III
As already said, from Rio one may go to São Paulo, the second largest—and, with the exception of Rio, the most important—city in the country, by railroad, and almost as comfortably, too, as one may travel from New York to Chicago. The city of São Paulo is the capital of the State of that name, the great land of coffee, the land in fact that produces more than half of all the coffee grown in Brazil, and Brazil as a whole produces more than three-fourths of all that the world consumes. The city has a population of about 350,000, and is located in the mountains, about forty miles back from the coast and three thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is connected by railroad with Santos, its seaport, where the best docks in the country are now. These two cities, though founded in early colonial times, are not quite as interestingly characteristic as Rio and the others that have been mentioned, for they are far enough south to be in the temperate zone, and have, therefore, attracted a very much larger foreign element, particularly German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. There are not so many negroes and mixed breeds among the laboring classes, and their institutions, business methods and social life more nearly resemble our own; and, as a consequence, they have certainly not been behind the rest of Brazil in development. As in Rio, enormous sums have recently been spent for sanitation, public buildings, and improvements.
São Paulo has thus been transformed into one of the most healthful cities in the world, and one of the handsomest. Its climate, uniformly mild like that of southern Europe, has never left anything to be desired—except, perhaps, snow and ice, if there are among the residents there any homesick northerners who prefer the sharper seasonal contrasts to which they are accustomed. The site is too near the tropics and the mountains are not high enough for freezing cold, yet so high that the air has a bracing, invigorating quality. As Senator Root declared when he was visiting the country: “There is something in the air of São Paulo that makes strong and vigorous men.” Their strength and vigor are not attributable, however, to the climate alone. It is an inheritance. The early Paulistas were of the sturdiest type, men who were compelled to maintain themselves and extend and defend their possessions by fighting and the hardest kind of work—an instance, they were, of the survival of the fittest. It is small wonder that their descendants, with their rich heritage of health and vitality and traditions, and their enormously productive lands, should be distinguished for their enterprise as well as for their wealth and social and intellectual culture. In political and educational progress they have always been prominent.
A splendid monument to their patriotism and enterprise is Ypiranga, a great building of classic design, erected on the site of the proclamation of independence on a hill overlooking the city, and intended both to commemorate the event and to be used as an institution of learning. Among other interesting things, it contains a remarkable museum. They have a polytechnic school in the city that is the pride of the whole country, and the graduates of which are in demand everywhere because of the particularly efficient system of training; an institution known as the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts, devoted to the practical instruction of the artisan classes, which graduates skilled workmen by the hundreds every year; and an excellently equipped normal school that occupies a whole square, facing the Praca de Republica—these in addition to primary institutions and conventional colleges and law and medical schools, that are attended by students from all over Brazil.
There is even a well-patronized non-sectarian North American institution, known as the Mackenzie College, which has been in existence for thirty-five years or more, and, of all surprising things—and this is only one of many indications of the liberal catholicism of their views respecting other religious beliefs, notwithstanding the fact that, as everywhere else in South America, Roman Catholicism is the religion of the state—an Episcopal seminary, conspicuously located in a beautiful building opposite the Jardim Publico. By mentioning particularly these institutions, I do not mean to imply that there are not excellent educational facilities elsewhere in Brazil—especially, of course, in Rio—but the people of São Paulo seem to devote more attention to education than in the other parts of the country and the percentage of illiteracy there, among the people as a whole, appears to be much smaller.
The Governor’s Palace and the principal office buildings of the administration are located around two large squares, one called the Largo de Palacio, the other the Praca Municipal, in the heart of the city. Several of them are spacious, imposing-looking buildings of stone and marble that compare favorably with those of the national government at Rio; all are in keeping with the importance of the city and State—particularly their superb big theater, which is another of those surprisingly costly and attractive places of amusement maintained by the municipality that one sees so many of in South America. The streets in the Triangle, as the commercial district is called, are crowded and busy. There is an air of briskness about them that is refreshing—although many of the busiest are narrow and unattractive in appearance, this being the old part of the town.
Even the Rua São Bento, the principal shopping street, is not much wider than the Rua do Ouvidor in Rio; but from this district a viaduct eight hundred feet long and fifty wide leads to the new parts, where there are broad, handsomely built-up avenues and shaded promenades, detached houses of modern type, surrounded by gardens, and an atmosphere of ease as well as luxury, as in the less bustling cities to the north. The Avenida Paulista is charming. There are few handsomer thoroughfares in America, either North or South, than this—and it is the common boast that along the Rua des Palmeiras, their most fashionable residence street, and in certain of the suburbs, the palatial homes of their millionaires are unrivaled in Brazil.
The great coffee port of Santos, once numbered among the dread homes of Yellow Jack, but now as healthful as any port in the tropics, is only sixty or seventy miles away by railroad—an excellently equipped road that runs down the slope from the mountain range to the coast over a route strikingly rich in scenic effects and grand views. The city, which has a population of about sixty thousand, is situated on the western shore of a landlocked bay connected with the ocean by a narrow but deep riverlike channel, ten miles long and flanked, like the city itself, by picturesque hills. The streets are well paved and clean, the residence section and suburbs attractive, and a narrow-gauge railroad affords an opportunity for an enjoyable trip to a seaside resort near by, where there are good surf-bathing and plenty of places of amusement.
It is said that more than 10,000,000 bags of coffee, each weighing 132 pounds, are shipped from this port every year. The extensive system of masonry docks and cranes is famous for its efficiency and is the best in South America next to that in Buenos Aires. The big steamers and sailing vessels lying broadside to these docks and anchored in the broad harbor, the custom house and warehouses facing the quay, the groups of dealers and agents standing bargaining out in front, the sailors scurrying about, the heavy teams heaped up with sacks of coffee, the long lines of negro stevedores, each with a bag or two balanced on his head, carrying them aboard the ships, all working in the blazing sun in this labyrinth of white-walled streets, with their background of green hills and blue water, make up a scene that is both lively and bizarre.
The custom of coffee drinking is relatively of rather recent development among peoples of Europe and their descendants in America. For some reason, for a long time after it made its way west from Arabia and Turkey, it was under the ban of the church. Maybe this was because of its Mohammedan origin. It was not until 1652 that the first house that made a specialty of serving coffee was opened in London, and about the same time it was introduced in France. From then on it has spread until the amount now consumed the world over is simply enormous, especially in the United States, where we take somewhere near half of all that is grown. At first it came only from northern Africa, Arabia, and Turkey; then the Dutch began experimenting and succeeded in cultivating it in Java, and the French in the West Indies. For a while these were the principal sources of supply. The story goes that in 1760 a Portuguese, João Alberto Castello Branco, planted a bush in Rio, and from that small start, thanks to her peculiarly favorable soil and climate, Brazil soon outstripped the others and took the lead. And it is in these uplands of the State of São Paulo that more than half of all of this enormous amount of coffee that is consumed in the world to-day is produced. There are between fifteen and twenty thousand cafezals, or plantations, employing hundreds of thousands of laborers, and some of the plantations are so vast that they grow millions of trees. Here it is that most of the immigrants flock. There is a million of Italians alone.
COFFEE PLANTATION, BRAZIL.
The general contour of the country is not flat but rolling. In great patches the bushy little trees cover the hills and valleys in long, parallel rows, from six to eight feet high, for they are kept pruned to a certain height to facilitate cultivation. The leaves are dark green and glossy, somewhat resembling myrtle, only not so dry and thick; the flowers are white and grow in clusters from the axils of the branches; the fruit, when ripe, is about the size of and resembles a dark red cherry, and grows in clusters, like the flowers, and the air is fragrant with perfume. No more beautiful sight could be imagined than one of these plantations in full bloom. Each of the red berries contains two coffee beans, embedded in a yellowish, sweetish pulp. The bean, in its natural shape, is convex on one side and flat on the other. As sold on the market, with the shell, pulp and skin removed by a mechanical process that requires an expensive outfit of machinery, the product is the result of a development in agricultural methods that is not surpassed in the wheat industry of Argentina or our own country, and which is very far ahead of that of the rubber industry in the north. It is said that no new trees have been planted since 1903 because the production has been so great that the government has thought best to restrict it until the demand shall once more have equaled the supply. The reverse of this condition has existed for several years.
The neighbors of the Paulistas in the State of Rio Grande do Sul are principally engaged (with Paraguay) in supplying the twenty or more millions of consumers in South America and growing numbers elsewhere, with the leaves from which the beverage is made that is known as yerba maté, or Paraguay tea, which those who drink it contend has all the stimulating and nourishing qualities of the tea we use, but none of its injurious effects. Next to coffee and rubber, this is the greatest of Brazil’s sources of revenue. These southerners also raise cattle and sheep on a large scale—though not yet sufficiently large for export—and do a good deal of canning and manufacturing. Their principal seaport, Porto Alegre (Smiling Port), has a population of nearly 150,000, and, as in Pernambuco and Rio, and all the big coast cities in fact, extensive harbor improvements are under way. This city too is to have a system of masonry docks and hoisting machinery and new warehouses along the quay. A few miles north, and connected with Porto Alegre by railroad, is São Leopoldo, the port of a large German colony that was founded in the State nearly a hundred years ago.
From Rio it is possible also to go by railroad to Bello Horizonte, the remarkable capital of Minas Geraes, the most densely populated of all the Brazilian States. This city is unique in that it did not have its beginning in the usual way and get itself chosen as the capital; it was built only a few years ago on a previously unoccupied site for the very purpose, and at a cost, for only the buildings owned by the government, of more than $30,000,000. It is located in a lovely, wooded, farm-dotted valley, through the length of which flows a river, interrupted at intervals by cascades. Near the city, both sides of the stream have been converted into a delightful park. One of the avenues that run through the center of the city is named for its founder, Affonso Penna, and is a hundred and fifty feet wide and shaded by three rows of trees. The hotels are comfortable, train service good, and the journey through a country of beautiful scenery and interesting people and towns.
This is the great mining State of Brazil. Of it Marie Robinson Wright says: “Few countries can boast of such an abundance and variety of mineral resources as Minas Geraes, which derives its name, signifying General Mines, from the industry that gave it existence, and which owes to this principal attraction the preponderance of its population.” Gold was not discovered during the first two hundred years after settlement had been begun by the Portuguese, but, when it was at last discovered, the yield was very great. In 1792 the amount registered in Rio—and this record, of course, was incomplete—was 360,000 pounds in weight. An English authority has estimated the total output up to within recent years at £200,000,000 sterling. “Of all the fabulous tales related of bonanza princes,” Mrs. Wright goes on to say, “the palm for extravagance belongs to the history of the early mining days in Brazil, when horses were shod with gold, when lawyers supported their pleadings before judges with gifts of what appeared at first sight to be the choicest oranges and bananas, but proved to be solid gold imitations, when guests were entertained at dinner by the discovery of gold pebbles in their soup instead of grains of corn, when nuggets were the most convenient means of exchange in the money market;” but here, as in some of our own mining regions, with the gradual exhaustion of the surface deposits and the impossibility of continuing by primitive methods, mining came to be more and more neglected. Modern methods and machinery are once more bringing the industry into prominence, and a considerable amount of gold is even now being taken out by the few companies that have already installed up-to-date plants.
The diamond mines in the neighborhood of the old town of Diamantina (also easily accessible by rail) have been famous since the first discoveries were made in 1727. In these parts several of the most valuable gems in the world are said to have been found—for instance, the Braganza, the richest of the Crown jewels of Portugal, the Regent, named in honor of Dom João VI, the Estrella do Sul (Star of the South), that weighed a hundred and twenty-five carats after lapidation and was purchased by the Rajah of Baroda, it is said, for $15,000,000, and the Dresden, which weighed sixty-five carats after lapidation and was also bought by an Indian prince. For many years, until the South African mines came into competition, this was the chief source of the world’s supply. The country is also rich in amethysts, tourmalines, topazes and aquamarines. The State of Bahia is still the principal source of the black diamond, known as the carbonado. The largest carbonado known was found there in 1835. It weighed 3150 carats.