Brazil and La Plata: The personal record of a cruise

by C. S. Stewart

The Indians and the snakes of this section of the Empire have been among our topics of conversation with Mr. Wells. The settlement of the white man extends but a short distance inland from the coast: not more than fifty or sixty miles at farthest. The interior is still a wilderness in the possession of wandering bands of the Aborigines. These cherish a deadly hatred against the whites; and, prowling along the frontiers in small companies, rob and murder them whenever they find opportunity. Sometimes they venture within twenty and thirty miles of the coast. A party of seven, not long since, made an attack at daybreak upon the shanty of an American, who has put up a saw-mill on the borders of the forest. Though single-handed, he hazarded a shower of their arrows, and afterwards put them to flight by the show of a musket, that, from the dampness of the priming-powder, missed fire.

Venomous snakes are said to be numerous on the island, and some are found occasionally even in the town. Not long since, a German lady, in returning from a party in the evening with her husband, trod upon one whose bite is considered to be death. Fortunately, her foot was placed near its head, and she escaped its fangs; and though it coiled itself about her ankle, she succeeded in throwing it off without injury. A remedy said to be a specific for the most virulent poison of these reptiles is kept at the apothecary’s; and families in the country make it a point to have a supply on hand. The mixture consists of six drachms of the oil of amber, two of the spirits of ammonia, and one of alcohol. The dose is twenty-four drops in a wine-glass of brandy, or other spirit, three or four times a day; the wound being also washed and kept wet with it. The ammonia is the active agent in the cure; and should be given freely till a profuse perspiration is induced. If the theory of some be true, that the virus of all snakes is but a modified form of prussic acid, the volatile alkali, ammonia, is the antidote, as that is known to neutralize the fatal acid. Alcohol alone is thought to have effected cures. A young German here was bitten not long since in the country, and being without the prescribed antidote, and unable to obtain it, unwilling to meet in consciousness the doom which he believed to await him, he swallowed a whole bottle of the common rum of the country, that he might be thrown into a state of insensibility. This was soon the case, and remaining dead drunk for twenty-four hours, on recovering his consciousness he was free from all effects of the bite. Here too, there may have been philosophy in the cure. The poison of a serpent being a powerful sedative, its effects may be best counteracted by a powerful stimulant.

A sad case occurred some three weeks ago at Santa Cruz. A fine young man of twenty, the proprietor of a small plantation, was at work with his slaves preparing a piece of ground for a plantation of sugar-cane. Coming to a spot in which the bushes and undergrowth were particularly thick, he cautioned the negroes against working in it with their naked feet and legs, as it had the appearance of a piece that might be infested with snakes. Protected himself by boots, he entered to open a way in advance, but had scarcely done so before the fangs of a jacaraca, one of the most poisonous of reptiles, were fastened in an unprotected part of his leg. Neglecting to apply immediate remedies, he was in a short time a corpse.

May 29th.—I have been complying here with the injunction recently received to “make hundreds of sketches;” and this morning, while taking one, of the lower parts of the square and market-house, from the balcony of the drawing-room, had an opportunity of introducing the Commodore as a conspicuous figure. In a stroll in the square before breakfast, he stopped for a little observation near the groupings of men, donkeys, and milk-boys in front of the market. Espying among them the bright little fellow we had seen at his father’s cabin on the mountain, with the benevolence and good-will of his nature, he bought the whole stock of boiled beans and farina of an old negro woman seated on the grass near by, and gave the boys in general a breakfast. They all seemed delighted, especially the old negress in receiving the pay, and had quite a frolic. The gratuity of a penny also fell to each boy. With characteristic improvidence and a development of the national passion, the little fellows, after having their stomachs well filled, set to and gambled with each other for the next hour, till every penny they had thus received had made its way to one pocket.

May 21st.—The Novena and subsequent auction was in regular continuance every evening of the last week. On Thursday our party again attended the former to hear the music, and the latter to catch the manners of the people. All the chief dignitaries of the place were present, the President of the Province, the Chief Justice, the Treasurer, and the Captain of the Port. To the residence of the last we were invited to a supper at the close of the auction, and the next morning waited on the President at the palace, or Government House. This is a spacious and lofty building, the ground-floor in front serving both as the entrance-hall and as a guard-room for a company of soldiers, and the corresponding rooms above being divided into a cabinet for official business on one side of the staircase, and a grand sala for reception on the other, with an intervening ante-room common to both. When our visit was announced, the President was engaged with official visitors in his cabinet, but soon made his appearance. He is a small, black-eyed, intelligent-looking man, careless and slovenly in dress, and most simple and republican in his manners. As he spoke Portuguese only, the conversation was necessarily carried on through interpretation by Mr. Wells, and the interview was more brief than it otherwise would have been.

The Presidents of the Provinces are appointed by the Emperor, and their salaries paid from the Imperial treasury. These vary in amount, in proportion to the extent and importance of the Province. That of the President of St. Catherine is four thousand milreis, or two thousand dollars. The selection for the office is usually from persons who are strangers in the Province for which the appointment is made, that the influence of family connections and personal friendships may not prove temptations to partiality in the distribution of the gifts and emoluments under his control.

An anecdote related of a former incumbent of the office, throws light upon the spirit sometimes induced by party politics here, and shows the despotism in small matters which a high official may exercise with impunity. The public square had been lined, at great care and expense, with a closely planted row of date palms. Uniform in height and size, in the course of a few years they became sufficiently grown to furnish by their plumed tops a beautiful screen against the sun, and were a great ornament to the place. The individual referred to, whose name—Pariero Pinto—like that of Erostratus, deserves for a similar reason to be perpetuated, was unpopular as President. Ambitious, however, of becoming at the expiration of his term the Deputy of the Province in the Imperial Legislature, he offered himself to the people as a candidate. An opponent was elected by acclamation. To avenge himself for the slight manifested by his utter defeat, he deliberately set the soldiers under his command at work in felling the palms; and in the course of a single day, the stately trunks and graceful foliage of the whole were laid in the dust.

May 31st.—On Saturday the 29th, great preparation was seen to be making around the principal church for the festival of Whit-Sunday, which occurred yesterday. A row of palm trees were planted in front; the verandah, in which the auction during the Novena had been held, was draped and festooned anew with wreaths of evergreen and gay flowers; and tar-barrels, filled with combustible materials, were placed on the square for bonfires at night, though the moon is now in her full. The dawn of the next day was ushered in with the ringing of bells, the setting off of rockets, the beating of drums, and the playing of bands of music. On looking out, every thing in the vicinity of the church was seen to indicate a grand festival. The temporary palm grove looked as if it had sprung up by magic. Gay flags and streamers of all colors floated from their plumed heads, from the roof of the church and its verandahs, and from various other points. After a service of worship in the drawing-room of Mr. Wells, Dr. C—— and I walked over to witness the scene. The congregation, consisting chiefly of females, had just begun to assemble. There are no seats or pews in the churches here, the whole interior being an open area in which all seat themselves, or kneel upon the bare pavement or floor, without the mat or rug which I have seen elsewhere. Soon the whole space became closely crowded. Most of the women were in full dress; the predominating materials being black silks, satins, and velvets, with short sleeves and low necks, and a half handkerchief of fancy-colored silk fastened round the throat by a brooch. A black lace mantilla upon the head, and the indispensable fan, completed the costume. The variety of garb, however, was considerable; and varied according to the circumstances and position in life of the wearer. Some, as penitents, were draped in mantillas of black cloth, so folded over the head as to reach to the eyes, and fall on either side over the whole figure to the feet. Two or three colored women, whether veritable Arabs or not, wore the thick white cotton veil of the women of the East, so arranged as to leave little of the face except the eyes and nose exposed, while long cloth cloaks reaching to the floor, enveloped their persons. Many of the most expensively and most tastefully dressed persons were negresses. These entered with a self-possession in air and movement, if not with a stateliness and grace, rivalling those of the most aristocratic of the whites; and were followed, like them, by one or more well-dressed servants. We were told that they were the wives, and in some instances the mistresses, of some of the most wealthy of the citizens. A few were in colored silks and dress bonnets of Parisian make, but the black lace veil, with or without the addition of a simple flower, either natural or artificial in the hair, was the general head-dress. All the children were arrayed as if for a dress party. By degrees there was a perfect jam on the floor; the greatest order and propriety however prevailed, each person sitting quietly with the face turned reverently towards the high altar.

At length a movement and bustle in the crowd without—the whizzing and explosion of rockets; the pealing of bells, the heathenish beating of drums, the tinkling of a guitar, and scraping of a fiddle, with the bawlings of the accompanying songs indicated the approach of the young Emperor. He soon entered the church with the cortège before described, and forced his way through the dense mass of women up the nave to the chancel, where seats were in reserve for his mock court and for the officiating priests. The boy was now robed in imperial dress—white small-clothes, silk stockings, and gold-buckled pumps; a flowing mantle of state of crimson velvet and gold, lined with white satin, a ruff of broad lace around the neck; and over all, the ribbon and decoration of the Holy Ghost before-mentioned. A crown of silver of the imperial pattern richly wrought, and a silver sceptre were carried before him on a cushion of velvet. A little girl of five or six years, apparently his sister, followed him. She was in full dress as an Empress, in tissues of silver and gold over pink satin, with a train of green and gold, and head-dress of ostrich feathers. The lad was seated on a throne, at the right of the high altar, the mock Empress on a chair of state beside him; the twenty or thirty gentlemen in attendance stood on the left opposite, while the vicar and his assistants in the richest of their priestly adornments, took their stations in the centre at the altar. All this was done with the most perfect stage effect. As if to give full opportunity to impress the imagination with this, a kind of interlude was introduced in the form of a procession from the vesting-room or sacristy, into a side chapel near the chancel, from which the vicar, under a canopy of crimson velvet, supported on four gilt staves by an equal number of attendants, fetched some seemingly precious thing, the consecrated wafer, a relic, or the anointing oil, and placed it on the altar where the crown and sceptre were already laid. The full coronation service was now commenced and performed in all its parts, including the consecration, the anointing, the crowning, and the enthronement, followed by the obeisance and kissing of hands, and ending with the coronation anthem; the whole was gone through with, seriously and solemnly, as it could have been at the coronation of Don Pedro himself. Mass was then chanted, after which the vicar was escorted through a side chapel to a concealed staircase; and making his appearance in a pulpit projecting overhead from the wall, proceeded to deliver a sermon of fifteen or twenty minutes’ length. It was for the most part legendary and fabulous in matter; but throughout impressive and eloquent in voice and manner. The eager and solemn attention which was given, and the fixedness of every eye and every ear upon the speaker, proved the readiness of the people to hear and receive instruction; and I could but think with deep feeling of the effect which the preaching of the Gospel in its simplicity might produce, in speedily substituting the sacrifices of the heart for the crossings and bowings, the genuflexions and prostrations, with which the pantomime of the priests at the altar is now accompanied. I was never before so deeply impressed with a sense of the profanity and idolatry of what is here called religion, as while contrasting in my mind this evidence of a “hearing ear,” among the people, with the puerilities and impiety of the childish show which preceded the discourse. It is seldom that a sermon is preached, and more seldom still one that is calculated to edify or produce any practical effects upon the morals, or true devotion in the heart. The people are not bigoted, and are desirous of religious instruction; so much so that, I am told, instances are known in which individuals have sent fifty miles for a tract; and, it is thought that they would here readily attend Protestant preaching in their own language.

The vicars of the churches are appointed by the Emperor, and paid by the state. The salary of the incumbent at the Matriz is fifteen hundred milreis, or about seven hundred and fifty dollars; a living which, with the perquisites of marriage, burial, and baptism, amounts to about two thousand dollars a year. In general the character of these pastors is dissolute. Their vows of celibacy are openly disregarded; they live almost without exception in a state of concubinage. One of the priests here has a family of ten mulatto children; and another, a former confessor in the royal family of Portugal and long resident at St. Catherine, who recently died of yellow fever at Rio, left also a large family. The Jesuits are more exemplary in regard to their vows of celibacy, and the bishop of Rio is among those who are above reproach in this respect.