The South American Tour

by Annie S. Peck

PRAÇA DE FREI CAETANO BRANDÃO, PARA

BAHIA

The narrow Chili street runs from the Praça da Constitucão to the Castro Alves Square, 150 feet above the bay, with a Statue of Columbus surmounting a marble fountain in the garden. On one side is the San João Theater. Here also are the Paris and the Sul Americano Hotels, and the building of the journal, the Diario da Bahia. Following from here Carlos Gomez street we may come to the Piedade Square with a pretty garden, and a marble fountain with a symbolic statue of an Indian stepping on a serpent. On one side of the square is the Piedade Church, on another the Senate House, of Italian style of architecture. Passing the Police Headquarters, a pretty street, Pedro Luiz, with modern buildings, leads to the Passeio Publico, a delightful resting place, the largest and most popular in the city, shaded by mango trees, containing an obelisk of Egyptian marble, commemorating, one says, the arrival of King João VI in Brazil, another the opening of Brazilian ports to foreign commerce in 1808. At one side, on the Afflictos Square, the thick walls of an old fortress have been remodeled into police barracks. A steep street leads down from the Passeio Publico to a colonial fortification, the Gamboa Fortress at the edge of the water.

The Largo Duque du Caxias contains in a pretty garden an imposing monument of Carrara marble and bronze, 100 feet in height, named the Dois de Julho, the date of the evacuation of the State by the Portuguese troops in 1824, which sealed its independence. At the top of the tall Corinthian Column stands the traditional Indian with foot on a dragon, signifying the triumph over despotism. Colossal figures of bronze represent the great rivers of Brazil, with other accessories making this one of the finest monuments in Brazil. A notable peculiarity of the city is that the monuments are of symbolic character and not of individuals, no busts or statues of heroes save one to the English philanthropist, Dr. Paterson, a physician whose good works were many. In the Praça do Riachuelo, which is overlooked by the handsome edifice of the Commercial Association, another beautiful monument, a marble pillar surmounted by a flying Victory, commemorates the triumph of Brazil over Paraguay in the terrible war of 1864-70.

Among a number of interesting churches is the San Francisco, built in 1713 with elaborate and gorgeous interior decorations. The Collegio Church of the Jesuits, now the Cathedral, built of stone prior to 1572, on the Largo Quinze de Novembro, has an imposing interior, the details of its ornamentation, from the design of the main altar to the work in the ceiling, making it perhaps the most curious in Brazil. A Benedictine Church, San Sebastião, on a central eminence, is peculiar in being all white inside and out, the main altar and the Saints’ images of Carrara marble, while the two towers and the dome, the highest spot in the city, are white also. Oldest of all in Bahia is the Church Nossa Senhora da Ojuda.

Bahia boasts of one of the best Medical Schools in South America, with a finer building than the School in Rio possesses; this on the Largo Quinze de Novembro. It has also a Law College and other excellent schools, one of the most valuable, a Lyceum of Arts and Trades founded in 1872 with day and night classes, workshops, and class rooms, and 2500 pupils in attendance. A Public Library with 30,000 volumes, a Municipal with 20,000, and still others are of good service to the people. The Poorhouse is an attractive looking place and there are excellent hospitals.

In the eastern suburbs are charming vistas; and of homely; interest are the hundreds of colored women engaged in laundry work along a little stream with the clothing spread out upon the grass and bushes. No machine washed and dried clothing there, but all done in good fresh air.

Bahia is the great cocoa port of Brazil, furnishing about one-fifth of the world’s supply; the State is wonderfully rich in productions of almost every kind. One may ask what does it not produce rather than what it does: coffee, tobacco, rubber, cotton, sugar, nuts, woods, etc., besides a wealth of minerals of great diversity; the largest diamond carbonate ever discovered was found here in 1895. It weighed 3150 carats and was divided in Paris into smaller stones. Gold, copper, and many of the precious stones are found in various sections. Even the sand is exported, being worth $100 a ton; some, at least, of a deposit found by an American engineer along the shore, called monazite, rich in thorium silicate, used for electric lights.