The curious winding track of the Leopoldina Railway.
Further up the coast lies Pernambuco, and this likewise will be found a most desirable halting-place. It is a conglomeration of four towns, Recife, the commercial quarter, Santo Antonio, which contains the Government offices; San José, where the public works and railway stations are situated; and Boa Vista, the fashionable residential quarter. The several townships are connected by handsome bridges, a feature which gives Pernambuco a distinct character of its own, and has earned for it the sobriquet of the “Brazilian Venice”; a coral reef about five hundred feet from the shore runs along the entire front of the city, and forms a natural protection to the magnificent harbour. This reef marches with the coast from Bahia to Maranhão, a distance of nearly a thousand miles.
THE RAILWAY OVER THE CONFLUENCE OF THE PAQUEQUR AND PARAHYBA RIVERS.
One is charmed with the aspect of Pernambuco long before one sets foot upon its quay. The palm groves and the red roofs of the houses compose into a really charming picture. The population of the city verges upon two hundred thousand. Its docks are spacious and well managed, and its importance as a commercial centre is demonstrated by the fact that no fewer than ten cable lines link it up with the great outer world. Several railways, of which the most important are the Great Western of Brazil, the Recife and San Francisco, and the Alagoas, connect it with the interior, and bring down to the port supplies of sugar, cotton, rice, tobacco, indigo, cinnamon, pineapples, grapes, oranges, bananas, and other commodities. The shippers of Pernambuco are favourably placed for despatching their merchandise to its destination, for the port occupies a point on the American seaboard nearer to Europe than any other.
If the traveller still pines for new worlds to conquer, the Lage Iramos steamers will take him to the mouth of the mighty Amazon, known to every schoolboy as the largest river in the world, and destined to become more and more the great outlet for the trade of Brazil. The great estuary of that stream is like a huge inland sea debouching into the ocean, for it is not only the waters of the Amazon that are there discharged, but the effluents of a dozen tributaries, many of them larger than any river that Europe can boast. The trip up to Manáos, many miles inland, will be more than sufficient to impress the voyager with the magnitude and majesty of this noble stream.
CHAPTER XXVI
São Paulo
UNLIKE most of the State capitals of Brazil, São Paulo lies some distance inland, but in close touch with its port Santos, some thirty-five miles distant. Many passengers travelling by the Royal Mail steamers bound for the Argentine, disembark at Rio and take the train from the Central Railway Station across country to São Paulo, rejoining their steamer at Santos. This variation is not only a pleasant break in the voyage, but affords the opportunity for viewing the most thriving and prosperous city in South America.
The journey by rail from Rio to São Paulo occupies about twelve hours in a sleeping or observation car, equalling if not excelling anything of the kind in Europe. The separate two-berth cabins provided with electric light and fans will be appreciated by the most experienced railway travellers accustomed to the latest improvements in the way of comfort.
The first part of the journey is through a hilly country, with immense woods and thick undergrowth of tropical vegetation, covering the earth as with a vivid green mantle as far as the eye can reach. Numbers of curious trees with fantastically twisted stems reaching to a height of 100 to 150 feet tower above the dense masses of tangled foliage, tall palms of many varieties with fan-shaped leaves, and straight smooth trunks, grow side by side with dwarfed bushy shrubs, over which great banana leaves bend with their own weight, whilst magnificent flowers and orchids of brilliant colour peep out from the dark recesses of the woods, sparkling like jewels in a mass of lovely hair.