II
Because of peculiar economic conditions, the railroads of Brazil, as originally planned, were not intended, like ours, to facilitate commerce among the States, but only for the purpose of bringing the products of the various developed sections of the country to the nearest shipping points. Thus Recife, the seaport of the State of Pernambuco, is the focus of one system, São Salvador da Bahia of another, Rio de Janeiro of a third, Santos, the port of São Paulo, of a fourth, and Porto Alegre, the chief port of Rio Grande do Sul, of a fifth. Not long ago, when these conditions began to undergo radical changes, the government realized the desirability of establishing connections by means of lines running north and south. The Rio de Janeiran system was extended north to the growing port of Victoria, in the neighboring State of Espirito Santo, and connected with the systems of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1910 pushed still farther south into Uruguay, so that by the end of the year it was possible to travel by rail from Victoria to Montevideo, a distance of more than two thousand miles.
The lines north of Victoria, however, have not yet been connected and the nearly twenty-five-hundred-mile journey from Belém to Rio, therefore, must still be made by sea. But, long though the trip is, it is very far from being a monotonous one, if only the tourist has the time to make it on a coastwise steamer that stops at the principal ports of call. São Luiz da Maranhão, “the City of Little Palaces”; Fortaleza, the port of Ceará, regarded as one of the loveliest in Brazil; Pernambuco, with its canals and lagoons and bridges, a city that inspired a famous Brazilian poet to exclaim: “Hail, beautiful land! O Pernambuco, Venice transported to America, floating on the seas!” and terraced, crescent-shaped São Salvador, enthroned on the hills beside its magnificent bay—all these are so interesting that they richly repay a visit. All are older than the oldest English settlement in the northern continent, yet, unlike Jamestown, there is not one of them that has not kept pace with the national progress.
The huge breast of land on which these cities are located, that reaches out in a direct line toward the western extremity of Africa and lies in the track of all ships bound by way of the Atlantic to and from the country south of the equator, is the great sugar, cotton, and tobacco region, and was the first in Brazil to contain a large European population. The French coveted and poached on it and were the first to settle São Luiz in Maranhão; the Dutch seized it in 1630, while Holland was at war with Spain and Portugal and her possessions had fallen under Spanish suzerainty, and held it for twenty-five years in spite of all the Portuguese and Spanish could do, only to be driven out at last by the persistence and courage of the colonists themselves.
It is doubtful whether anywhere else could be found such a mingling of the classic, medieval, and modern in architecture, such quaint old institutions and customs of living in an atmosphere permeated with up-to-date business methods, such strangely attractive displays of primitive ornaments and curios as may be seen in their shops side by side with importations from Paris. In few other places could such results be studied as have come from the process of racial assimilation that has been going on for centuries in the mestizo classes—the Indian by the Caucasian, the African by both; for in Brazil, as in the islands of the Caribbean, immense numbers of blacks were brought over in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after the enslavement of the Indians had been forbidden. Nor could more cordial courtesy be met with anywhere than that with which one is here treated by all, as a rule, from the highly cultured, thoroughbred Portuguese to the poorest and most illiterate mixed-breed or negro laborer—though this is true of nearly every place in South America.
THE CITY OF BAHIA.
Of all these cities, though, Pernambuco is perhaps the most interesting. After Rio, São Paulo, and Bahia, it is the largest and most important in the country. Its canals and lagoons and handsome bridges, which give it an attractiveness distinct from the others, are accounted for by the fact that the city is divided into sections by the channels of the river at the mouth of which it lies, and a few hundred yards out from the shore is a long reef, running parallel with it, that forms a natural breakwater, which encloses the harbor and protects it from the heavy rollers in time of storm. It is from this reef that the section known as Recife, the old city proper, derives its name.
Recife is the commercial and shipping section now. There is not much to commend it to the sightseer except a few fine old churches and the Praca do Commercio, a place of general resort facing the local Wall Street, where almost every one who is engaged in business down town is to be seen taking a breathing spell at some hour or other during the day. Near by is a large hucksters’ market, which, it must be confessed, serves better than the hotel menu to disclose the peculiarities of the fare with which the denizens of the neighborhood regale themselves. And good fare it is, too, and wonderful to behold—to a northerner unaccustomed to such luxuriance.
The section in which the government buildings and custom house and the principal retail stores, theaters, and places of amusement are to be found is the one called São Antonio, on a large island a little to the southeast. This part of the town is much better built. Many of the old houses, as in Recife, are reminiscent, some of the early Portuguese, others of the Dutch occupation—tall, pointed-roof structures, painted white or pale blue or pink—but the newer ones, and the streets generally, are more sightly and characteristic of the indulgent, easy-going, artistic temperament of the people. The fashionable residence district is called Boa Vista and lies back on the mainland, where the bishop has his palace. Most of the houses here are the charming one-story affairs, surrounded by beautiful gardens, so suited to life in the tropics.
Three or four miles to the north is a suburban section called Olinda, where many of the old families still have their homes. In colonial times, as Dawson tells us, when this part of the country was supplying Europe with nearly all of the sugar it used and the planters were rolling in wealth, this “was the largest town in Brazil and the one where there was the most luxurious living and the most polite society. Great sums were spent in fêtes, religious processions, fairs, and dinners. The simple Jesuit Fathers were shocked to see such velvets and silks, such luxurious beds of crimson damask, such extravagance in the trappings of the saddle horses. Carriages were unknown and, instead, litters and sedan chairs were used, and these remained in common use until very recent times.” Lots of these old houses and customs still exist, and there are many new features of the town that are worth seeing.
São Salvador da Bahia, “where the wicked Brazilian cigars come from,” was the provincial capital once, and the seat of government of the whole Portuguese empire when the King was forced by Napoleon’s aggressions to take refuge in Brazil. Formerly, too, it was the headquarters for diamonds, before the mines in the south and in South Africa were developed. Now it is the capital of the rich Bay State, and is the third of the big cities in point of size and importance—though here the percentage of negro blood is much higher than anywhere else in the country.
Its location is delightfully picturesque, the upper section built on bluffs several hundred feet above the level of the bay, the lower along the shore. In this lower section, behind the docks, are the warehouses and factories, the arsenal and a great lighthouse, and, aside from defensive works of modern type, the old fortifications which the Dutch had made the most formidable in America in colonial times; and on the upper terraces are the Governor’s palace and public buildings, one of the best public libraries in the country, the cathedral and convents, the municipal theater, and the better class of residences and amusement resorts. In general, the streets are much like those of Belém and Pernambuco: paved with cobblestones and narrow in the shopping and café districts, with long white rows of two and three story houses built closely together, many with balconies above the show windows; and the parks are as beautiful and the residences out along the wide, palm-lined driveways are fully as sumptuous.
But, interesting as are all these places, their attractions are fairly dimmed by Rio’s, and especially by her gorgeous bay. From the Guianas to its southernmost boundaries, in fact, Brazil is one grand series of prismatic forests, majestic rivers and cascades, immense rolling plains and mountains—a panorama that is matchless anywhere in the world—but, if I were asked to point out some one feature that was preëminent among them all, I should not hesitate to select that bay. The bay of Naples, the Golden Horn of Constantinople, all those wonderful aspects by the mention of which writers have sought to impress those who have not seen the Rio bay with its grandeur and beauty, can but suffer by the comparison. “Extravagant language must be used in writing of it,” says Burton Holmes, “for there all is extravagance—extravagance of color, extravagance of form.” It is so incomparably sublime, says the Rev. James C. Fletcher, the author of one of the most noted of the descriptions—though no pen or brush could possibly do it justice—that “the first entrance must mark an era in the life of any one. I have seen the rude and ignorant Russian sailor, the immoral and unreflecting Australian adventurer, as well as the refined and cultivated European gentleman, stand silent on the deck, lost in admiration of the gigantic avenue of mountains and palm-covered isles, which, like the granite pillars of the Temple of Luxor, form a fitting colonnade to the portal of the finest bay in the world.”
Entering the outer bay, we see to the left the huge, fantastic figure of Gavia looming up from the shore, rock-capped and bald, and, a little beyond, the more symmetrical crests of the Three Brothers. Just distinguishable, off behind where the city lies, the summit of Corcovado (the Hunchback) appears. On the right are mound-shaped islands called the Father and Mother, that protrude from the water like tops of mountains partially submerged, and, off in the distance, the pinnacles of the Organ group mount higher than all. In the center, on a point jutting out from the mainland, is an isolated peak fifteen hundred feet high, called the Sugar Loaf, that stands like a sentinel guarding the narrow entrance to the harbor. As we draw nearer, the coloring of the mountain sides and shores, only a confusion of vague tints before, grows more and more vivid as the foliage begins to take form, and we see that on the hills above the rocks at the extremities of the peninsulas that extend from either side to form the gateway, are white-walled forts. These are known as São João and Santa Cruz, and, passing through, we are confronted by still another called Lage, midway between but a little beyond. It is steel-clad like a man of war, this one, and frowns down from an island of big rocks, dominating the passage. Once by this, we are in the harbor itself.
Copyright, 1911, by W. D. Boyce.
BOTAFOGO BAY, HARBOR OF RIO DE JANEIRO.
Photograph used by courtesy of Mr. W. D. Boyce and the Pan American Union.
Just within are shapely arms of the bay, Botafogo on the Rio side and Jurujuba on the other, that sweep around in wide, graceful curves to two other and much larger peninsulas opposite, like those of São João and Santa Cruz; and on one of them, the one to the left, is the old or commercial district of the national capital, on the other the pretty little city of Nictheroy, the capital of the State of Rio de Janeiro—for the city of Rio is the national capital and located in a separate federal district, like our city of Washington. Above these larger peninsulas the water broadens to a vast expanse, a sort of inland sea. Inclosing it like a wall, and on beyond as far as the eye can reach, stretch the serried peaks of the Coast Range.
Everywhere, bathed in the intense golden sunlight, are the same gradations of green, the same riot of brilliantly colored flowers, that we saw on the Amazon—only here the water is not muddy but deep blue, and the beaches are lined with almost snow-white sand. Then, as we steam slowly across to the anchorage, which lies over between the Villegagnon and Cobra islands near the quay, we have the first view of the city, dense in the center where it covers the peninsula, and stretching along the shore and here and there back between the foothills, for miles and miles to the north and south. The roofs of the houses are tiled in reds and browns; the walls are cream or rose-tinted or else dazzling white. “It looks like a fragment of fairy-land,” as Curtis expresses it—“a cluster of alabaster castles decorated with vines.”
Perhaps I ought to give warning that some of the writers on Brazil, after going into raptures over the scene in the bay, express themselves very differently respecting the experience on entering the city. That same Mr. Curtis, for instance, goes on to say that “the streets are narrow, damp, dirty, reeking with repulsive odors and filled with vermin-covered beggars and wolfish-looking dogs.” But he was writing of experiences encountered many years ago, before the reforms and improvements were undertaken, which, when completed, will have cost some sixty millions of dollars. It is still true, no doubt, that in the commercial district several of the ugly old sections remain, where there are narrow, tortuous streets and dingy warehouses, ship-chandleries, saloons and stores that cater to the stevedore class of trade, such as there are in all great shipping centers as old and as busy as Rio, and of course there are the districts in which the lowest classes foregather. But since he and Dr. Fletcher wrote their books, the old passenger landing place called the Pharoux quay has been transformed into a handsome square; adorned with gardens and a big bronze fountain; hills have been leveled to permit extensions and relieve the congestion; literally thousands of marshy, mosquito-breeding places have been filled in and reclaimed; a fine drainage canal has been constructed, an adequate sewerage system installed, and a system of masonry docks is nearing completion that will rival the celebrated docks of Santos and Buenos Aires; some of the streets have been broadened and more have been repaved, and the sanitary conditions and healthfulness generally have been so improved that yellow fever is a thing of the past.
Besides all this, many magnificent new government buildings have been erected, notably the Congressional Palace on Tiradentes Square. The estimated cost of this building alone was $15,000,000 and it is proudly claimed to be one of the finest in South America; also the Palace of the Supreme Court, of rose-tinted stone and marble, with bronze ornamentations, and the Post Office and Mint, National Printing Office and National Library, all of great architectural beauty, and the City Hall and Municipal Theater. This last is an ornate, high-domed marble and stone structure of Moorish design that cost $5,000,000 to build. And, to facilitate traffic, a superb hundred-and-fifty-foot wide avenue, the Avenida Central, has been constructed clear across the business section of the city for a mile or more, opening a vista from bay to bay. To do this more than six hundred houses had to be purchased and torn down; they have been replaced by others of a pleasing general uniformity and elegance of appearance, of which any city in Europe or America might well be proud. The Jornal do Commercio building, for example, looks more like one of our fashionable metropolitan hotels or apartment houses, than a business establishment. The sidewalks are paved with mosaics and kept perfectly clean.
BAY AND CITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO FROM SUMMIT OF CORCOVADO.
Beginning at the southern end of this avenue and following the contour of the shore past the elegant residence districts of Gloria and Flamengo, they have constructed an esplanade a mile long, called the Avenida Beira Mar, and, farther on, around the exquisite inlet of Botafogo, where some of the handsomest of the residences are, have converted the semicircular beach into a still lovelier avenue, adorned with alternate rows of trees and arc lights like the other, and flower beds and formal lawns. Unless it is the more comprehensive one from the top of Corcovado, there is no more enchanting view than that of this whole ensemble from the Morro da Viuva at the northern end of the semicircle, especially looking straight across at the hills on the opposite side, where the rose-tinted buildings of the Military School nestle in the green depths of a rocky cleft, with the Sugar Loaf towering behind.
And then, up near the business section again, there is the Paseio Publico, with its park and lakes and broad waterside terrace overlooking the whole southern part of the harbor, and the naval barracks and fortifications on historic Villegagnon, quite close at this point. It was here that the adventurer for whom it is named made the first attempt at colonizing the neighborhood: with a party of Huguenots sent over by Admiral Coligny to escape religious persecutions in France and to found a place of refuge for those of the Protestant faith. The Paseio Publico is regarded by many as the most charming of the parks, but there are lots of these beautiful spots. One of them, the Botanical Garden, which is larger and more complete than the one in Belém, is known the world over from the thousands of pictures that have been published of its magnificent avenue of royal palms. Few visit Rio without going there; and now that a good cog-wheel railroad has been built from one of the trolley lines up to the summit of Corcovado, the whole mountain side has become a wildwood park. With reference to the view from the summit, I cannot resist quoting from Arthur Ruhl, who describes it so delightfully.
“The Corcovado is a rock jutting over the trees,” he says, “so sheer that you look down on Rio and the blue harbor as from a balloon—down two thousand feet of velvet green descents to the terra cotta roofs and sun-washed walls and the wheel-spoke streets like lines on a map. Not one of our smoke hives, but a city of villas and palms and showering vines and flowers, meandering about over the foothills, immersed in the blazing sun. The cool, laughing sea envelops it—blue, and bluer yet in the sun; and, all about in it, islands—agate in turquoise—jut out as though the gods had tossed a handful in the water. It is, as I heard an American say of the backward look toward Rio as the train climbs to Petropolis, as though one had been taken up into the mountains to see the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” Petropolis, though, is not simply another viewpoint, but one of the loveliest of the suburban mountain cities, where the late Emperor lived, surrounded by the ambassadors and ministers of the foreign countries and the nobility and aristocracy of the old régime. It is still the home of the diplomatic corps, and the most fashionable of the suburbs.
Do not imagine for a moment, however, that the pleasures of a visit to Rio are limited to such things. Like all cities of its respectable age and size—for it has almost, if not quite, reached the million mark now—it has its antiquities and places of historical interest, its museums, art galleries, libraries, statues and churches (the paintings and decorations in the beautiful Candelaria Church are the richest in South America), and its theaters and amusement resorts of every description; and, down town in that same commercial part that Mr. Curtis scored so heavily, is the noisy, vivacious old Rua do Ouvidor, of all things Rio de Janeiran the one that possesses the most individuality, the place where everybody who is anybody is to be seen. It is only about twenty feet wide—just think of it, the “Broadway” of a great city like Rio!—so narrow and crowded that vehicles are not allowed to go through at certain hours of the day, but most of the old somber Portuguese-style buildings have been replaced by modern ones, and what it lacks in width is compensated for by the attractiveness of the stores and cafés.
AVENUE OF ROYAL PALMS, RIO BOTANICAL GARDENS.
AVENIDA CENTRAL, RIO DE JANEIRO.
These cafés, principally devoted to the service of the demi tasse, are everywhere in Brazil, but here particularly they are the rendezvous for the official, military, professional and more prosperous commercial classes, who drop in at all hours to talk things over to the music of the orchestra—everything from business, religion and politics to the idlest society gossip—only they sip coffee, for the most part, instead of highballs and beer. And such coffee! A North American never realizes what a perfectly delectable flavor coffee really is capable of, how deliciously rich and sirupy it is when brewed by those who know how, until he has drunk it in the Orient or down there in Brazil.
There was a time, and not so very long ago, when these crowds along the Rua do Ouvidor were all of one sex. The ladies of the upper classes—when they went shopping at all, instead of simply having samples sent to their houses to choose from—remained in their carriages while the shopkeepers brought out to them for their inspection the various qualities of such articles as were desired; but this old world idea of seclusion, like many others at the capital, has given way to more advanced ones now. Brazilian metropolitan womanhood is beginning to awaken and follow the general trend toward emancipation. In these days ladies not only appear on the streets and go from shop to shop on foot, as do the ladies of our cities, but drop in at certain unexceptionable cafés for luncheon, or perhaps at a matinée or some moving picture show, unattended by their husbands or fathers or brothers. The Avenida, Saturday afternoons when the weather is pleasant, reminds one of a Parisian boulevard, so densely is it thronged with smartly gotten up promenaders and so well patronized are the little sidewalk tables under the awnings in front of the cafés. Needless to say, on these occasions the ladies do graciously suffer the attendance of their admirers or the male members of their families.
“‘Superb’ is the word that best fits the beautiful Brazilian woman,” no less an authority than Burton Holmes enthusiastically declares. “‘Striking’ is the word that best describes her dress.” Then, referring to their appearance at the opera: “The belles of Rio seem to have taken the styles of Paris and given to them a strange, exotic something that makes the toilettes seen at the Municipal Theater far more striking and effective than those at the Paris opera,” he goes on. “Mere man cannot say in what the difference lies, but the fact remains that while the gowns may have been made, or at least designed, in Paris, they are not Parisian; they are instead pronouncedly Brazilian. The men, too, deserve a word of mention, for they are very well-dressed men, much better dressed than the men of Paris or of Lisbon—all of course in evening dress, all looking as if they were accustomed to wearing it. The women in the boxes retain their hats. The men might as well retain theirs, for they are quite invisible behind the massed millinery of their fair companions.”
Rio, of course, has all the up-to-date public utilities—electric street-car lines, lights, telephones, taxicabs and the rest; but, as Arthur Ruhl so aptly puts it, “Before the things seen and heard and vaguely felt,” in this city of such strange, peculiar charm, “the endless procession of vague, unrelated things that baffle and allure—semi-antique humans living languidly in the midst of a sun-drenched nature, which, by its very luxuriance, might seem to have overpowered them—Latin sensibility tinged with African superstition—negro coachmen in top-boots, such as Puss-in-Boots might have worn—dusky, velvet-eyed donzellas—palms, blazing walls and indigo sea—one loses interest in railroads and power plants and the things we do better at home. Brazilians must interest themselves in such things, for therein lies their salvation. If I seem to neglect them, it is because it seems absurd to visit a conservatory full of orchids and spend one’s time seeing how the steam-pipes are put in. By the same token,” he adds—
“There is a certain mellowed dignity in the Brazilian scene—the natural inheritance of the empire, and doubtless, also, a reaction of race and climate—lacking in the more energetic Argentina. It was only in 1889 that good Dom Pedro—that kindly, cultured, old-school gentleman—was dethroned and shipped off to Portugal. It is only since 1887 that the negroes ceased to be slaves. Brazil’s foremost statesman, the big, able Minister of Foreign Affairs, who, as he moved amongst his slender Caribbean brethren at the 1906 conference, looked like the senior partner of some old firm of Wall Street bankers, is still called ‘Baron’ Rio Branco. You can still see in Petropolis the house of the Princess Regent and her husband, the Conde d’Eu, overgrown somewhat with vegetation and buried in somber shades. Rio’s great public library was started by King João VI himself when the Portuguese court was transferred to Brazil in 1808.
“There is still a suggestion of the old world and grand manner. They have their Academy of Forty Immortals; their politicians are often pleased to practice the politer arts. Senhor Joahim Nabuco, who presided at the conference, has written his ‘Pensées.’ These littérateurs may be, as Senhor Bomfim suggests in ‘A America Latina,’ ‘inveterate rhetoricians whose abundant works are taken as a proof of genius.’ Yet at least they have a certain way with them. Pompous, grave, they go through the solemn motions. In spite of the vast majority who neither read nor write, Brazilians of the upper class are probably more ‘cultured,’ in the narrow literary sense of the word, than our average man of the same class at home. They speak and write French as a matter of course in addition to their own language, and most of them make fair headway with English. They enjoy and encourage music and painting and poetry. Opera not only comes to Rio each winter as it does to Buenos Aires, but they have their National Institute of Music and their native composers, one of whom especially, the late Carlos Gomez, has heard his operas successfully produced in Europe. They have their National Academy of Fine Arts and a gallery which, I am sure, is visited and appreciated more than the really excellent one tucked away upstairs in Buenos Aires’ Calle Florida.”