fatalistic conceptions and traditions of the rural
population who had accepted malaria as a part of the
ordinary regime of existence. Their fathers and their
grandfathers before them had suffered from this disease,
and it was no easy task to establish the modern scientific
measures by which Lages and vicinity has now become
one of the healthiest communities of all Brazil.
The cleaning process required much time and expense.
All cans and refuse capable of holding water were gath-
ered up and even tree trunks and plants which furnished
a standing place for stagnant water were destroyed.
Eighteen hundred acres of the Lages territory was thus
cleaned, and the work lasted for months. The cost to
the Company for this particular work was considerable,
and certain lands were purchased solely for the pur-
pose of ridding them of breeding places for anopheles
larvae.
The Company offered to pay the owners of property
adjoining the Lages territory part of the expense of
draining their land, but the people refused, having little
or no interest in this life saving propaganda.
This initial work of sanitation at Lages changed the
entire condition of things; but not content with their
success the Company has continued preventive sanitary
agencies for the entire seven years which have followed,
and they now have seven men, six men and a foreman,
who devote their entire time in definite sections of the
Lages station to the searching out and the destruction
of mosquito larvae. These men bring into the office such
larvae as may be occasionally found in their respective
territories, and if by chance a stray mosquito is found,
176 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
as one of the men expressed it, "every one at the station
gets busy."
Every precaution is taken. Fish which eat the mos-
quito larvae are procured for the lakes; the latest scien-
tific books on the fighting of malaria are studied and the
Company keeps in close touch with specialists like Dr.
Oswaldo Cruz, the late eminent physician of Rio de Ja-
neiro, who drove the yellow fever from the country, and
foreign experts along this line. The value of the cam-
paign can hardly be overestimated, and the experiences
of Lages have not only rendered important services to
the country but have contributed to the fight against the
malarial mosquito in other parts of the world. Lages is
one of the few places in Brazil where we have not found
the need of a mosquito net at night, and during my ten
days' stay at the hydraulic station, I neither saw nor
heard a mosquito.
The benefit to the immediate community is evident as
one passes from the Company's property into sections
where the campaign has not been carried. It was during
the systematic campaign carried on in 1909 against ma-
larial fever by the Company that the entire countryside
began to realise the interest of the Light and Power peo-
ple in its welfare. During the time of famine due to
malaria, the Company sent its physicians and workers
with medicine and food for relief, distributing food and
medical assistance not simply to the families of the Com-
pany's employees, but amongst the population generally,
wherever there was need. The Lages station to-day
maintains a resident physician who gives his entire time
to the people of the district. It is through such agencies
that the Light and Power Company have gained the con-
fidence of their workers and have overcome prejudice
which so often exists in out-of-the-way communities
against modern enterprise.
He who examines the inner workings and aims of this
ELECTRICITY TRANSFORMING BRAZIL 177
Company which to-day is rendering such far reaching
service to Brazil, especially in the two great cities Rio
de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, will be inclined to assign one
reason for the Company's success to the spirit of co-
operative effort existing among its employees. From its
President and Vice President to the humblest workmen,
one finds a remarkable unanimity — a team play — a desire
for efficiency and harmonious action in which a regard
and loyalty for one another and success for the work's
sake are closely interwoven.
The Lages station, which for nearly a decade has been
superintended with efficient and devoted ability by Mr.
Thomas W. Bevan, who is ably seconded by Mrs. Bevan
at the ''Fazenda," reveals clearly this spirit of co-opera-
tive endeavour. There is evident here the sense of g-uard-
ianship of a great trust — a trust in which the sense of
welfare of tens of thousands of people is always present.
The Light and Power Company of Rio de Janeiro may
impress the casual observer simply as a great and suc-
cessful business enterprise. To one who gets behind the
scenes, this Company appears more like a large, well-
articulated band of congenial workers, a big business
family, whose members enjoy working together toward
a large and worth-while end. That this end is truly the
ever enlarging serviceableness to vast populations, quite
as much as money making, is abundantly apparent.
Lages is more than a big hydraulic plant ; it is a con-
stant object lesson to all Brazil of wide visioned engi-
neering and sustained and ever expanding utility.
XIII
THE RACIAL MELTING POT
Successful colonisation requires the combined knowl-
edge of at least three things : the character of the people
sent to any nation as colonists, the character of the peo-
ple to whom they are sent, and the thorough acquaintance
of the country which is to support them.
During the first centuries of Brazil's colonial history
there were numerous influences militating against coloni-
sation. Portugal was a small country, and until other
nations forced her to colonise to hold her possessions, the
arrivals in the new colony were for the purpose of ob-
taining metals, precious stones and Brazilian woods, an
easier task than tilling the soil and preparing for a
strong future civilisation. When later, labour was re-
quired, negro slaves were brought from Africa, degrad-
ing agriculture in the minds of the people, and taking
away the zest for land owning and cultivation on the part
of those who could succeed at such effort. The natural
inclination of the Latin American toward politics and
aristocratic life far removed from industrial and agra-
rian pursuits, added to the neglect of the soil. These con-
ditions together with the lack of knowledge of their own
country, and the absence of a carefully laid and thought-
ful nation-wide plan of immigration, have left Brazil
with a vast uncultivated continent on her hands, while
she cries with one voice — ''Give us people!"
The Portuguese early settlers coming to Brazil pre-
vious to 1808, when the ports were opened, together with
upwards of 900,000 of their countr^nnen who have ar-
178
THE RACIAL MET/riNG POT 179
rived in Brazil since 1820, and their descendants, have
formed the backbone of the country's colonisation. A
brief review of these people throws light on the vast
present day problem of populating the country. "Retro-
spective prophecy," to use Huxley's phrase, is needful.
A clear view of the fundamental racial strain of colonists
is necessaiy to the understanding of the later attempts
at mixture.
These Portuguese colonists of Brazil were what the
Spanish and French would call '' Creoles" (or crioulho),
using the word in the scientific meaning, signifying not
a ''tainted with black" mixture, but that type of race
w^hich has remained entirely Spanish or French or Por-
tuguese, although it has altered its habits and view of
life under new influences of a new habitat. We have a
similar thought in our minds when we say ''Anglo-In-
dian," but do not mean by that "Eurasian." Had we
kept our American ports closed to immigration for three
hundred years after the early settlement, as were the
Brazilian ports, we would have a similar racial condition.
While new stocks began to flow into the United States
at once, Brazil was left for three centuries to colonise
largely by means of one racial nationality.
According to one of the Brazilian ethnological authori-
ties, the early century settlement of Portuguese was of
distinctly three types: the adventurous-commercial; the
aristocratic-official; and the humanitarian, missionary-
monk and teacher. These were virtually ostracised here,
at an enormous distance from home, with all communica-
tions cut off by law from any other country but Portu-
gal. "Money was made easily, but the cost of living was
abnormally high, so the temptation was always not to
hoard and go home, but to make money and to spend more
to make more, leaving the idea of a return to Portugal
to be a sort of vague dream."
Women were rare here, as they were in other Latin
180 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
American countries, but the subject races, the conquered
and converted Indians or African slaves, offered easy
miscegenations. The Catholic Church with its doctrine
that the soul is born at the moment of conception, did
away with infanticide and fostered the legitimation or
the adoption of cross-breeds. It should be remembered
also that there was no nobility (as in the American colo-
nial days) except among officials sent out by the mother-
country. The rich planters' dream was to imitate these
and possibly to be knighted by the home-country. The
whole tendency was toward a feudal-aristocratic state of
society, in which the close attention to the development of
the land as we knew it among our early settlers, was
quite lost sight of. A life of wasteful extravagance arose
on the lonely and distant plantations. A broad and al-
most royal hospitality existed, which even the landed gen-
try of European Portugal were unable to imitate. Sec-
ond sons of noble families, ruined aristocrats, adventur-
ers of good lineage, and all their ilk, streamed to the new-
world colony to "get-rich-quick" and succumbed to the
surroundings, keeping state on broad lands in the inac-
cessible interior where no public opinion existed to con-
trol morality.
It was colonialism under absolutely medieval condi-
tions. The books of romance picturing the European
type of feudal possession do not usually tell the whole
story. They do not state how a feudal lord even in Eng-
land had proprietary rights over any woman who came
his way; if she herself was of noble blood, a small war
might result ; if not, nothing was said, and the monastery
or nunnery brought up the child until it was adopted by
his father. This bar sinister was on many a Latin Ameri-
can escutcheon during the first three generations at least
in the Brazilian colony; then the marrying drifted back
to Portuguese or quasi-Portuguese types, by natural se-
lection. It was the lonely life of the fazenda. The land-
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 181
holder either reveled, or gambled, or read, according to
his temperament, while his children were sent often to
the University of Coimba to be educated, and the sons of
rich men were frequently knighted or given titles. Revel-
er-gambler, literaiy man, unconscious aristocrat — this
was the formula on which the earlier colonial breed of
the country was made ; it kept however the racial quali-
ties of hospitality, courtesy, respect for the family tie
and for women, provided they belonged to the ' ' acknowl-
edged" families.
As time passed and the communications with Europe
became easier by reason of steamboat lines, the rich
planter (by planter one means here in Brazil not only the
owner of a farm, but any one grown rich through *' ex-
tractive industries," getting wealth from mines, rivers,
forests, etc.) went more frequently to Europe, and there
came into being that curious race of rich Latin Ameri-
cans who either live abroad as absentee landlords, or
make it a rule to go to Europe with regularity every two
years and remain for eight or ten months. These are
known in Paris as the "rastas" or the "rastaquoueres,"
and they bear certain likenesses to certain of the Ameri-
can old family or nouveau riche class who go abroad to
spend money and get pleasure and ''Europeanisation."
This condition worked a hardship on the development of
native industry of Brazil, since these men and their fami-
lies representing the largest spending power of the coun-
try, made most of their household and personal purchases
while abroad, and spent comparatively nothing when they
returned. Hence the dearth of industries for the manu-
facture of clothing, furniture and art work, as well as
the absence for so long of modern scientific agricultural
development requiring intelligent personal interest as
well as money. This latter state of affairs is not peculiar
to Brazil ; the wealthy classes of Peru, Chili and Argen-
tina have been accustomed to forget home development
182 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
for foreign recreation. If Latin Americans complain
later that foreigners have annexed industrially their
countries through their large enterprises they may gain
some satisfaction by burning in effigy the wealthy plant-
ers and landed proprietors, who would neither develop
their lands nor allow others to do it, but sold out their
nation's birthright for extravagant residence in Europe's
capitals.
It will be seen that the only serious attempts on the
part of Brazil for colonisation of races other than Por-
tuguese, came in the last half century. There was a start
made by King John VI in 1818-1819, when two German
villages were inaugurated at Bahia, and also a Swiss set-
tlement at Novo Friburgo, in the State of Rio de Janeiro.
The Emperor Dom Pedro II made a more far-reaching
colonial attempt in 1851, when he founded the German
colony of Blumenau, in the State of Santa Catharina,
which took root quite largely through the philanthropic
services of Herr Blumenau of Brunswick, and now has
a population of fifty thousand inhabitants ; it is almost as
German in its aspect and industry as a town on the
Rhine. About the same time Dom Pedro assisted in the
establishing of the Joinville German colony and also plac-
ing one at Petropolis. The Joinville nucleus owed its
name and much of its early influence and growth to the
Prince of Joinville, who married a wealthy Brazilian
jDrincess, inheritress of large estates in this part of Santa
Catharina. It would have been well if all Brazilian colo-
nists had taken as their slogan the motto which I found
in this enterprising town of Joinville — '^ Education and
work!" In this flourishing centre on the Brazil Railway,
I visited schools, churches, lace factories, flour mills, and
saw the cosy Teuton homes with vines and roses running
over the sides. There was no indication of any desire
to ''rise up" and lay heavy hands on Brazil, although
the agent of the Standard Oil Company who was in the
THE EACIAL MELTING POT 183
party, was not permitted to take the tour of inspection
with us through the German mills, because of his English
birth. The German language was usually spoken in the
town, but I was informed that Portuguese was also used
in the schools. Everything was peaceful and prosperous,
as were the other German colonist settlements which we
visited in South Brazil. One is told however, that the
Germans have been carrying on purely an official cam-
paign down here, and that 800,000 tons of goods have
gone in recent war times to small ports in the United
States for German firms. The use of German in official
documents of these Teuton colonies, publishing the de-
cisions of the local authorities, is considered scarcely
proper by certain Brazilians, who believe that the lan-
guage of the country should be used in such cases. There
are varying estimates as to the number of Germans resid-
ing in Brazil at present. The Colonisation Department
of the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce,
states in its figures then rendered that 116,150 German
immigrants had reached Brazil between the years 1820
and 1912 inclusive. According to these Government fig-
ures the German immigrants were outnumbered by the
Italians who came in this period to the number of
1,327,808; by the Portuguese who had sent 883,351 and
also by the Spanish whose immigration since 1820 had
amounted to 412,438. Following the Germans in the list
were the Russians with 92,413 ; the Austrians with 75,774 ;
the Turks and Arabs of whom 39,286 had arrived; the
French with 25,748; the English sending 16,396; while
fewer numbers of immigrants were sent in this 92-year-
period by the Swiss, Swedish, Japanese, Belgian, and
various other nationalities.
The Portuguese, Spaniards, Turks and many Italians
seem to prefer life in the towns or cities or working as
servants on the farms, but the majority of other nation-
alities coming as inmiigrants have been settled in colonies
184 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
as owners of land. The larger share of the immigration
has gone to the southern parts of Brazil where the climate
is more nearly that to which the colonists have been ac-
customed in Europe. The Federal district and Sao Paulo
have the largest percentage of foreigners, there being 25
per cent, of the population foreign in the former, and 23.2
per cent, of the Paulistas of foreign extraction. Immigra-
tion is almost negligible in the northern states of the
Republic, save in one or two points, Para for example.
The proportion of the foreign population to the inhabi-
tants of the whole of Brazil is about 8 per cent. In the
United States the proportion is around 13 per cent., while
in Argentina the foreign element reaches 30 per cent.
The Italian settlers in the State of Sao Paulo are said
to number 800,000, where large sections of this population
are engaged on the coffee estates ; in other parts of Brazil
the Italian colonists are calculated as amounting to
400,000. The inhabitants from sunny Italy seem to find
in Brazil a favourable home, and these intermarry with
Brazilians, speak Portuguese and are readily assimilated.
The same may be said of the Poles, Austrians and Rus-
sians, of whom there are 80,000 or more in the State of
Parana. While Germans are found in all parts of Brazil,
at least two-thirds of these are in the South Brazilian
States of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catharina, and Rio
Grande do Sul. There have been at times immigrants
coming in goodly numbers from China and Japan, but
most of the colonising ventures with these Far Easterners
have been unsuccessful. The Japanese, however, are
found in many places in South Brazil ; in 1908 there ar-
rived at Santos 787 Nipponese, coming in a Japanese
ship. The valleys of the State of Sao Paulo are suitable
to the cultivation of rice, tea and silkworms. The Japa-
nese Minister who visited this part of the country some
time ago was heard to remark, as he looked down a wide
sweeping valley: ''What a place for rice fields!" The
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 185
coming of 1,500 Japanese in 1913, and the organisation of
a Colonisation Company with a capital of half a million
dollars having in view the settling of 20,000 Japanese
labourers in the Iguape Valley in the State of Sao Paulo,
has aroused some adverse comments in the press which
has flown warning signals of Asiatic domination of
labour. This colonisation venture has added materially
to the output of rice culture in South Brazil, but it is still
a question whether any considerable Japanese population
will eventuate.
In Rio Grande do Sul there is a slow but steady prog-
ress in the number of colonists as well as in the quality of
their work, and also in the solution of difficulties relative
to the titles for land, which for a time complicated col-
onisation matters. The Erechim Colony constitutes one
of the most recent and best located enterprises in this
State. It is aimed at opening the large unoccupied ex-
panse of land lying to the northwest. The Colony has
been in operation for nearly seven years, dating its begin-
ning at the time of the opening to traffic of the Sao Paulo-
Rio Grande Railway. The Colony has seven small towns
with a population of 30,000. As in other states the ten-
dency has been to locate along railroad lines for the sake
of transportation. The Guarany Colony is now nearly
one quarter of a century old, but through lack of railroad
communications has not advanced rapidly, having ap-
proximately 25,000 inhabitants. These two colonies are
the chief ones directly under the supervision of the State.
Rio Grande do Sul, which offers such unusual opportuni-
ties for cereals and cattle raising particularly, is held in
large tracts by families, and at present is given up chiefly
to cattle and sheep raising. In the United States, if land
is worth more than $15.00 per acre for agricultural pur-
poses, the soil is usually thought too good for cattle.
Here in Brazil it is estimated that twenty-five acres are
necessary to carry one head of cattle, but planting ga-
186 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
bura, which is better than alfalfa, since it does not have
the tendency to bloat the cattle, one acre is enough to
support a single head of cattle. This State like all of
South Brazil is a well watered country, the slope from
the Amazon basin assuring not only excellent water sup-
ply for the herds and for agriculture, but also being suffi-
cient to furnish ample power for manufacture.
The Federal Government has been giving practical and
scientific aid to colonisation throughout the country since
the year 1907 especially. A propaganda service is carried
on in Europe and foreign colonies are assisted by both
Federal and State Government, as also by railroads and
other companies which have been given large territorial
concessions. Farming implements, medical attendance
free for a year, and in certain cases financial aid to enable
the colonists to live until the first harvest, are afforded.
Extra concessions are also given to immigrants marrying
Brazilians, and in the case of the death of the immigrant
the allotment of land goes to his family providing a cer-
tain payment has been made. The day of free land is
largely past in South Brazil with the exception of the
State of Matto Grosso, but the easy conditions make it
possible fot" an immigrant landing without money to se-
cure sufficient land to become a successful farmer, pay off
his indebtedness, and in many cases where agricultural
ability and perseverance are present, to become a wealthy
and prosperous citizen of the country. In cities like Sao
Paulo, some of the most costly residences are said to be
owned by Italians who have landed in the country a de-
cade or more since, utterly penniless. One third of the
inhabitants of Sao Paulo are of Italian blood, and in the
year when Brazil received its greatest immigration, 1891,
there were 116,000 Italians out of a total of 275,000 im-
migrants.
Brazil seems to be determined to make up for her long
years of lethargy and lack of attention to foreigners by
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 187
her present day progressive arrangements to welcome
them and secure their proper maintenance. The Federal
Government has established a well equipped hostel for
immigrants at both Rio de Janeiro and Santos, while
several of the states have made similar convenient ar-
rangements for these people who have come, strangers
into a strange land, to be received and cared for at a mini-
mum expense until they are satisfactorily located.
The Immigration Department of Brazil offers induce-
ments to newcomers who are over twelve and under sixty
years of age, as follows:
''Free passage on trans-Atlantic liners from port of
shipment in Europe or America to Brazil; free landing
for families and baggage, and accommodation at the hos-
tel especially devoted to that object ; free transportation
to the colonial site selected by the immigrant, and ac-
commodation there for the first few days; sale at long
credit of a plot of land properly divided and marked out
with one portion of it cleared and prepared for prelimi-
nary cultivation, and a house erected with the necessary
domestic accommodations; gratuitous supply of imple-
ments, seeds, animals, and transport vehicles; optional
employment, paid by wage or by the piece, on works in
their own settlement, for the purpose of assisting those
who have no means of subsisting ; gratuitous medical as-
sistance; free elementary instruction for children; and
facilities for reception and despatch of postal and tele-
graphic correspondence."
It is important to note also that there are no religious
disabilities of any kind, and among these colonists, scat-
tered through the different states one finds not only Ro-
man Catholics, but also Protestants of nearly every
stripe, Jews, Mahommedans, Positlvists, and members of
other faiths, pursuing their religious beliefs with utter
freedom. Citizenship, rights of property and safety of
persons, also legal and police protection, are the same
188 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
for immigrant and Brazilian, while the colonist's earn-
ings are made quite as secure in Brazil as in the United
States.
Among the large concerns with which the Government
has co-operated in answering this call of the immigrant
for an opportunity to build his home and live in content-
ment, is the Brazil Railway Company, which is at present
one of the preeminent factors in the opening up of South-
ern Brazil. French capital is prominent in this company,
but American leadership is present. It was my privilege
to study the colonisation plans of this company in three
of the most important southern states of South Brazil,
through the courtesy of the Manager of the road. The
things witnessed in connection with the colonisation plans
and achievements of this company can be seen on various
scales of advancement in at least eight different states of
this country. At present the largest number of colonists
settled by the Brazil Railway has come from Poland and
Austria, the Brazilians coming third in the scale. Among
the settlers are also found a considerable number of Ital-
ians, Germans, French, Hollandaise and Russians.
Following the example of the Governments of the
United States and Canada, which granted to the early
trans-continental railways large land concessions along
the zone of their lines, especially to the Northern Pacific
and the Canadian Pacific Railways, the Government of
Brazil in 1889 granted the Sao-Paulo-Rio Grande Co., a
railway concession through the vast unopened territory
lying between Itarare in the State of Sao Paulo, and
Santa Maria in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. This
grant gave concession to all the public domain for a width
of nine kilometers on each side of the track for the entire
length. This decree was the last one signed by the Im-
perial Government. In 1909 the railway company began
to survey lands and attempt active colonisation work.
The Polish and Austrian immigrants came first, and the
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 189
Holland colonists arrived in 1911. For these early set-
tlers the company constructed the necessary buildings,
furnishing them with fencing, farm implements, work
animals, cattle and pigs, and at the colony of Nova Ga-
licia, with living supplies from a general store. These
furnishings were all charged to the colonists accounts,
but the lack of knowledge on the part of the farmers of
Brazilian rural conditions, and often the absence of agri-
cultural training, resulted in the colonists becoming heav-
ily in debt to the company. Through such experience the
railroad became discouraged in its philanthropic efforts
to furnish initial supplies to its settlers, and in the open-
ing of the Valley of the Rio de Peche, greater care was
taken in the selection of colonists of agricultural experi-
ence, securing whenever possible those having sufficient
capital to make their own improvements and care for
themselves. In spite of the fact that no colonists in this
valley has received the smallest advancement from the
company in the way of building, implements, or stock, one
finds these people making marvellous progress, in many
cases being able to pay for their entire allotment of land
of sixty acres in three years. I have seldom been more
impressed with what the ownership and development of a
piece of mother earth gives to a man than in this valley,
which we traversed on horseback, stopping at the small
houses of the colonists. The w^iole family would be
marshalled to welcome us and we were taken in a solemn
processional from the attempts at a parlour along Euro-
pean lines, to the piggery, the flourishing gardens, and
the fields of maize.
The colonies were started as a rule near the railway
stations, and at each station a small area of land was re-
served for the colonial village, the village lots being laid
out in accordance with the best American practice. An
efficient superintendent was in charge and spent his time
going from place to place assisting the settlers. The
190 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
colonial lots were surveyed about the villages, and as the
colonies grew, the lot surveys were extended to the in-
terior. Good roads were constructed radiating from the
villages, and I found that these had well constructed
bridges and culverts, and were well drained and graded.
The colonists are responsible for the conservation of
these roads, as Brazilian law exacts that each settler
must keep up the roads on the margin of or within his
own land. The colonist can secure as many lots as he
can arrange to pay for in accordance with the conditions
of the company's land contract.
Good water is abundant in flowing streams and the
virgin soil yields readily to even the primitive implements
which are sometimes used. One settler told me that when
he arrived he could not afford to buy a plough but began
to cultivate his estate by the use of a pickaxe and a
spade. This was less than three years ago, and he is now
the proud owner of fifty acres of cultivated Brazilian
soil.
The conditions of sale and contract are as follows :
Upon the selection of a lot (colonists may select wherever
they wish) the colonist is required to make a first pay-
ment of 200 milreis, at present about $50.00, for each
section selected, and to sign one of the company's con-
tracts. The usual allotment is sixty acres. The colonist
has no further payments to make until the end of one
year or subsequent to the harvest of his first crop. He is
thus enabled to utilise his cash in hand during the first
year in the development of his new home. After the first
harvest he begins the liquidation of his account with the
company by equal semi-annual payments of one tenth of
this remainder, thus liquidating his obligation in six, or
six and one half years. These liberal terms are made for
colonists who are in the poorest of financial condition.
Many of the colonists visited had completed the payments
of their lots within half of the time at their disposal,
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 191
securing a discount of 10 per cent, and are now holding
their titles thus gained from the cash coming from the
land and the results of their labour. Many of these
colonists are also purchasing additional land. The com-
pany's contract makes it necessary for the settler to take
up his residence and make it permanent within ninety
days. He is not allowed to be away without a grant from
the company for a period to exceed ninety days each
year. He is to keep his land in good condition and to
cultivate at least one tenth of the area, paying all taxes
imposed upon his land together with the deferred pay-
ments upon his property as they fall due. The colonists
of this company are free from export and other taxes,
and also the tax ''Ciza," or land transfer tax, which
amounts frequently to ten or twelve per cent, of the value
of the sale. It was interesting to note that the company
sets aside land for school and church purposes, construct-
ing at its own expense school buildings and houses for
instructors. The State furnishes the teachers. Money
has also been donated by the railway to several colonists
forming strong church organisations, to assist them in
the construction of a colonial church. We found also
certain fraternal organisations in which the colonists
come together for social functions. The settlers are ab-
solutely free to follow their chosen religion, but in the
schools constructed by the railroad company, the lan-
guage of the country, Portuguese, must be taught. The
school instructor in addition to his home is given land for
whatever planting he wishes to do and for such stock as
he may desire to keep. The schools are always located
at the most central point within the colony.
This new colonisation land consists of beautiful rolling
country covered with heavy growth of hard wood timber,
which the settlers cut into tirewood and sleepers and sell
to the railroads. The soil is a deep red or chocolate
colour, loose and fertile. All crops, including cereals.
192 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
garden vegetables, alfalfa, sugar cane, tropical fruits as
well as northern fruits, are successfully cultivated. A
selection of location is made in accordance to the class of
crop which the immigrant desires to produce. The princi-
pal colonial crops exported are beans, corn, sugar, po-
tatoes, wheat, rye, mandioca flour, butter and cheese.
A large number of pigs and cows are being raised, and in
the near future, pigs especially will be shipped on a large
scale. One of the best authorities upon South Brazil
informed me that in his judgment this country would sur-
prise the world not simply by its agricultural output, but
also through a huge production of cattle, pigs and sheep.
An important arrangement to the success of these
South Brazil colonists has been provided in the establish-
ment in the villages of merchants who purchase the
colonial products at good prices. A special department
on colonisation has been established by the railway com-
pany whose business it is to get the colonists into touch
with the larger outside market ; one gains the impression
that the alert efficient Americans who have charge of this
work are introducing eYery known experience of value
to the subject of marketing products, which is one of the
most vital points in present day Brazilian colonisation.
If one multiplies such examples of the present colonisa-
tion of the new Brazil by the forty or more colonisation
settlements now in process under Federal authority and
quite as many more carried on along various scales by the
different states, ranging all the way from Para to Rio
Grande do Sul, one has at least the earnest of the great
possibilities of future settlement in this land of agricul-
tural opportunities. In spite of all that is being done,
when one realises that Brazil possesses nine million
square kilometers of fertile land still awaiting capital and
labour to develop and transform it, one is inclined to say,
^'"VVhat are these beginnings of colonisation among so
THE RACIAL MELTING POT 193
many states where the acreage has never been touched
by the hand of the cultivator?"
The possibilities of fertilisation have hardly yet been
attempted ; the vast waterfalls with their magnificent nat-
ural potentialities have not yet been utilised ; the mineral
and timber wealth is almost as ready of access as are the
products of the fields. European colonists are beginning
to discover that with proper treatment of the soil and by
use of modern machinery, enormous tracts of territory
may be made to yield in the diversified climate of Brazil
virtually every product known on the planet. But Bra-
zilians are not naturally agriculturists and the demand
for farmers is growing more insistent every year. The
European war stopped the stream of immigration in
Brazil as it did for the United States. Although immi-
grants are still coming, there will be a tremendous need
for labour of all kinds in Brazil during the next quarter
of a century. The men needed are workers, colonists,
agriculturists, like those who went to our Western Ameri-
can prairies fifty years ago to make their homes, and to
form a new rural civilisation, ringing with the vibrant
note of toil. Brazil can furnish a certain quota of such
men and she is already doing it, but Brazilians, who are
first of all politically and socially inclined, will doubtless
find in the vast industrial and commercial development of
their country sufiicient occupation for their talents. Bra-
zil, in many respects the richest of all South American
States in agricultural as well as in industrial and scien-
tific possibilities, is absolutely dependent upon foreign
immigration, if she is to advance rapidly in the next gen-
eration. Her present great progress in railways, light
and power plants, port works, economic and commercial
houses on a large scale and great engineering projects,
can be traced in a large degree to foreign initiative. It
is typical of the progressive spirit of the country that
she has welcomed this initiative and that to-day she now
194 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
turns to other nations, calling for volunteers for lier ex-
tensive lands, offering them every inducement to assist
her in the development of the hidden and potent resources
of the soiL
XIV
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS
There are some compensations for the traveller who
secures his first impressions of Brazil from the south,
rather than through the magic beauty of the Bay of Rio
de Janeiro. From the point of view of richly wooded and
verdant mountains, smiling valleys, snatches of vision of
vivid blue sea and wonderful sub-tropical uplands, the
thirty-five miles of railroad journey from the coffee port
of Santos to the city of the Paulistas is rarely surpassed.
Coming from the south in September when the air has in
it still the tang of November, the southern coast of Brazil,
with its soft moist airs, its palm trees and wonderful
sunshine, exerts a charm all its own. The usual traveller
stops long enough in Santos to investigate the manner in
which about three-fourths of the coffee used in the world
is shipped, then takes a train on the Santos and Sao
Paulo Railway that carries him upwards two thousand
or more feet along the edges of the green Serra do Mar,
or Sea Range mountains, to the broad tableland upon
which the city founded by a Jesuit missionary in 1554
finds its happy location.
The railway in question has the honour of being, as one
is authoritatively informed, the most expensive piece of
engineering in existence. The company is limited in the
payment of a dividend beyond a certain point, and the
surplus is expended along the line upon trains, stations
and roadway. One hears the saying frequently in these
parts that the only improvement still possible upon this
railway line is the gilding of the tops of the telephone
195
196 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
poles. The road is not only remarkable in itself but the
mountain sides along the way with the steep gorges over
which one passes, are filled with cemented irrigation*
drains to carry the mountain streams away from the bed
of the railway. The trains are worked by wire rope haul-
age, and each one of the five inclines has its own particu-
lar house and plant, while safety is secured both by a
locomotive brake on the last car and also by the simul-
taneous descent of a train on this double track while
your own train is ascending. There are thirteen tunnels
along the way affording a perpetual scenic panorama for
three hours. One looks down into valleys a thousand feet
below richly carpeted with banana and coffee trees.
Small chalets are seen here and there, constructed for the
most part of corrugated iron, and clinging so precipi-
tously to tiny projections of rock that it would seem a
heavy wind would dash them bodily into the valleys
below.
Sao Paulo, the Capital City of the Paulistas, is said to
take its name from the fact that the first Mass was cele-
brated on this site on the same date (the twenty-fifth of
January) that St. Paul was converted. It is situated on
a tableland and possesses a climate far more agreeable
than is found in the humid and somewhat steamy air of
the low land of the littoral. It is the second city in Brazil
with a population of over 400,000, three railroads serving
it, and boasting of one of the best services of electric
traction known to any city in South America. It is a city
of most impressive buildings. The Luz station into which
the trains from Santos run, covers an area of 7,520 square
meters and compares favourably with any such terminal
in any part of the world. Its Palace of Industries, its
Ipyranga Museum, containing peculiar wonders of Bra-
zilian flora and birds, and its Municipal Theatre are
peculiarly notable. The latter building constructed at a
cost of millions is illuminated by 14,000 electric lights.
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 197
which are disposed with an artistry significant of a people
who have not lost their devotion to beauty in their rapid
and remarkable prosperity. The decoration is remindful
of France in its Louis Quinze style, while its invisible
orchestra of 120 musicians is claimed by the Paulistas
to be unexcelled.
The population of the city at the opening of the Euro-
pean war was increasing at the rate of 40,000 yearly. It
is also significant industrially to find here 500 factories
with a working capital of $20,000,000, and paying average
yearly dividends to their stockliolders of 10 per cent,
previous to the European war. We were particularly
struck with the attention being given at present to ele-
mentary education which is carried on here along modem
and scientific lines. In fact one hears in his investigation
of schools in Sao Paulo quite as much concerning up to
date methods of health, hygiene, medical examination,
gymnastics and all kinds of regulations regarding school
books, heights of desks, lighting, water supply and play
grounds, as is encountered in New York, Paris or London.
The inhabitants are also proud to tell you that they pos-
sess an army of their owu, and undoubtedly the Paulista
Police and military organisation are the best in Brazil.
French army officers have greatly assisted in the latter
accomplishment.
The police boxes are similar to those used in certain
American cities, and they seem to be most effectual.
There are two key holes, of which one is for public use,
every citizen householder of standing being able to hold
a numbered key. When this key is inserted in the lock it
cannot be withdrawn until the police arrives when it is
restored to its owner after the policeman has learned
the nature of the call. The policeman's key automati-
cally calls up any kind of help wished, police, motor am-
bulance, etc. Before the policeman uses the second key
he turns a pointer to the words, accident, crime, resis-
198 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tance to police, or whatever the case may require, gets a
telephone connection to the nearest police station without
delay, and there you are. One hundred and sixty such
alarms are to be found in the city.
The military force of the State comprises upwards of
seven thousand men and two hundred oflScers.
One hears in certain parts of the country that this
finely organised army and police department may one day
furnish a helpful support and protection to other parts of
Brazil, less proficiently supplied with protection.
The inhabitants of Sao Paulo are made up of the Bra-
zilian mixed races formed by the intermingling of the
Portuguese and the Brazilian Indians, together with. a
large Italian element composing nearly one-third of the
poi^ulation, and a smaller proportion of British, French
and American residents. The presence of the negro is
also noticeable by the traveller who reaches Brazil from
Uruguay and Argentina where the coloured man is rarely
seen. In Sao Paulo, however, the negro is comparatively
infrequent as compared with the Federal Capital and is
usually employed as a labourer.
The history of the Paulistas who have taken so large a
part in the conquest of modem Brazil is more or less a
romantic one. The Indians known as Guayanas origi-
nally dominated this part of the country. Joao Ramulho,
a Portuguese sailor, married the daughter of the chief
Tybiricha and from the mingling of the Portuguese set-
tlers and Indians a cross race arose which was first called
the Mamelucos, later known as the Paulistas. In 1554,
the Jesuits came and for two centuries contested with the
Paulistas for day labourers, which were the essential
necessities for the development of the country. These
labourers were held by both the Jesuits and the Paulistas
in a condition closely resembling slavery, the Catholic
Church controlling the negroes by a system of semi-
communism. As the Paulistas grew and went slave-
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 199
hunting among the Jesuit missions, the representatives of
the Church were gradually overcome and finally driven
out. In 1758 the Indian slaves were emancipated. The
results have left a conglomerate race made up of diverse
elements with no colour line.
Sao Paulo, although it is not half the size of Rio de
Janeiro, is infinitely richer per capita of its inhabitants.
One soon learns that he is in a city where the milreis
seem to flow like water. The richly appointed Automobile
Club overlooking the new Plaza was one of the first points
of vantage from which I was allowed to see and to talk
with the progressive Paulistas. To this club come the
fazendeiros, the owners of the great coffee plantations.
The entrance fee to this club is $750.00, and afterwards
there are no dues, since, as one is told, revenues to the
club from games of chance and the free use of money in
connection with club entertainments, more than pay the
necessary expenses. When the coffee is sold one may see
the rich planters staking their gold by the thousands of
dollars upon a single turn of the wheel. The play begins
in the afternoon at three o 'clock and the rules of the game
are rigidly followed; no outsider being allowed to play
or even watch the game.
"Does not this become a menace to the business life of
the inhabitants of the city?" we asked of a prominent
bank president.
''No," was the reply, "because the men consider their
gamesters' losses as a part of the over-head charges of
their business, and they rarely go beyond their limit.
Furthermore, if they lose to-day, they are quite likely to
win to-morrow, and the Latin temperament here in Brazil
looks upon the gambling habit much as the Anglo-Saxon
considers his out-of-door sports. Gambling furnishes the
zest and keen excitement which takes the mind away from
business cares, and the partakers in this exercise rarely
go to the length of excess common to the Anglo-Saxon
200 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIE COUNTRY
when he indulges in games of chance. Everybody is a
bit of a gamester here, from the street urchin to the
wealthiest coffee planter and land owner. It is not so bad
as it seems to you Northerners. Before judging us, you
should first learn our point of view, and also study the
results."
In answer to the question as to whether the credit of a
man was diminished if it was known he was a frequenter
of the gaming table, my banker Brazilian friend replied :
**If we should limit credit according to this standard,
we would have to shut up our bank, the custom is so uni-
versal among the native Brazilians. The big bank cus-
tomer rarely if ever goes beyond his limit decided before-
hand, and I have never had reason to lose confidence in
his commercial integrity as far as his relations with our
bank is concerned. ' '
The Paulista impresses the foreigner as a buoyant and
capable person, partaking somewhat of the confidence of
the American who has seen and been a part of large mod-
em enterprises. In the course of the rapid development
of Sao Paulo State, he has evolved certain individual
characteristics. He has the old fighting spirit of his In-
dian ancestors, the astute political acumen of the Jesuit,
the courtesy and affability of a Frenchman, and much of
the twentieth century practicability and business keen-
ness of the best European man of affairs or the inhabi-
tant of the United States. The Paulista is a daring and
original worker, and he has put the coffee fazenda on the
map. We had always had the impression that coffee was
a stimulant, but we needed to visit Sao Paulo to realise
how the small coffee bean possessed potentialities suffi-
cient to so exhilarate a semi-tropical state as to make the
inhabitants of that state believe that they were really
Brazil ; and that Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Pernambuco, the
Amazon River and other more or less well-known portions
of this country, exist within the land merely by polite
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 201
suffrance. Furthermore, it often happens that when the
lively inhabitants of this favoured state show their north-
ern guests over the leagues upon leagues of coffee farms,
stretching in well-nigh every direction as far as the eye
can reach, the guest imbibes the enthusiasm, becoming
himself an animated advertiser for the country where
Coffee is King.
The Paulistas have learned the system of advertising.
They know how to bowl one over by statistics, and it must
be admitted that they have surpassed other Brazilian
states in their modern progressiveness along this line.
Yet the human mind gets more or less water-logged by
being asked to conceive of things reaching numerically
into the millions. Even an American promoter once con-
fessed that when people confronted him with figures be-
yond five hundred thousand his imagination stopped
working. Imagine then the mental state of mind of the
innocent American who has always been wont to think of
coffee by the pound at about thirty cents per, when a
Paulista calmly informs him that Sao Paulo has
800,000,000 coffee trees in the state, and that these in a
single year (1911) produced 8,524,245 sacks of coffee,
which being further interpreted to the American's corner-
grocery understanding, means 1,131,678,766.20 pounds of
this cheering concoction, which would cost him at his
normal bourgeoise thirty cent rate, the neat little sum of
$339,503,629.86 ! When these cold facts were first hurled
at my defenceless head by an ardent Paulista coffee
broker, I confess to a feeling similar to that of a quiet
home-staying Pennsylvania business man who one day
was confronted by a rather vehement foreign missionary.
"Do you know, sir," exclaimed the missionary, ''that
there are 300,000,000 heathen in India ? What impression
does that make upon your mindf" "Well," answered
the business man, cautiously, "I think that's too d
many heathen."
202 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
When the visitor has been whirled for clays in a high-
powered automobile from one great fazenda to another,
seeing with his own eyes literally millions of coffee trees
in full bloom, he is likely to find the impression of this
great industry growing deeper. Seeing coffee in Brazil is
more inducive to believing than tons of statistics. In the
whole range of South America few things made a deeper
impression on me by way of exhaustless extent than these
richly rolling coffee fields of the State of Sao Paulo, —
their picturesque workers embracing such varied races
and nationalities, their chain of old time Portuguese
homes with long lines of workmen's cabins — the feudal-
like hospitality of these gentlemen planters and the ex-
traordinary combination of culture and business foresight
— it was all intensely invigorating to one's convictions as
to the future of Brazilians and their country.
It was my privilege to be introduced to the coffee busi-
ness in Brazil through the courtesy of the members of
an old and distinguished Portuguese and Brazilian fam-
ily, who possess one of the most ancient coffee farms of
the country. The month of September is a favourable
time to study the Brazilian coffee fields, since it is one of
the three months of the year when the plants are in bloom,
and the white and green picture that greets the astonished
gaze of the visitor reminds of the cotton fields of Lou-
isiana.
One hears at least two explanations of the way in
which coffee was introduced into South America ; as one
account has it, the' seeds were brought from Cayenne to
Para in 1761, while, according to another version, a Bel-
gian Monk introduced coffee plants to Rio de Janeiro in
1774. The point of vital interest lies in the fact that up
to the end of the 18th century, coffee was looked upon
generally merely as a medical stimulant to the nerves,
and it was not until 1835 that the South Americans
learned that it was used as a beverage in other countries
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 203
and began its extensive cultivation. Sao Paulo, of all the
Brazilian states, and in fact of all parts of South America,
because of its hot, moist, semi-tropical, and well-drained
soil, was found to be the proper coffee-garden of the
world. I visited a fazenda which has been growing cof-
fee for eighty years, and the trees are found to be still
hard}^ and fruitful, having been rejuvenated and ferti-
lised year by year in accordance with the ever-advancing
methods of coffee culture learned in the passage of time.
A few hours from Sao Paulo city on the fast express
train bring one into the country where, as it seems, noth-
ing whatever by way of land culture exists other than the
business of caring for the precious berry. One realises
the marvellous fertility of this red soil of Brazil, when
looking through the car windows the traveller beholds
what seems to be interminable jungle, but is told that this
great tangled mass of trees, vines and variegated shrubs,
represent only a ten years' growth. One also appreciates
the amount of toil required to clear the land of this ex-
uberant undergrowth in order to make it ready for coffee
planting. The colonist, who receives his eighteen cents
for each coffee tree planted, and the proceeds of the first
crop after four years [which is the necessary time needed
for the coffee tree to begin bearing] would not seem to be
overpaid for his labour. The owner of these fazendas
have the habit, more generally than is witnessed among
the landholders of Argentina and Chile, of residing upon
their estates. This condition has eventuated to the ad-
vantage of the labouring man, as well as to the appear-
ance of thrift and general prosperity with which these
plantations are environed.
In one of the houses visited, which had belonged to the
grandfather of the present owner, the pictures, the furni-
ture, the great rooms with their high ceilings, giving the
appearance of having been built to entertain on a regal
scale, set one back in another century amidst conditions
204 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
heretofore only existent for the spectator in books and
tales of romance. The dining-room in this house was at
least fifty feet in length with a table extending the entire
length. ''Every one of those twenty-five chairs," said
the present owner, ''were filled by the members of the
family in my grandfather's time." My host went on to
say:
"This house was built, as you may surmise, in a period
before the Paulista fazenda proprietors had acquired
the habit of spending portions of their winters in Sao
Paulo and their holiday vacations in Paris. ' '
As we roamed from room to room through the vast
manor house, admiring the quaint, heavy, old-fashioned
furniture made years ago in Portugal, each room looking
out upon spacious vistas of smiling coffee lands, there
began to dawn upon us what it must have meant to have
been a pioneer coffee-planter in Brazil. The days of
actual slavery are no more in this part of the world, but
the atmosphere of the old plantation days still hovers
about these ancient landmarks, and the owners speak of
their fifty families occupying the cabins on their estate,
with the same sense of proprietorship as did their fathers
doubtless, a half century before them. Although there is
little of the appearance of servility in the attitude of the
Brazilian workman on the modern coffee farms, one no-
tices the quick obedience to the mere gesture of the hand,
and the doffing of the hat as the landowner passes. The
majority of the working men on the Paulista coffee es-
tates are Italians, though there is a goodly sprinkling
of negroes together with even a larger constituency called
"caboclos," the Brazilian type resulting from the min-
gling of the Indian and the Portuguese. There is of
course no adherence to colour line, and the fazendeiros
are eager to explain to you their belief that in a few
generations the negro will be entirely eliminated in this
section through his intermarriage with other races.
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 205
The workmen give every appearance of being well
treated. They are provided with small houses by the
proprietor of the estate, and are paid for their labour in
a way that seems to them satisfactory. The workman re-
ceives six hundred reis, or 15 cents, for picking fifty
litres of coffee, and his recompense for cleaning the
ground beneath one thousand trees is approximately
$22.50 ; this process of ground cleaning is repeated from
four to five times a year. If he is simply a day labourer
and not a member of one of the families employed on the
estate, he receives about sixty-two cents a day. The
German employed in one of the hulling factories visited
received $26.00 a month and a house, while his son, a boy
of sixteen, received $15.00.
That the fazendeiro is no slave driver in present day
Brazil was intimated by the action of our host who, when
showing us his workmen's cottages invariably removed
his hat as he entered the door, and by many little cour-
tesies and care for his workmen's welfare he proved the
change which had swept over Brazil towards Democracy
since the days when his father-royalist managed the
estate. This respect for the workmen may be influenced
at times by the fact that the Government has established
a bureau where the colonist or employee may enter com-
plaint against any ill treatment by his employer. In all
our investigations, however, we failed to find conditions
that would lead to the belief that any such state of affairs
existed as one may find to-day in Peru, for example,
where the Indian resembles more truly a beast of burden
than a self-respecting employee.
Capital is needed, and that on a large scale, to be a suc-
cessful coffee planter in Brazil. Each tree costs per year
on an average of ten cents for its regular upkeep, and
as some of the fazendeiros possess more than a million
trees, the yearly outlay is considerable. On a smaller
estate containing, for example, 250,000, requiring at least
206 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
fifty families resident upon the property, the owner in an
average year is said to make a profit of approximately
$50,000. But it must be remembered that this is usually
the result of several generations of careful attention on
the part of families who have made the coffee business a
specialty. In other words it is apparent that the Ameri-
can youth without means who sails south of the Rio
Grande to make a fortune, should not be recommended
to start in the role of a coffee fazendeiro. As a matter
of fact the great coffee estates in this region are owned
and controlled almost entirely by old Brazilian families,
in competition with whom untrained intruders would be
severely handicapped.
The owners of these old estates are also under consid-
erable expense by reason of the fact that the trees that
have been bearing for many years require increasing
fertilisation in order to keep up the average of profit.
This leads to what is becoming a considerable by-product
of the coffee estates represented by large herds of cattle,
which are kept largely because of the need of the land for
constant fertilisers. On one estate visited I found 400
cattle, and the proprietor has become so much interested
in his ''pure bloods" and his ''mixed strains," that he
has ahnost forgotten his coffee. We had some difficulty in
persuading him to show us his coffee culture, so great was
his enthusiasm in displaying his prize $1,000.00 bull and
his choice herd of Holsteins for whose welfare he had the
most up-to-date stables and modern appliances we have
seen in all South America. Even the Argentine breeder
could sit at the feet of some of these Brazilian coffee men
and learn about cattle raising, although here it is only a
side issue.
That the coffee business in the State of Sao Paulo is a
lucrative one is revealed by the fact that a fazenda, of
50,000 trees, in good condition is worth at present
$25,000. These 50,000 plants if properly cultivated
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 207
should produce 240,000 pounds of coffee yearly. It is
possible also to grow crops of vegetables of different
kinds between the coffee trees.
In the whole of Brazil at the present time there are
more than 1,300,000,000 coffee trees, occupying 4,500,000
acres of this enormous Republic. Two million of these
acres of coffee are to be found in the Paulista state, and
the total amount invested in this area in this state is con-
siderably beyond $500,000,000.
The process of coffee cultivation is a fascinating one,
especially to the visitor from the north. For the most
part coffee is grown from the seed which is planted in the
ground, except in cases where it is found necessary to
replace old trees which have died, when the coffee berries
are planted in a nursery and transplanted later on as
soon as the plants are about fifteen inches high. The
coffee trees are placed from ten to fifteen feet apart, and
in some instances (more especially in the northern sec-
tions) the trees are covered for protection from cold
winds. In other cases shade trees are planted among
them to shield the plants from the hot sun. The shrub
flowers first in the third year, bearing a small quantity of
berries, and in the fourth year the coffee plant begins its
average output of fruitage. The length of life of the
coffee tree depends upon the manner with which it is
cultivated and conserved. Many plantations have profi-
table trees seventy or eighty years old. The flower is
white and its beauty upon thousands of blooming plants,
waving over a rolling country, is quite beyond descrip-
tion. The life of the flower is ephemeral, and as soon as
it withers and drops to the ground, the green berry begins
to form, ripening usually in about seven months, and
looking at the end of that period much like a ripe cherry
in colour.
The Brazilians, unlike the Arabs, do not allow the ber-
ries to remain on the tree until they ripen and fall, but
208 THE BBAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
pick them by hand, many women and girls being em-
ployed in this process. On some fazendas one finds
sheets placed beneath the trees, and men mounting lad-
ders or standing on the ground stripping the branches
of the berries, which fall on the sheets. The women and
girls gather these up, sift them, remove the stems and
the leaves, after which the coffee is placed in baskets
and conveyed to large tanl^s where it is washed in run-
ning water, and then passed through a "pulper" and
afterwards into a tank, where the pulps float off leaving
the seed. The berries contain normally two seeds, or
coffee beans, and each bean is enveloped by a thin delicate
skin which in turn is covered by a parchment, and both
enclosed in a fleshy pulp, the outer portion of the fruit.
All these coverings must be removed to prepare the beans
for consumption. After the coffee berry has been
stripped of its pulp, it is put through a process of fer-
mentation which removes the parchment ; then it is again
washed in vats and spread out on large stone or concrete
floors for drying. The beans are left there for about four
days, while men work them over with long rakes, or draw
across them a large wooden drag which turns the coffee
over, exposing every berry to the sun. It is then gathered
into baskets and loaded in small cars and taken to the
factory where the beans are passed through a hulling
machine and fanning mill which removes all the dry cov-
ering, leaving them ready for sorting and sacking. The
coffee is now shipped and needs further only the roasting
and grinding to become the famous Brazilian breakfast
coffee, known throughout the world.
It is a mistake, however, to consider the State of Sao
Paulo merely as a great coffee country. As has been
hinted already, it is a land of growing industries of many
kinds. In addition to a salubrious climate, one finds here
a remarkable land of water power. The rivers that course
down the western slopes of the Serra do Mar are rich in
DRYING COFFEE, S.iO PAULO
HYDRO-ELECTRIC PLANT, LAGES. PENSTOCK AND VALUE HOUSE ABOVE;
CLUB HOUSE OF OPERATORS BELOW
THE STATE OF SSO PAULO IS A LAND OF WATER POWER WHICH THE "SAO
PAULO TRAMWAY, LIGHT AND POWER CO., LTD." HAS HARNESSED FOR
UTILIZATION
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 209
great waterfalls. Two of these in close conjunction are
said to furnish in combination as much water as Niagara,
and are capable of making 1,000,000 horse-power of en-
ergy, many times the amount now utilised in the entire
state. Wherever one goes in the Paulista country, there
seems to be a notable ' ' falls, ' ' which the inhabitants are
proud to show the visitor.
The effective utilisation of this water supply, for tram-
ways, electric lighting, and motor energy of various kinds,
began on a large scale in 1900, and the credit of a far-
reaching and highly beneficial undertaking is due to the
Sao Paulo Tramway Light and Power Company, Limited.
This company, carried on largely by Canadian capital,
and Brazilians doing the actual work, is accomplishing
for the State and City of Sao Paulo what the Rio de
Janeiro Tramway Light and Power Company, Ltd. has
been achieving for the Federal District and the State in
the midst of which it exists. Both companies indeed had
a common inception as far as the man-leadership was
concerned, the American engineer, Dr. Frederick Stark
Pearson, with his colleagues, laying the foundations of
the Sao Paulo enterprise before the one at Rio de Janerio
was undertaken.
The results in utility and beautification of the City of
the Paulistas are immediately apparent to the visitor.
The company has aided in the making of the State Capi-
tal a city of light by installing 332,392 incandescent lamps
and 497 public arc lamps, and furnishing besides 40,491
H. P. motors. There are here 28,757 consumers of elec-
tric light and 1,494 customers for the power which this
company has brought down from the mountains in its
great transmission lines. The tramways also are at once
noticeable for their comfort and the dexterity of their
control and general management. They seem to run
nearly everywhere and to be used by every one. This
company owns and operates 451 cars, 359 being passen-
210 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ger cars' and the remainder used for postal service, for
truck, baggage and meat cars. There are more than
150 miles of track and the tramways run upwards of
10,000,000 miles yearly in conveying their tens of thou-
sands of passengers. The same care and politeness on
the part of employees are seen here as in the Federal
Capital, and there are also similar unique advantages in
special trips to famous buildings, gardens and scenic
splendours.
The company obtains its power from two of its several
sources, one known as the Sao Paulo Electric Co., Ltd.,
a subsidiary company of the Brazilian Traction Company,
Ltd., whose plant is located near the City of Soracaba,
the other on the Tiete River near the village of Parna-
hyba, about twenty miles below the City of Sao Paulo.
The company's power plant at the latter place is served
by a dam across the Tiete River, 160 feet in length; to
conserve the flood water for use in dry times, another dam
one mile long with a centre height of about 60 feet, has
been constructed across the Guarapiranga River, which
is one of the principal branches of the Tiete. The reser-
voir formed by the latter reserve dam has a storage ca-
pacity of 195,000,000 cubic metres and a surface area of
34 square kilometres. Contingencies are thus amply an-
ticipated. The carrying of this energy in two transmis-
sion lines, one fourteen miles in length from Parnahyba,
and the other fifty miles from the Sao Paulo Electric
Company's plant, is a most impressive engineering work.
The main terminal station, the sub-stations, and the re-
serve steam plant compare favourably with those at Rio
de Janeiro, and the entire enterprise is worthy of the
present progress and the future possibilities of a State
which is becoming increasingly known for its industries
along technical and commercial lines, as well as for its
agricultural prowess.
From whatever anofle the traveller from other lands
IN THE LAND OF THE PAULISTAS 211
views this colonial, yet modern, city and state of the
Paulistas, the vision is stimulating. It is highly cos-
mopolitan and its population is increasing rapidly, its
Capital having grown from 50,000 inhabitants in the year
1890, to its present size, not far from half a million. Its
statecraft has given to Brazil her presidents and many
of her foremost men in public affairs. Its love of liberty
and independence is as pronounced to-day as when the
sturdy and brave Portuguese explorers and colonists
fought for their rights three centuries ago, or as when
the young Dom Pedro I proclaimed Brazilian independ-
ence on that notable September day in 1822, on the Paul-
ista ground now crowned by the Ypiranga Museum. The
Paulista enterprise in converting Santos from a fever-
stricken city, worse than Eastern Port Said, into one of
the most healthy business towns in South America, was
also notably distinctive of the State's ambition and
energy. In education leading the country, and in techni-
cal and scientific institutions, of which Dr. Vidal Brazil's
Pasteur-like Instituto for the cure of snake bites is but
one notable example, Sao Paulo measures her progress
by the advance of the world 's learning and science. Fur-
thermore, if any one believes Brazilians incapable of
business acumen and practical initiative, he will find his
dreams and theories shattered here ; in business the Paul-
istas are called not inaccurately ''the Yankees of
Brazil. '»
We have already wandered over her vast coffee fields,
where there is cultivated and produced about three times
as much coffee as in all the other states of the country
taken together. We have also seen that the temperate
climate of the State, on her tablelands 2,400 feet above
the Atlantic, has in itself marked off these people for
leadership in agricultural Brazilian history. Undoubt-
edly, the proud and efficient Paulistas are soon to have
keen competitors for state preeminence among a half
212 THE BKAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
dozen other commonwealths, where the currents of twen-
tieth century progress are sweeping in upon vast natural
resources. Brazil is now aroused, and from Para to
Porto Alegre, as from the rubber-land of Acre to the
sugar land of Pernambuco, she is seeing the dawn of de-
sire and destiny. Still it must be admitted that this fair
Paulista land was the first Brazilian section to really feel
and respond vigourously to the throb of modernity. If
one is to believe her men, she is still only mounting the
wave that is to carry her farther out into a greater sea of
progress and prosperity.
XV
THE AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL
It was not so many years ago that South Brazil, beyond
the confines of a few -coastal cities, was as wild and
'Svoolly" as was our Far West a half century or seven-
ty years back. Savage Indians shot poisoned arrows
through blow-pipes, transfixing fatally the daring settler
or hunter who invaded the more or less howling wilder-
ness that stretched from the narrow inhabited littoral
for hundreds of miles through the vast reaches of Rio
Grande do Sul, Parana, parts of the States of Sao Paulo
and Minas Geraes, and still inward through Goyaz, and
the gigantic and formerly almost unknown Matto Grosso.
A lumberman told me of a distressing experience which
beset his men less than a decade since, when they were
building a saw-mill on the edges of one of these southern
states near the Matto Grosso border. Several of his men
venturing into the edge of the forest, where the foot of
the Avhite man had rarely sounded, were mysteriously
killed, pierced through with the immense arrows that only
the red man knows how to hurl from the great bows ; yet
no Indian or trace of enemy bushman was ever seen. It
was only when the manager himself boldly took his place
on the forest side of the new enterprise, that the work-
men were persuaded to return to the building of the mill.
The stealth and cunning of the Brazilian Indian was not
surpassed by our North American red man in his fighting
days. A member of the Roosevelt Expedition through
the Amazon country informed me that in all the long and
wearying weeks of marches through wilderness and jun-
213
214 THE BKAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
gle, they never once caught sight of the Indian of the
Brazilian forests, though frequently they found the re-
mains of recent camp-fires, and once or twice surmised
that they heard echoes of the retreat of these aboriginal
inhabitants.
One cannot fully appreciate the accomplishments of the
colonising and agricultural pioneers in this part of Brazil,
who fails to realise that the only roads of any kind, until
in comparatively recent years, in the interior portions of
these southern states, now becoming so prosperous, were
the w^ater-ways of rivers. The region was not only un-
settled but unexplored in many cases, and the Brazilians
were as ignorant as North Americans of the extent and
grandeur of their future wealth. As the traveller of
to-day rides across thousands of miles of rolling plains,
through luxuriously rich wood-lands which are already
echoing to the axe of the settler, and the crashing, whirl-
ing wheels of modem saw-plants ; as he sweeps through
fine up-to-date cities, provided with the devices of twen-
tieth century progress and comfort; as he watches the
vast herds of cattle, the waving corn-fields, or the new
factories and mills — all or most of them the product of
the past two decades, he can but stand at attention and
salute the astute foreign and Brazilian makers of this
new world empire. Mr. J. C. Oakenfull, who in his ex-
cellent and concise hand-book of this country, after show-
ing how Brazil had recruited her slender forces of popu-
lation during the years from 1820, by bringing to her fair
domain and incorporating in her life nearly three and a
half millions of foreign born, representing thirteen or
more diverse nationalities, remarks: *'Eead, mark, learn
and inwardly digest, and treat with the contemptuous
scorn it merits any attempt to discredit such a countiy
as Brazil."
He who takes a leisurely journey through the progres-
sive States of Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catharina and
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 215
Rio Grande do Sul, finds noble commonwealths possessing
rich futures in wheat, corn, rice, lumber, mate, coffee,
live stock and an endless variety of sub-tropical and
temperate-zone fruits and vegetables. Manufactures
also are found with no mean beginnings. I visited glass-
factories and timber plants in Parana, flour mills, stock-
ing mills and weaving enterprises in Santa Catharina,
and woollen mills, railway shops, frozen meat plants and
mate factories in Rio Grande do Sul, of which any coun-
try could be justly proud.
The State of Sao Paulo with its area of 112,300 square
miles is larger than all the New England States and
Pennsylvania combined. It has a coast line of 372 miles
and its breadth in some places from north to south is 546
miles, and from east to west, 643 miles. This state has
quadrupled in population since 1870, and now has
3,400,000 inhabitants, about 30 per cent, of whom are
foreigners. Here in the cool and delightful climate of the
Sao Paulo tablelands I found, in addition to the progres-
sive Paulistas, many Italians, Germans, Portuguese,
Spaniards, Russians, Austrians and an ever increa.sing
number of Americans, the latter engaged in foreign trade,
engineering and in connection with the conduct of some
of the most significant enterprises, like those of the re-
organisation of the Brazil Railway which has in South
Brazil more than 5,000 miles of road, and the National
City Bank of New York which has flourishing branches
both at Sao Paulo and at Santos.
"While education of the elementary sort is one of the
crying needs of present day Brazil, the State of Sao Paulo
is somewhat exceptional in this regard. The present
budget of the State Government includes for education
$4,600,000, and in localities containing 25 children of
school age, the state builds a separate school house. The
1916 reports show 1,414 separate schools and 158 groups.
The people are interested in education and point the vis-
216 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
itor with pride to their higher instruction which in addi-
tion to the schools for elementary grades noted above,
consist of an agricultural school, a polytechnic school,
four normal schools, three preparatory schools or gj^m-
nasiums, a Faculty of Law and Medicine and three pro-
fessional schools. Mackenzie College in the city of Sao
Paulo, in its engineering and English departments, will
bear comparison with schools of its kind anywhere.
The effect of this emphasis upon education is evident in
the high grade of intelligence seen in the middle and lower
classes. While throughout Brazil the percentage of il-
literacy is said to be 70 per cent, of the entire population,
in the State of Sao Paulo it is only 23 per cent. The pub-
lic instruction is absolutely free in this State.
It is worthy of note that the State of Sao Paulo pos-
sesses a well organised Meteorological Department, or-
ganised in 1886: we were told that this department re-
ceived daily by wire 200 messages from different parts
of the State.
Large public w^orks for water supply, sewerage, and
drainage of stagnant waters, have been constructed at a
cost of $40,000 which have helped in making this State
one of the most charming places for residence in the
country.
Although one hardly expects to find manufacturing in-
dustries in Brazil, this advanced State has $50,000,000
invested in 190 of its counties in establishments for the
production of cotton, woollen, and jute textiles, hats,
shoes, umbrellas, together with flour mills, match fac-
tories and various other industries. The shipping from
Santos forms a distinct enterprise in itself. In the year
1915, 1,396 ships entered this port and 1,397 departed,
carrying cargoes amounting to 6,349,404 gross tons ; this
large shipping business was even greater previous to the
European war.
The Light and Power Companies have found the nat-
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 217
ural waterfalls of the state easily productive of large
electric plants wliicli furnish one hundred and fifty cities
in different localities as well as the chief fazendas and
manufacturing industries. It is estimated that the hy-
draulic power of this state is 3,000,000 H. P. and that
250,000 of this horse power has been developed for in-
dustrial purposes.
There is diversity in agriculture in all South Brazil,
and Sao Paulo is no exception. Here one finds sixty per
cent, of the total area of the State under cultivation, the
high plateaus, 2,000 feet above the sea, furnishing favour-
able climate for the great plantations of coffee, cotton,
cereals and fruit trees, while the lowlands along the coast
produce easily tropical products, such as cocoa, bananas,
cocoanuts, vanilla, rice and sugar cane. The returns of
the year 1914-15 show that the State possessed 60,500
farms, with an area of 55,000 square miles, or 41,500,000
acres ; 65 per cent, of these or 27,000,000 acres being de-
voted to coffee farms and 35 per cent, or 14,500,000 acres
being given to the cultivation of cotton, corn, rice, cane,
etc.
As one rides over these vast fazendas, and some of
them consist of many thousands of acres, he begins to
realise the huge wealth of this Southland of Brazil, for
Sao Paulo is only chronologically ahead of the four or
five other rich States of this country. These Paulista
farms alone are valued at $900,000,000, and their pro-
prietors would furnish a cosmopolitan register of na-
tionalities including at least ten different nations. Cof-
fee is only one of the many important products, for
58,000,000 bushels of corn w^ere harvested in Sao Paulo
last year, 9,820,000 bushels of beans, and 8,172,000 bushels
of rice — these in addition to the 12,194,000 bags of coffee,
which is virtually 60 per cent, of the coffee consumed in
the world.
In this State there are 750,000,000 coffee trees, valued
218 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
at $1.00 eacli. Throughout this southern section of Brazil
one hears to-day more often of the coming of the big
f rigorificos and the new sources of riches in frozen meat,
than of any other one industry at present. Sao Paulo has
two of these plants, one at Asasco, ten miles from the
capital city, owned and managed by American capital,
and another at Barretos, which is at the terminus of the
Paulista Railway, 330 miles from the city of Sao Paulo.
This latter plant is owned by Brazilian capital. Al-
though foreigners have taken the lead in establishing
many of the industries of the State, the Brazilians have
not been slow to follow the example, and their intelligence
and adaptability are at present making them worthy com-
petitors in the rapidly awakening life of these southern
countries.
As the traveller passes into the State of Parana he
finds quite a different condition ; a dozen rapidly advanc-
ing cities and towns, and a vast and at times almost un-
explored interior. In the higher sections there are enor-
mous pine forests, while in the southern littoral the lands
and woods resemble semi-tropical regions.
The State of Parana has been brought into recent at-
tention because of the contested territory lying between
this State and that of Santa Catharina, about which con-
siderable fighting and some bloodshed has occurred within
the past few years. This ''contestado" matter has now
received the mutual attention of the Presidents of the
two States involved, and not long ago an agreement was
concluded with the aid of the President of the Republic as
to these lands fiercely contested between the men of the
*'bush." The borders are now quiet. It is not easy,
however, in these wooded, isolated regions to convince
the population that land boundaries and rights can be
settled by means other than through the appeal to arms.
The inhabitants of the Brazilian bush remind one of the
mountain whites in the North American southland — a
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 219
race with laws unto themselves, and not to be tampered
with thoughtlessly.
Parana is a mingled memory of graceful pine trees,
lifting their luxuriant heads on every horizon, resembling
inverted umbrellas resting gracefully upon the lofty tops
of high, straight columns. These have made Parana
famous, and in their shadow have come the lumber men
who in considerable numbers are now forcing their way
farther and farther into the semi-tropical pine forests.
The Parana pine, especially adapted for interior wood-
work in house construction, is finding a ready market not
only in Brazil, but in the Latin American Republics to the
south.
A visit made to one of the largest saw mills and lumber
camps of the country, ' ' The Southern Brazil Lumber and
Colonisation Co.," at Tres Barras, Parana, is clear in my
memory. This company, under the general control of the
Brazil Railway, is conducted by American lumbermen
who have utilised modern machinery of the latest type,
and have built up a colony of four hundred men and their
families around the lumber plant. I found in responsible
positions twenty-three Americans, and the remainder of
the workmen divided in nationality between Brazilians,
Italians, Poles, Germans and Hollandaise. A territory
comprising forty-five thousand acres of pine forests was
being worked and the mills cut 110,000 feet of lumber
daily — a log a minute being the rate, and some of these
massive pine logs weigh each no less than two and a half
tons. One of the great self-propelling log-rolling ma-
chines in use has the capacity of bringing in from distant
parts of the forest 150 logs daily, dragging them from
four directions. To watch these great trees crashing
through the jungle, breaking do^vn the smaller forestry
that chances to rise in the path, and being finally depos-
ited without the aid of manual strength on the long flat
cars that carry them to the saw mill, is a fascinating
220 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
experience. Tlie big steam loaders bring in the timbers
by means of heavy wire cables with hooks attached to the
ends of the logs, and no obstacle great or small questions
seriously the progress of the pine monsters when the
throttles of these forest engines are opened.
This lumber enterprise in Brazil is a railroad business
as well as one of timber manufacture. This particular
company builds fifty kilometres of railroad yearly, and
men are constantly at work laying new lines into the for-
ests primeval. The railroad clears the land a kilometre
in width as it advances, and when the forests go the col-
onisation begins, carried on also by the same company,
whose concessions along its lines are extensive. There
are company stores where the men buy their provisions
and necessities at about cost; a hospital and workmen's
houses are furnished by the organisation. In addition to
the sawing of the Parana pine and Brazilian hard wood
called "imbuia," the project of using the waste lumber
for making paper pulp is now under consideration by
certain of the lumber companies, a matter of no small
moment at present to Brazil, as to other parts of the
world. The manager informed me that he had at present
sixteen thousand logs on skids; that he was cutting six
hundred logs a day ; and that the demand was constantly
increasing, especially from the South American Repub-
lics, which in many instances have nearly every other
national resource except lumber-producing forests. Nine
hundred acres of new forest land had recently been pur-
chased to meet the advancing trade, and ten car loads of
lumber are being shipped daily from this camp.
Such business is not a matter of chance, even in this
new and rich land of plenty. Until a short time ago the
lumber trade in this mill was a failure. The market had
to be prepared, and agents were sent forth to make
Parana pine famous. The men in positions of leadership
were chosen with care from specialists in the lumber
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 221
business from our own Far West. The right economic
proportion between foreign and native workers had to be
determined by experience; new men had to be trained;
machinery, most of it made in the United States, had to
be decided upon, transported and installed at great cost.
''What chance or need is there at present for Ameri-
cans in this lumber business in Brazil?" was asked the
manager.
"There are openings for good men who know the lum-
ber business," answered the director, ''and there are op-
portunities, as in other lines in Brazil for men with capi-
tal and brains who are not of the get-rich-quick variety.
This business does not offer much inducement for the
American workman or colonist who is absolutely without
money. These would hardly be happy here, while the
European from Italy or Poland or Germany is more
nearly adapted to the early stages of development in
these lumber and colonisation sections."
While this Parana pine, together with mate, are now
among the chief industries, the trade which centres in
the flourishing modern capital of Curityba with its forty
thousand inhabitants, and in half a dozen other smaller
cities and towns of the State, there are also found many
other elements of industrial and municipal progress.
There are modern tramways, electric light plants, fac-
tories and industries on a growing scale. There are
libraries and schools, clubs and public buildings. Ger-
mans and Poles are the leading foreign inhabitants, the
former owning and controlling many of the large business
houses, and the latter furnishing much of the labour for
mate and agriculture.
In an interview with the President of the State of Par-
ana, Dr. Affonso Alves Camargo, I was impressed with
the way in which business and the development of a new
country seemed to be bringing out characteristics quite
different than those found among the politicians of the
222 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
Federal District. To these Federal politicians Dr. Ca-
margo paid his somewhat scant respect by saying, ' ' Here
in Parana we need leaders ; in Rio de Janeiro every one
is a leader or tries to be, but nobody follows, so the
political leaders don't count."
It was learned that within this State composed of
800,000 people the first need was for population, the Pol-
ish and Italian immigration having entirely stopped since
the beginning of the European war. The President
showed that he was prou(i of the fact that they had very
few negroes, saying that they were not particularly de-
sired. ''The Germans," said he, ''make good colonists
here, but unless they marry Brazilian wives, they do not
mix easily with the people of the country, keeping their
own language and schools, and carrying on their lives
almost as though they were still in Germany. ' '
For the most part, however, the sentiment in the section
seemed to be that the German colonists should be credited
with having developed the country they had settled, mak-
ing towns prosperous, pointing the way to Brazilian set-
tlers, and on the whole being peaceable and efficient farm-
ers, business men and manufacturers. Yet now and then
one hears a fear expressed that the settling in isolated
sections of 100,000 or more Germans in South Brazil,
"each man a trained soldier," furnishes if not a menace,
at least an opportunity for misunderstanding arising be-
tween these vigorous settlers and the Government, rela-
tive to lands and law.
I found the Parana President deeply interested in the
6,000,000 coffee trees of his State, and also in the new
and prolonged highroad contemplated to the frontier
of Matto Grosso upon which cattle can be driven into
the State of Parana, thus saving the long, round-about
journey through Sao Paulo. As to the contested territory
between Parana and her neighbour state Santa Catha-
rina, the President who had rendered an historic service
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 223
to the cause said that this ''gentlemen's" agreement re-
cently consmmnated, tends to equalise the two States in
size giving to Santa Catharina a goodly strip of land
formerly held by his own State. He was not sure that all
trouble over this vexed boundary section had ceased, as
the bushmen affected are a lawless element, and the thick
forests of this region still afford shelter for dark deeds.
The State of Santa Catharina contains even more
German colonists than the State of Parana, at least 20
per cent, of the whole population, its principal industries
being agriculture, lumber and cattle raising. Certain
coal mines are being exploited, but as yet Brazil has not
given evidence of being a great coal country, partly be-
cause through its ports, it has been able previous to the
war to import coal cheaper than it could be mined under
difficult transportation conditions. Santa Catharina is a
State of great agricultural promise. An equable climate
and a fertile soil, a good port in the capital city of Flor-
inopolis, situated on a small island south of the State,
and the development by the Brazil Railway of the excel-
lent old port of Sao Francisco, as a big railway terminus
and shipping port, are all encouraging enticements in-
tended to bring to Santa Catharina ever enlarging popu-
lation and progress.
Of all the coming States of South Brazil, Rio Grande do
Sul gives the visitor distinct and amazing impressions.
Here is the vast horse and cattle ranching land, an almost
boundless stretch of rolling plains, capable under proper
cultivation of raising well-nigh every product of the tem-
perate zone. The State situated well out of the tropics
has seasons well defined, a healthy and often cold winter,
with a dry and hot summer. Virtually all crops and in-
dustries common to the prairies of North America can be
reproduced here. The streams of colonists from Europe
already have been large in this great free and favoured
land of the pioneer. It is our Far West as we knew it
224 THE BEAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
fifty years ago. The gaueho with his flowing robes and
distinctive habits, weird customs and consummate skill
with horse and cattle is here; the sheep, the horses and
the tens of thousands of cows and steers range the un-
fenced spaces. The towns and cities are filled with farm-
ers, colonists, and sun-browned cattle men, buying their
provisions, their musical instruments, and their gay sad-
dlery. The stations are surrounded as the trains arrive
with wagon loads of passengers and produce, and with
motley crowds ; great bunches of horses saddled and tied
in rows — all speaking plainly of the status and character
of the civilisation. Until recently these hill prairies have
been the uncontested home of the cattle ranges, and even
to-day the trains startle great herds with wide, heavy
horns and powerful shoulders, which gallop away in
fright at the sharp whistle of the engine.
Over all this animal world is the sway of the race of
gauchos, or cowboys, the Brazilian horsemen living in
the saddle, many of them still unlettered, and breathing
the air of their ruder ancestry. Along the prairie
stretches there are now growing up everywhere the homes
of colonists, and agricultural progress and the inception
of great modern beef industries are becoming known.
There is a sense in which the pastoral life and the modern
land and industrial progress, growing up side by side,
have richer possibilities in Rio Grande do Sul than in
any section of which we know. Seldom save in rural
France has agriculture flourished alongside of stock rais-
ing. The cattle lands have been the rule first and these
have made way, as in Argentina, for the plough of the
farmer. This great State, however, promises to provide
the example of agricultural and cattle enterprise develop-
ing hand in hand.
"Brazil is forming races of her own, both men and
cattle," was the summary of conditions which the sturdy
President of the State of Rio Grande do Sul presented.
THE HOME OF CATTLE IN SOUTH BRAZIL, THE COMING CATTLE COUNTRY
OF THE WORLD
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AGRICULTURE, SLOW BUT SURE
THE "SOUTHERN BRAZIL LUMBER AND COLONIZATION COMPANY" LOAD-
ING PINE LOGS AT TRES BARRAS, PARANA
•THE PARANAQUA RAILWAY FAIRLY FLINGS ONE INTO THE BOSOM OF THESE
VIRGIN WOODS"
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 225
We had been travelling for days across the vast undulat-
ing ranges of hills, plains and rivers, vi^hich form the
basis of the most natural cattle country to be found in the
world to-day. Unlike the flat lands of Argentina, where
droughts menace cattle and crop, one finds here a smiling
land of hills and lakes, and a campo dotted by farm houses
set loftily upon hill tops, shaded and enhanced by luxuri-
ant trees and flower gardens.
Why, one asks, are there but a million and a half in-
habitants in this great free and fertile commonwealth!
Why have the fifteen or twenty million head of cattle
estimated to exist in this section of Brazil not been dis-
covered before by the Swifts and Armours of the world 1
Judging from the rich fields of wheat, barley, rye and
corn which I saw in numerous sections, this Brazilian
southland is capable of almost anything, agriculturally
speaking. Why have the lights of its varied resources
been hid during these generations, when the outside world
has thought of Brazil chiefly as the land of rubber and
coffee! In answer to such queries put to the officials and
landowners in Porto Alegre, Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul,
and other enterprising towns of this new but old country,
the answer usually ran as follows :
*'We have needed population. Roads have been want-
ing until comparatively recently. A method of utilising
our cattle, such as the big frigorificos have furnished in
Argentina, which would stimulate our people to the care
and higher breeding of the herds, have only just begun to
appear here. Then, too, Brazil has had such limitless
riches ; it has been so easy to live here in the land of fruits
and sunshine ; there has not been the need or the inclina-
tion towards scientific industry by a people who have
lived readily on coffee booms and mate booms and ready
loans from Europe."
For such reasons Brazil now finds herself on the thresh-
old of one of the greatest developments that has yet
226 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
marked her picturesque progress. She believes, and with
good right to the belief, that she is to become the great
cattle country of the earth ; that Rio Grande do Sul will
lead and that Matto Grosso and other inland states will
follow in this development. Already five big freezing
plants are establishing themselves in south Brazil, several
of them making arrangements to use one thousand head
of cattle per day, and leading in an industry that promises
to eclipse anything that Australia, Argentina or the
United States have yet accomplished in this business of
feeding the world.
The day of Southern Brazil is just dawning. There is a
spirit of getting-ready throughout these immense do-
mains. In Rio Grande do Sul we found great woollen and
cotton mills, where ponchos and various kinds of cotton
and woollen goods were being manufactured on a large
scale from Brazilian products. One sees here what Euro-
pean thrifty peasants are capable of doing in a new coun-
try. One finds land holders who do not feel it beneath
them, or injurious to their dignity as gentlemen, to spend
a large portion of their time on their estates, galloping
across their broad lands, dressed in the flowing ponchos
of their own cowboys. It is this open life of the plainsman
that seems to suit best these South Brazilians. These
men are not by nature book-keepers and shop-keepers.
They are lovers of horses and lands ; a strain of romance
is always coming to the surface; they dislike details.
These feudal-like landowners form a race distinctive,
more typically Brazilian in a sense than the coffee plant-
ers of Sao Paulo, or the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro.
One of the Presidents of a Southern Brazilian State
said, ''I am not a politician, I am a cattle-man," and he
looked it. Even in the State House, I found him dressed
in vicuna cloth and high gaucho boots doing his official
work seemingly with some regret, and anxious for the
hour to arrive when he could mount his horse and ride
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 227
away to his large estate. Here lie was studying with
much enthusiasm the business of cattle raising and was
crossing his herds with East Indian zebus, which animals
he had imported in large numbers, finding them particu-
larly fitted for subsistence and profit on the southern
campo.
The people were making extensive plans for the great
Cattle Congress to be held the following May, the first
formidable gathering of its kind known to Brazil. The
National Society of Agriculture is supporting and con-
ducting it. Even the Federal politicians have overcome
their conser\"atism and are joining heartily in the plans.
The preparations include a re-census of Brazilian cattle,
and men from all parts of the country interested in land
and stock will attend lectures and discuss new and vital
problems. The congress marks a long step in advance in
a land where the cattle business has been carried on in a
more or less primitive and feudal fashion.
An o\\Tier of tens of thousands of big cattle told me of
the old customs still in vogue by which his ''vaquero"
or cowboy cared for a certain number of cattle, taking
every fourth calf in payment, branding it with his own
name. Should a cowboy be found dishonest he would be
driven out of the country, in accordance with traditional
custom. Unwritten laws are strict here in these fenceless
lands. Should a wandering cow join a strange herd, her
calves are cared for and branded with the name of the old
owner, save every fourth calf which is marked with the
name of the gaucho or cattleman into whose herd she has
strayed. When the original owner appears, his cattle are
turned over to liim, and he usually follows the custom
of giving several cattle of the herd to the cowboy as a re-
ward of honesty and fidelity.
There is an evident feeling in Brazil that Argentina has
been giving somewhat inordinate attention to the breed-
ing of fancy cattle, that such attention is inclined to make
228 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
cattle-raising too much of a fad, and also that less ex-
pensive cattle are quite as useful for the purposes of
freezing plants. In the Cattle Congress considerable at-
tention is to be given to the ways and roads for bringing
cattle to the seacoast from the inland states. The build-
ing of cattle drove-roads to the nearest points of contact
with shipping facilities is a matter of particular moment.
The Brazil Railway is projecting lines into the interior
with this in mind.
The congress of cattle men will give special attention
to considering Government responsibility in this new
and strategic development, as well as to matters concern-
ing dairying, cattle diseases, sanitary conditions, seeds,
grasses, and patent foods for stock. Dr. Eduardo Cotrin,
President of the Executive Commission of the First Na-
tional Cattle Congress of Brazil, outlines the cattle con-
dition and the aims of this meeting:
''On the upper Rio Branco, as on the island of Marajo,
as in the prairie lands of the central plateau, in the rich
fields of the south of Matto Grosso, cattle reproduce and
herds increase almost without any care; so that Brazil
offers a vast field which at no distant future time will in-
vite enormous capital into creating for it a systematized
cattle industry. The competition of the future will de-
pend entirely upon our being able to offer products at low
prices. The abundance of practically unoccupied land in
Brazil gives the country an enormous advantage in the
way of being able to meet this coming competitive strug-
gle. There is no country at present devoted to cattle rais-
ing where land is not dearer than in Brazil. Even in the
Argentine and the United States, the possibilities of rais-
ing cattle cheaply are every day becoming less and less,
and not only the exploitation of vast wheat and corn
fields, but the enormous influx of homesteaders, inevitably
tend to raise the value of land and to do away with the
possibilities of a cattle industry. In Brazil on the other
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 229
hand, our extent of pasture land is so enormous that it
mil be doubtless a half-century before the homesteader
and agriculturist — who have besides, plenty of Brazilian
woodland to select from for farming — ^begin to intrude
upon the range." It is Avith such things in mind that the
cattle breeders from all parts of Brazil will come to-
gether to make a policy that should have sweeping results
in the business now to the front.
The United States will have a share in the Congress.
Three American concerns have offered to give silver cups
for competitive prizes, and calves were fed with American
cattle food from January 1st, 1917, to the time of the
exposition, for the purpose of exhibition and experiment.
This food, of which cotton seed oil is the basis, was
handled by an American, and the interest of North Amer-
ican breeders and cattlemen in these developments is
meaningful. It should signify for the United States a
larger meat supply and a new market, as well as the
rejuvenation of the Brazilian herds by the introduction
of American blooded cattle.
There are few indications of progress in the new Brazil
more fascinating to the American with the inheritance
of plains and wide western distances in his veins, than
this open life in the Brazilian cattle land. At a small
station in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, I left the train
and visited a large fazenda situated on a lofty hill-top
overlooking wide ranges of rolling country. Many square
leagues of cattle estates stretched out before the eye in
all directions. There was a striking contrast with the flat
cheerless sandy plans, and the often unprepossessing
buildings found on the Argentine pampa. We entered the
fazenda through luxuriant gardens in which vegetables
and fruits and flowers belonging to both temperate and
sub-tropical zones, were growing in abundance. Through
a grape vine arboured walk one could see in the distance
part of a red farm house, Portuguese in appearance, with
230 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
brown-tiled roof and roses and hibiscus climbing over it.
There was a wealth of foliage, all colours in plants, white,
red, yellow, blue, and flowers everywhere. Palm trees
waved their high heads above the other trees. The voices
of children playing, and a snatch of a Brazilian folk song
and the strumming of a guitar reached our ears. There
was a large, well-kept lawn, and in the corner of the yard
that lay before the farm house was a rose arbour, hung
across with a hammock, and seats built about it, revealing
the presence of something more than a hum-drum work-
a-day world.
Two men, wearing wide cowboy trousers and home-
made shirts, high topped boots and broad sombreros,
came out to greet us. They pointed out the "buena
vista," lying below and beyond on every side; the undu-
lating lands sloping away in rising tiers of foot-hills to a
distant blue ridge of mountains. Here and there on
strategic hill-tops stood other thick bunches of trees and
heavy vegetation, through which the red roofs of other
big fazendas glistened in the sun. Brown coloured cattle
were feeding in assembled herds of fifties or hundreds
on different portions of the wide acres. A dozen or more
gauchos were driving a large herd of horses into a corral
in the depths of a valley beneath us ; we were informed
that these horses could be bought for one hundred milreis
each, which is about $25.00. One could pick out corn-
fields in many of the spaces between the green hills, but it
was evident that the main business of these people was
that of cattle-rangers.
The hospitality of all Brazilian plainsmen was at once
evident. The host, despite the fact that we were utter
strangers to him, bid us hearty welcome, and clapping
his hands to call servants, a stout, happy-looking
''mammy" as black as night appeared out of a row of
servant quarters, which might have been at home on a
Southern slavery-days plantation. Brazilian coffee was
AWAKENING OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL 231
soon served in the summer house, and we almost forgot
we were in the midst of the real gauchos in the great
future cattle country of the world. It was all quite pic-
turesque and suited to the kind of romantic environment
with which the Brazilian is inclined to surround his every
day life.
One is told here tliat Matto Grosso is to be one day even
a greater cattle country than Rio Grande do Sul; but
when that day arrives, this most southern of Brazilian
states will have entered the competitive markets of the
world with her waving grain fields, her vineyards and her
industries already beginning in no mean way. There
are comparatively few of the North Americans who know
much about such thriving cities as Santa Maria, Pelotas,
Rio Grande do Sul, or of the active and prosperous Capi-
tal City of this large southern commonwealth, Porto
Alegre. But there is coming a day, and it is not so far
distant, when the eyes of the world will be turning toward
this section, great with the greatness of the land. South
Brazil has a future too large and promising to fully
predict.
XVI
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION
Mr. James A. Fareell, President of the United States
Steel Corporation, has stated that as a rule it is not as
difficult to sell goods to foreign countries as it is to trans-
port them. The truth of this fact as far as trading with
South America is concerned has been brought home with
emphasis to business men since the opening of the great
war. As one man of affairs said of Brazil, ' ' You can sell
anything under the light of the stars down here providing
you can deliver it."
The impressive element in the above statement by the
experienced steel exporter lies in the fact that he believed
so thoroughly in the necessity of having steamship facili-
ties that in 1913 he inaugurated the United States and
Brazil Steamship Line, which has the distinction of
being the first line of its kind during the past twenty years
to become an unqualified success as a transportation
agent between the two big Republics. Trade conferences
and discussions are helpful. A certain amount of ex-
perience is needed in getting orientation in a foreign land.
Theories and trade papers help. But the crying need just
now in connection with cementing a firmer trade relation
between the United States and Brazil is for men of Mr.
Farrell's stripe, who get through talking and begin to
act. An ounce of attempt and accomplishment is worth
tons of conference or newspaper talk about what should
or might be done, especially at this moment, in its effect
upon Latin Americans.
232
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 233
"A right good thing is prudence,
And they are useful friends
Who never make beginnings
Until they see the ends.
But give me now and then a man
And I will make him king,
Just to take the consequences,
And just to do the thing."
The prime solution of trade between North and South
America does not exist in spending an overplus of time
and legal talent in discussing shipping combinations (as
happened in the year 1913) but rather in going directly
to the root of the need, as the United States Steel Cor-
poration has showed the path, furnishing beyond cavil
the answer to the first requirement for trade between na-
tions — adequate shipping facilities. One important ele-
ment relative to trade competition is distance. In this
regard the United States possesses a favourable advan-
tage for Brazilian commerce. The distance between New
York and Rio de Janeiro is 4,770 sea miles, shorter than
that between this Brazilian chief city and any one of the
following European ports of special importance, to which
Brazilian exports have been sent in large quantities and
European manufactures returned. Hamburg is 5,500
miles distant from Rio de Janeiro ; Liverpool, 5,265 miles ;
Barcelona, 4,808 miles ; Genoa, the same distance as Bar-
celona, and Southampton is 4,985 miles from the prin-
cipal port of Brazil. With this geographical advantage,
given a frequency of steamings and a class of ships ade-
quately fitted for freight and passenger accommodations
equal to those plying between Brazil and Europe, there
would seem to be no reason for despair over American
trade with Brazil. The advantage of frequent sailings on
the part of a nation competing mth a nation of infre-
quent service is apparent. The interest charges are les-
sened, a smaller investment is required for a large ' ' turn-
234 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
over" of commodities, and the risk of losses is reduced to
a minimum.
Foreign trade with Brazil means, morever, what the
word signifies — trade; buying as well as selling. It im-
plies reciprocity of products. It involves getting a mar-
ket for our goods, and also affording a market for Brazil-
ian goods. Its good business as well as good psychology
to keep in mind the "other fellow." Commerce does not
signify merely selling to Latin America; it also means
buying from Latin America. Steamship lines need car-
goes both ways, and the fact that they have their holds
full on the return voyage is a big foreign trade asset, as
well as necessary steamship statesmanship. The answer
of Mr. William Lowry, the efficient manager of the United
States and Brazil Steamship Lines in Rio de Janeiro, to
my question as to the reason for the success of the Amer-
ican attempt to found trade upon good transportation,
conditions, is significant in this connection : ' ' The United
States and Brazil Steamship Line has carried from Brazil
to the United States 260,300 tons of manganese iron be-
tween the dates of January 1st, 1916, and August 31st,
1916. This is one of the reasons for the success of the
line, since a steamship service between New York and
Brazil must have return cargo or die. There is not
enough coffee cargo for all. The steel companies need
manganese ore for the manufacture of ferro-manganese,
an essential alloy in the manufacture of steel. There is
an adequate tonnage of manganese from Brazil to supply
return cargoes for monthly steamers. Hence, the pur-
chase of manganese under contract and the manufacture
of ferro-manganese by the United States Steel Corpora-
tion on an increased scale. The return voyage in ballast,
— that economic waste which had sapped the vitality from
every effort of establishing an American controlled line,
from 1893 to 1913, — ^was eliminated." A statement con-
taining multum in parvo and rich in meaning as regards
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 235
the establishment of steam communications directly
owned and administered by the country trying to promote
foreign trade.
Every European nation engaged in any considerable
trade mth South America has long since realised the im-
possibility of building up permanent and effective com-
merce without its own ships, and also without keeping its
service in advance of its needs. There is little use or jus-
tice in complaining of the treatment rendered American
shipping by European steamship service. It is quite nat-
ural to expect that a European nation, while quite willing
to accept shipments from other nations that give a fair
prospect of immediate return, will have in view primarily
the inauguration of a direct trade betv/een the foreign
country and that of the home-flag nation, rather than giv-
ing its first attention to indirect trade between two for-
eign countries. This is especially true when one of these
countries is an actual or potential competitor with the
nation whose flag flies over the steamship line.
In these days when the United States is perforce en-
larging its international vision, this matter of ship com-
munication may be taken up on a large scale more easily
than at any other period perhaps during the last century.
The investment in, and the promotion of, direct steamship
service for both passenger and freight between the United
States and countries like Brazil, partakes of a large spir-
ited national and international service. Like the railroad
engineers and the promoting managers of the new lines of
interior conmaunication that have done so much to open
the inaccessible sections of the South American Republics
to civilisation and industrial progress, the steamship men
are the pioneers of world advance in a peculiar way. "With
them as with all great enterprises the small and selfish
microscopic policy is doomed to fail. The steamship
manager and ''those who go down to the sea in ships"
must necessarily look beyond the immediate present.
236 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
There are some things which do not seem to pay from
the point of view of the narrow utilitarian, but which in
the larger vision of statesman-like policy, embracing the
future, yield for the nation and the individual an abun-
dant multiplication of investment. It is this farsighted-
ness of steamship construction and administration, the
happy mixture of utilitarianism with national patriot-
ism, that has brought England and Germany so far for-
ward into the heart of South American commerce during
the last twenty-five years. Again quoting from the ex-
perience and knowledge of Mr. Lowry, who speaks of the
European steamers as the advance harbingers of trade:
''The superior passenger accommodation of these
European steamers as well as their more rapid voyages,
induced the heads of European firms to offer to their pas-
sengers, as relaxation from a luxurious sea voyage, an
investigation of the commercial possibilities of the coun-
tries with which they had business relations. Such com-
mercial possibilities began to be exhaustively developed
as a result of personal investigation— ythe homely adage
that 'seeing is believing' was verified. Mutual needs and
the national idiosyncrasies of the foreigner became bet-
ter understood by the man who really counted, and as a
result of this understanding, a degree of commercial con-
fidence was reached which it will be impossible to de-
velop between the merchants of the United States and
those of Brazil until like shipping conditions make paral-
lel results possible."
With this notable exception the ships of Uncle Sam,
comparable in any way with the strong European lines
plying between England, Italy, Germany, France, Scan-
dinavia and many other foreign ports and Brazil, are
conspicuously absent. It is not only a bit shattering to
American pride to find the Stars and Stripes confined
entirely, in most South American ports, to an occasional
tramp steamer or to an ancient-looking sailing vessel
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 237
carrying oil or lumber, but it also makes one wonder that
the United States of all the great nations of the world has
failed to recognize the tremendous future importance, as
well as the present open door for a strong merchant ma-
rine service with these growing countries.
From Panama to Patagonia, and from Patagonia to
Para, the traveller hears to-day one universal moan
relative to the lack of ships or the necessary delays in
business by reason of slow and uncertain sailings. I
found agents of large foreigii concerns in many port
cities of South America, sitting practically idle in their
offices, refusing even to solicit orders or to accept orders
that came to them for goods. ' * What is the use ? ' ' they
said, *'it is impossible to fill our orders. There are no
boats, and we see no prospect of getting any for at least
a year, and then everything is uncertain. ' '
To be sure, war-times have added greatly to the South
American commercial dilemma, but the prospect for suffi-
cient sea-carriers after the war is over for years to come
is not bright, as far as Europe is concerned. The United
States has the opportunity even yet, not only to serve her-
self but also to do for European nations what they have
been doing for her these last twenty-five years or more,
as they have made their triangle shipping voyages from
the shores of France, Germany and England to South
America, thence homeward by the way of North Ameri-
can ports. If the United States had possessed a series
of steamship lines plying between our northern cities
and Latin America at the opening of the war, the lines
could not only have paid for themselves during the past
three years, but they would have saved many of the
South American business reverses and afforded at the
present time an inestimable resource for our allies. Re-
grets, however, are useless unless they become our teach-
ers. It is as clear as daylight to any man who has
given time and thought to these questions in South
238 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
American investigations, that South American trade is
not going to be won in the next quarter century of
rapid development of these Republics, by Monroe Doc-
trines, pleasant writing or visiting commissions. This
trade will go to the country or countries which are far-
sighted enough to invest large capital in transporta-
tion enterprises of all kinds intended to open and main-
tain a broad channel through which these nations' rich
natural treasures may flow out easily in recompense for
things they want in return. In other words, crude as
it may seem, the country that has the money and is
willing to spend it in a big way for such things as steam-
ship lines, railroads and dock works in order to give
business to, and to get business from, Brazil and every
other Latin American nation, will be ''simpatico" in
Latin America, and its material reward will be "beyond
the dreams of avarice."
The coastwise shipping in Brazil is carried on by a
dozen or more lines of Brazilian boats, the largest being
the Lloyd Brasileiro with 72 ships. This line is said to
receive a government subsidy of 187,000 pounds per
annum, and it connects Rio de Janeiro with all parts of
the coast, north and south, by both express and slow serv-
ice. A tri-monthly freight and passenger service is also
carried on with New Nork by the Brazilian Lloyd boats,
and this fact has meant much to the line as also to Bra-
zilian shippers during the war, when these steamers have
been a main resource among neutral carriers. It is said
that this excellent fleet of 70 or more ships has not been a
paying concern in the past, but with such unique oppor-
tunities as have been offered it of late, and with reorgan-
ised management, the Government should realise large
revenues from the ' ' New Brazilian Lloyd. ' '
According to Brazilian law, coastal navigation for the
transport of merchandise is only possible in duly regis-
tered Brazilian vessels. Except under exceptional cir-
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 239
cumstances, foreign ships are prohibited to engage in
coastal trade, though utter freedom is given such ves-
sels for the transport of passengers ''of all classes and
origins" from one port of the Republic to another. River
and internal navigation is permitted to all nations, con-
formably to the laws of the Commonwealth, and ships
intended for navigation in the Amazon Valley are exempt
from import duties. In addition to the steamship coastal
service of the country, there are fleets of fishing boats and
numerous smaller craft engaged in regular or occasional
trade. The main passenger and freight service between
Brazil and Europe and North America has been admin-
istered by four English companies (The Royal Mail and
the Lamport Holt being the largest lines) ; three French
companies serving aU the chief Brazilian ports ; two Ger-
man lines, the North German Lloyd and the Hamburg-
American and the Hamburg-South American Lines com-
bined; eight Italian companies between Genoa and
Brazil, together with other national steamings from Aus-
trian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Spanish and Portuguese
ports.
There are few countries where water transportation
is more intimately and vitally connected with the growth
of trade. The thousands of miles of shore line pierced by
extraordinary harbour facilities, with new port works be-
ing constructed at great cost along modern lines ; the ex-
ceptional opportunities for commerce along the numerous
rivers — the Amazon River and its tributaries alone fur-
nishing a network of water ways forty thousand miles in
extent — all call for ships. The spirit of the old Portu-
guese navigators is still in the veins of their Brazilian
descendants, who have been in the forefront of national
commercial navigation. Their ports were made wherever
possible, as the only means of communication for many,
many years in Colonial days, between the widely scat-
tered settlements, was by sea. In short the ports were the
240 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
centres of colonies and have since become the capitals of
states. In front the sea, immediately behind usually for-
est-covered mountain ranges, and inland vast plateaus
and the fertile Matta or the sweeping wastes of the
Sertao. The rivers were the railroads, and they seemed
to run nearly everywhere. The area of the Amazon River
Valley is estimated at 2,000,000 square miles. Although
much of this lies outside of Brazil, the main course of the
great river as well that of its numerous tributaries is in
Brazilian territory. The valley of Central Brazil's vast
river, the Paraguay, shared by several states, is also
enormous, and its hundreds of square miles of water mea-
dows form some of the finest pastoral land of the country.
South Brazil seems to be almost independent of roads
by reason of its many rivers. The Uruguay and the Pa-
rana with their long flowing, mighty waters, take the con-
tributions of a cluster of Brazilian streams. Such tribu-
taries of the Parana, as the Pamahyba, the Tiete, the
Rio Grande and the Pardo would stand out as notable in
any country that was not so richly blessed with large nav-
igable streams. A full list of Brazilian rivers would
make a history of the country in themselves, if they could
tell their story. Many are short tumultuous currents
known only to the Indian with his canoe, while others flow
windingly through upland valleys, and pierce mountain
gorges on their journeys to the sea. Most of the latter
are served by lines of steamers, and in some cases these
still are the only means of communication of vast sections
of Brazil with the outside world. There are said to be
more than 120 river steamers plying on the Amazon and
its tributaries.
It is due in part to the fact that Brazil has used so
easily and naturally the river courses, the traditional
highways of mankind, that her national railroads, traction
companies and rural highways have been so long in com-
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 241
ing, and are even now in the beginning stages in many
regions.
Railroading in Brazil has been no easy task. The engi-
neer has had no level or compact country with which to
deal, as for example in Argentina, or in the United States
where the roads of iron found comparatively ready access
through the configurations of the Mississippi valley or
otherwise through many natural slits in mountains. The
foreign railway engineer who was called upon to con-
struct the first lines a half century ago, was confronted at
the outset with the formidable Brazilian coastal barrier
of mountains stretching along the thousands of miles of
waterfront, dividing the Atlantic and the only large set-
tlements from the uplands of the interior, and affording
easy entrance through only a few narrow passes. Build-
ing railroads was costly as well as a difficult enterprise.
The first large tunnel built in Brazil, 2,445 yards in length,
required seven years to build and was the cause of bank-
ruptcy of the Central Railway of Brazil. Incidentally,
this natural obstacle has made railway travel in this
country more grandly picturesque than in any other
South American State, with the possible exception of
Peru, where the foothills of the Andes shut off in similar
manner the sea from the inland areas.
Another obstacle to railway construction is what Baron
D'Anthouard warns the Brazilians to guard against, —
* ' the intoxicating influence of space. ' ' Brazil was too big
to tackle all at once, and the first attempts were along the
lines of least resistance, connecting the points where
traffic was most promising, and this was nearest the
coastal towns. The result was a series of disconnected
lines, having little relation to each other, and a lack
of railway cohesion generally. Like Topsy, since the first
Brazilian railway was constructed in the year 1854, the
roads of the country have ' ' just growed. ' ' It was natural
enough that a country with 3,329,365 square miles of ex-
242 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tent, and 5,000 miles of coast-line, with the major portion
of its 24,000,000 of population living on or near the sea
coast, should build its railroads to accommodate its in-
habitants. Perhaps it is useless to lament that Brazil did
not have her Harriman or Hill to see in farsighted rail-
way visions her need one day of transcontinental and
affiliated lines binding her far-flung empire in one. Cer-
tain it is that Brazil's foreign railway concerns, which
built her railroads in many cases at a prescribed price per
kilometre, were thinking of the number of kilometres they
could build rather than the co-ordinating of systems.
Furthermore these foreign concessionaries who received
large guarantees proceeded in not a few cases to build
roads quite regardless of the prospect of future business
of the section or sections through which they ran, and
evidently were not actuated by the mathematical princi-
ple that a straight line is the shortest distance between
two given points. On some Brazilian roads the traveller
is sometimes puzzled to know whether he is coming or
going, so multitudinous are the curves. I travelled on one
short railroad built by the early pioneers, covering 98
kilometres between its starting point and destination,
which was rebuilt recently by an American engineer in 43
kilometres. In other words, railway constructors in the
beginning of Brazilian transportation, did not heed the
maxim I once heard stated by an expert railway man:
''You are operating a railroad at all times; you are build-
ing a road but once."
These conditions have left Brazil of the present with
the outstanding railway problem of co-ordination. The
country is politically one in her federated States ; she can
be commercially unified only by a proper interweaving of
her railways and water ways in such systematic fashion
that her interior body, now beginning to thrill with quick-
ened life, may be able to communicate readily and quickly
with her members scattered widely along her shore line.
TEADE AND TRANSPORTATION 243
That the countiy is now awakening to the needs is pat-
ent. One hears to-day of a ''Canadian Pacific of the
South," wliose project has become in part performance,
to join Brazilian and Bolivian lines, thus uniting by iron
tracks of commerce the Atlantic and the Pacific. There
are other plans in mind to bring together Argentina,
Paraguay and Brazil in speedy communication as does
not now exist, and also to link up the rich interior (still
railroad-less) with coastal lines in something approxi-
mating a co-operative harmonised railway whole. A
prominent railroad man in Brazil told me, in reply to
the question as to the investment of capital by Americans
in Brazilian railway construction, that providing the
company selected some of the newly-developing central
territory, and had sufficient capital to use, this business
furnished one of the very greatest opportunities open to
foreigners in the country.
A study of railways existent in Brazil, which consist of
something like 20,000 miles of road in operation and
many more in projection, shows various kinds of hold-
ings. Some are administered by the Federal Government,
others by the State Governments, while others are owned
by these powers and leased. Another important class
have been built by corporations under a guarantee of in-
terest on the capital invested, while still a fifth class of
roads have been constructed without a guarantee, but in
return for grants of land, or other inducements.
The inhabitants of the United States, in ready com-
munication with one another through more than 250,000
miles of railways, can scarcely appreciate the rapid
changes railway construction has brought to Brazil in
comparatively recent years. The Brazilians have doubled
their railway mileage since 1900. Their agriculture and
their immigration have followed the new roads, laid at
enormous outlay of both national and foreign capital be-
tween the points of her largest and most productive sec-
244 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
tions. Business and trade of many kinds have been re-
animated, and the old, easy commercial days of the Em-
pire have been quickened into new and more vigorous
life by these greatest of all industrial benefactors — the
railway pioneers.
In this development, the characteristics of the people
of the country have been manifest. Brazil has been called
the land of extravagance, and the spoiled child of Europe.
She has been able to get money from the Old World for
the asking, and the natural riches of the country are so
great that she has thought that if resources ran low in one
direction there were many other treasure houses of wealth
in her untouched domains, and spending has been as nat-
ural as breathing with these favoured people. Success
has not meant to make money, but to spend it. Nothing
is more repugnant to the Latin of South America than
economy, and as long as the first land fortunes of these
countries continue to exist, Brazil, like her Spanish Amer-
ican neighbours, will not soil her hands overmuch in the
more trying pursuits of manufacturing development.
There is also here the ''lingering perfume of monarchial
institutions," and an attitude toward work in commercial
realms not directly conducive to national industrial ad-
vance. Latin America has not had her Benjamin Frank-
lin to give her by example the dignity with which he sur-
rounded manual labour. One can imagine the thoughts
of almost any South American, could he have seen the
author of Poor Richard's Almanac, the honoured Ambas-
sador to Europe and one of the writers of the Declaration
of Independence, in his earlier days wheeling his paper
for his printing press through the streets of Philadelphia,
lest people would think him too proud in his growing
newspaper business and assembling honours. That our
Brazilian friends will be finding it necessary to employ
greater individual initiative and application to industrial
pursuits in the future, is thought to be certain by many
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 245
of the most astute business men who believe that the
purse strings of Europe will not be as ready of access
after the war as they have been in the past, and that this
will be also to the ultimate advantage of Brazil's indigen-
ous life and progress. Regarding this question one man's
guess is as good as another, and the suppositions as to
what Europe will do after the war are far too numerous
and vague to permit of certified forecasting.
It is true that during the early railway projections in
this Republic, money was spent lavishly. Brazil's bor-
rowings were great. The cash was forthcoming and
streams of immigrants followed the newly-laid road, and
the European settlers bivouacked in advance along the
freshly-surveyed lines, staking their claims in a fashion
resembling the pioneer railroad days in the Far West of
the United States.
Concessions for new railways flooded Brazil shortly
after the formation of the Republic in 1889. Railway
companies were guaranteed interest on their investment,
and in some cases premiums were paid for each kilometre
of road built. Engineers came ; scientists came. Brazil
became conscious suddenly that her future as a nation de-
pended upon her economic development, and railroads
comprised the primal element of this new order.
This was not the only avenue into which the new Re-
public poured her borrowed riches from England, Bel-
gium, and France. There were vast construction schemes,
including harbours, dockage, city beautifying, electric
traction enterprises, and great sanitation projects in the
larger centres of population. It was a shining period of
industrial renaissance in the early nineties in this new-
est of American Republics. Brazil was the most extrava-
gant world customer, and no one seemed to think of an
inevitable day of reckoning. That this day came we all
know, and it brought a financial darkness upon the people
equal to that which has at times reigned in our own Re-
246 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
public in the earlier days. But the railways came also,
and the street tramways, and to-day one hears the Bra-
zilian talking with no uncertain pride of his twenty thou-
sand miles of railroads, modern in their every accessory,
and piercing through mountains and tropical jungle,
sweeping over the lofty table lands of the interior, letting
in the light of the civilised and commercial day to the
remote corners of this varied and dowered land.
Of these carriers, the largest government railroad is
the Central Railroad of Brazil which was opened in 1858,
and built in its different projections at great expense.
Its longest extension is north along the River Sao Fran-
cisco, a twenty-six-hour run, while its contemplated ex-
tension to Para, an additional distance of 2,200 miles,
three and one half days' journey, reveals something of
the railway ideas of the Government. This road was the
early result of a law passed in 1852 conceding the privi-
lege to railroads with a guarantee of five per cent, interest
on the capital used in enterprises which would connect
Rio de Janeiro to the provinces of Minas Geraes and Sao
Paulo. This line, originally known as the Dom Pedro II
Railway, connects Sao Paulo with Rio de Janeiro, a dis-
tance of 324 miles, which is made in nine hours and rep-
resents perhaps the most important passenger traffic in
the country. One is advised to take the journey in the
day time in order to enjoy the remarkable scenery to be
viewed along elevations, at times reaching two thousand
feet. The entrance to Rio de Janeiro is hardly less im-
pressive through the narrow channel of its beautiful Bay
than from the tortuous windings of this railway down
the mountains, giving panoramic glimpses at different
angles of the beautiful and historic city. One day, when
Thomas Cook and his followers become aware of Brazil,
the railway journeys of this land will be among the most
fascinating itineraries of world jaunts. A railroad with
such marvellous facilities should be an ever-increasing
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 247
asset to its backers, but, like the government railroads
of Chile, richness of territory, heavy traffic and wonder-
ful scenery have not always guaranteed successful rail-
road administration, from the point of view of dividends
to Brazilian government-controlled roads.
The Brazil Railway Company, which cari-ies at least
50,000,000 pounds sterling of foreign capital, and serves
virtually all of South Brazil with its branching lines, is
one of the greatest enterprises, from the point of foreign
capital involved, in the country. The road was begun in
1906, and it now manages 3,128 miles of lines and is busy
in the construction of at least 2,000 more miles, being also
associated with neighbouring roads which possess 1,712
miles. This is the largest railway system in Brazil and
has set a new pace in such matters as the revising of
tariffs and unifying scattered units. It has imported new
rolling stock and is doing much to encourage the cattle
industry, colony founding and the opening up of lumber
regions. The road has attempted railway exploitation in
a far-sighted manner in accordance with modern ideas
and experience, and the debt which Brazil owes these men
of vision and practical abilities is considerable.
The Brazil Railway Company traces its corporation
to the laws of the State of Maine, U. S. A., and the moving
spirit in many of the earlier projects has been Mr. Perci-
val Farquhar, of New York. In the large directorate are
found men of American, Canadian, French, British and
Brazilian nationalities, and the road has offices in Lon-
don, Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. An
indication of the interest of this company in wider rail-
way plans is revealed in the Madeira-Mamore Railway
Company, opened in 1912 with 226 miles of road, fur-
nishing the outlet for Bolivia on the Atlantic side. The
goods traffic on this road reports 38 per cent, of rubber
and there are sixty-two miles of road into Bolivia now in
construction, which involves the measuring and mark-
248 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
ing out of 6,000,000 acres of land. The Brazil Railway
Company owns 50 per cent, of the stock in this road.
It was with no little pleasure and interest that I trav-
elled over several thousand miles of this remarkable rail-
way development in four of the states of South Brazil,
remarking the signs of rehabilitation and progress which
have come to the road and the country it traverses since
1914, when the Honourable W. Cameron Forbes, ex-Gov-
ernor General of the Philippine Islands, was appointed
Receiver of the Brazil Railway Company. The present
manager of these railways who is acting as agent of the
Receiver, is Mr. William T. Nolting, formerly in charge
of the Postal and Telegraph service in the Philippines,
and to whose excellent business sense and efficiency these
great railway lines are at present rapidly responding.
The Sorocabana Railway is a line of 1,514 kilometres
in length and traverses the most fertile part of the State
of Sao Paulo. Its chief articles of transportation are
coffee, cereals, cattle and timber. The extension which is
now being built to the Parana River will open up a re-
markable coffee district, which will shortly add to the
richness of this already rich state. One learns that the
problem already upon these southern Brazil lines is to
build or obtain sufficient cars to meet the demand for
increased agricultural products which are being sent to
the coast ports and there reshipped not only to Europe
and the United States, but also to Uruguay, Argentina
and Chile.
The Rede Viacao Parana-Santa Catharina road passes
through the States of Parana and Santa Catharina and
forms a connecting link between the States of Sao Paulo
and Rio Grande do Sul — a line of 1,732 kilometres. The
Compagnie Auxiliare de Chemin de Fer au Bresil fur-
nishes railroad facilities to all parts of the great and in-
creasingly flourishing State of Rio Grande do Sul, and
all along its 2,172 kilometres is situated the country which
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 249
is now experiencing a big cattle ^'boom" and one day
later on will be the great Middle West of Brazil in agri-
cultural enterprises upon a large scale.
The railroad line Dona Thereza Christina is in the
State of Santa Catharina, where some of the largest Ger-
man settlements are located with their flourishing insti-
tutions and commercial enterprises, and the road runs
from the port of Imbatuba westward to the town of Lauro
Muller, a distance of 118 kilometres. This particular line
was built for the purpose of furnishing an outlet for the
coal mines in this district. In spite of the fact that as
yet Brazil has not been looked upon as a coal producer
in large extent, the coal mines which the traveller visits
in South Brazil reveal the latent possibilities of large
results.
The Brazil Railway Company, with its diversified in-
terests, is doing much along lines indirectly associated
with its work for the development of trade throughout
the country. The Compagnie do port de Rio de Janeiro
operates the Port of Rio de Janeiro. The Empreza de
Armazens Frigorificos, also a part of the Brazil Rail-
way's enterprise, is a cold storage plant in the Federal
Capital, which is now freezing and storing 5,000 tons of
meat per month, which is exported to Europe. This new
business for Brazil bids fair to be the cold storage deposit
for the perishable products reaching Rio de Janeiro from
the interior and is of vital moment to the larger produc-
tion and shipment of Brazil's peculiar climatic riches
along this line. The State of Rio Grande do Sul, for
example, has a capacity for raising fruits ranging from
the temperate to the sub-tropical zone and has needed
only a cold storage deposit in some such port as Rio de
Janeiro for the rapid development of its industry. No
one visits the extreme southern city of the country, Rio
Grande do Sul, who does not hear very soon from the in-
habitants concerning the Campagnie Frangaise do Port,
250 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
wliich lias been constructed by expending enormous capi-
tal, making the port a first-class harbour with facilities
capable of meeting a large future expansion which is
confidently expected. I was interested in this connection
to be told that one of the first engineers in this project
was Mr. E. L. Corthell, an American.
I had the privilege also of speaking with Mr. Murdo
Mackenzie, a well-known man throughout the United
States in connection with the cattle industry, who after
twenty-seven years of successful management of ranges
at home, was called to Brazil to take charge of the Brazil
Land, Cattle and Packing Company, which own large
ranges in the States of Matto Grosso and Minas Geraes.
Pure-blooded Hereford and Short-Horn cattle were im-
ported from the United States and the improvement al-
ready made in the herds of native cattle is a monument
to Mr. Mackenzie's ability.
The Southern Brazil Lumber and Colonisation Com-
pany is also the product of the organisation of the Brazil
Railways, for the purpose of developing the lumber in-
dustry in Parana and Santa Catharina, which has al-
ready received mention, as has also this company's De-
partment of Lands and Colonisation. In addition to these
many enterprising projects, this railroad has organised
the Campagnie do Grandes Hoteis de Sao Paulo for the
purpose of furnishing first-class hotel accommodations
at the summer resort of Guaruja, near Santos, which is
one of the best known pleasure places of Southern Brazil.
Mention might also be made of the Rio de Janeiro Hotel
Company, which the Brazil Railway has organised, pur-
chasing a site near the Municipal Theatre in Rio de
Janeiro, where a large modem hotel is contemplated. No
one can view such diverse and successful plans of de-
velopment without realising not only the field that Brazil
offers for foreign investment, but also the readiness with
which Brazilians themselves, who in the case of the Brazil
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 251
Railway Company, as with tliat other large Brazilian en-
terprise, and Rio de Janeiro and the Sao Paulo Tramway
Light and Power Companies, have readily co-operated,
furnishing in both cases the large proportion of the men
who are conducting these far-reaching lines of national
development.
The picture of transportation in Brazil would be in-
complete without mention of the Leopoldina Railway,
named from the Princess of the Imperial family of Brazil,
and now owned and controlled by British capital. During
the last fifteen years more than 6,000,000 pounds of Eng-
lish money have been invested in this road, which now
possesses a system embracing 1,701 miles of railways,
reaching outward fan-like from Rio de Janeiro as a
handle. There are connecting branch lines at the outer
end and the area served is 200,000 square miles, a terri-
tory larger than France. This road carries 4,000,000
passengers yearly, in addition to the staple products of
the country like coffee, timber, sugar, maize and live
stock. The Leopoldina has been one of the most costly
railroads to build in Brazil, piercing into the very centre
of the country, and winding sinuously about the moun-
tains. One gets the impression in riding on this railroad
that the roadbed is made up largely of curves, but there
are few more wonderful railway journeys than that which
this line affords between Rio de Janeiro and Victoria, an
eighteen-hours ' ride, through a picturesqueness of scen-
ery in which Brazil is uniquely endowed. There are all
the signs of modernity in the way of sleeping and dining
cars. The gradient in the road reaches frequently two
and one-half per cent., and at the Victoria end in the
Guyamor Pass a height of 786 metres is attained.
This railway serves also Petropolis, the mountain resi-
dence of Brazil's Diplomatic and fashionable world, which
some one has styled "the pocket show piece of Rio." Al-
though the journey is thirty-nine miles and takes but one
252 THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY
and one-half hours to accomplish, the trip upwards
through the mountains, especially at Raiz da Serra, where
the road rises on the rack system for a distance of three
and three-fourths miles, amid scenery of almost unparal-
leled beauty, the final vantage point is quite unforgettable
in the glimpse of Rio and its Bay lying miles away in the
sunlight, 2,000 feet below. Many of the Federal Capi-
tal's foreign and wealthy inhabitants, as well as Brazil-
ians, live the year around in Petropolis, commuting sev-
eral times during the week.
In a recent year the gross receipts of the Leopoldina
Railway were 1,688,926 pounds, the net receipts amount-
ing to 602,269 pounds — again revealing the fact that effi-
cient railroading is not necessarily carried on at a loss
in Brazil, even amid the most stupendous difficulties of
construction in a mountainous region.
North Brazil, from the point of view of railroad sys-
tems, is not so well served. There are a goodly number
of disconnected links of road between the towns and the
sea, but for generations it has been the habit of Brazilians
to travel by water between such cities as Bahia, Pernam-
buco and Para. River facilities have also competed suc-
cessfully with the railways, and although one hears of
new and long systems contemplated in this section, for the
most part thus far the North Brazilian roads are com-
paratively short ones. The Great Western Company con-
trols twelve of these railways, which for the most part are
conducted under the leasing system from the Government,
which system was instituted in 1911. It is interesting in
connection with northern Brazilian transportation to
note that there are 26,000 miles of navigable rivers in
North and Central Brazil, the longest stretches of navi-
gable waterways in the world, one-half of which, at least,
are now being used for traffic. The Amazon Steam Navi-
gation Company, with its headquarters at Para, alone
controls a fleet of more than forty river steamers repre-
TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION 253
senting a total tonnage of 20,000. The boats of this
company provide regular services on the Amazon and its
most important branches, covering over a quarter of a
million miles yearly.
The Republic of Brazil is now aroused to the immense
opportunities and needs of transportation. She desires
help of foreign capital and foreign leadership providing
these can be afforded in consistency with her laws and her
growing needs. Undoubtedly some of the most important
transportation developments, both by sea and land, of
the next quarter of a century will be forthcoming in this
land of areas and natural resources. Brazil's future
trade is limited in extent only by her transportation facili-
ties.
XVII
OUTDOOR SPORTS AND LOTTERIES
EvEKY one has heard of Santos Dumont, but few know
that not long since another intrepid Brazilian sailed in his
aeroplane over the lofty mountain range that divides Rio
de Janeiro from the progressive city of the Brazilian
southland, Sao Paulo. During my stay in the Federal
Capital of the Brazils, I lived for the most part in Nicthe-
roy, the old palm-covered city across the Bay, which now
serves as a summer residential abiding place for Cario-
cans, who especially love the swimming and the boating
which have their popular centre there. Among our diver-
sions not the least interesting was the watching of the
aeroplanes and water planes as they skimmed the blue
waters of Rio's Bay, and like sea birds, at times rested on
the waters or ran races with the yachts and motor boats.
Here also are the boat clubs and on Sundays the small
arms of the Guanabara Bay resemble a miniature Henley.
Rowing is one of the most popular of the Flumenenses'
sports and when the big regattas occur, all society, with
the Republic's President and the Government officials,
are in attendance and the scene is gala in the extreme.
Certain Europeans call the rowing of the young fine-look-
ing Brazilians a bit amateurish, but the earnest manner
in which these youth train for the ''events," together
with the high standards they have set for this sport,
would cause one to predict that the descendants of those
who began rowing and yachting on Guanabara Bay in
1846, will one of these years be sending challenges to
Oxford and Yale. There are at present a dozen or more
254
OUTDOOR SPORTS AND LOTTERIES 255
rowing clubs about the bay, and t 
