Brazil is rich in having 50,000 miles of navigable waterways. Three of the largest rivers of the world flow through its territory. The Orinoco attains a width of four miles, and is navigable for 1,400 miles. The Amazon alone drains a basin of 2,500,000 square miles.
Out of this mighty stream there flows every day three times the volume of water that flows from the Mississippi. Many a sea-captain has thought himself in the ocean while riding its stormy bosom. That most majestic of all rivers, with its estuary 180 miles wide, is the great highway of Brazil. Steamboats frequently leave the sea and sail up its winding channels into the far interior of Ecuador—a distance of nearly 4,000 miles. All the world knows that both British and American men-of-war have visited the city of Iquitos in Peru, 2,400 miles up the Amazon River. The sailor on taking soundings has found a depth of 170 feet of water at 2,000 miles from the mouth. Stretches of water and impenetrable forest as far as the eye can reach are all the traveller sees.
Prof. Orton says: "The valley of the Amazon is probably the most sparsely populated region on the globe," and yet Agassiz predicted that "the future centre of civilization of the world will be in the Amazon Valley." I doubt if there are now 500 acres of tilled land in the millions of square miles the mighty river drains. Where cultivated, coffee, tobacco, rubber, sugar, cocoa, rice, beans, etc., freely grow, and the farmer gets from 500 to 800-fold for every bushel of corn he plants. Humboldt estimated that 4,000 pounds of bananas can be produced in the same area as 33 pounds of wheat or 99 pounds of potatoes.
The natural wealth of the country is almost fabulous. Its mountain chains contain coal, gold, silver, tin, zinc, mercury and whole mountains of the very best iron ore, while in forty years five million carats of diamonds have been sent to Europe. In 1907 Brazil exported ten million dollars' worth of cocoa, seventy million dollars' worth of rubber; and from the splendid stone docks of Santos, which put to shame anything seen on this northern continent, either in New York or Boston, there was shipped one hundred and forty-two million dollars' worth of coffee. Around Rio Janeiro alone there are a hundred million coffee trees, and the grower gets two crops a year.
Yet this great republic has only had its borders touched. It is estimated that there are over a million Indians in the interior, who hold undisputed possession of four-fifths of the country. Three and a quarter million square miles of the republic thus remains to a great extent an unknown, unexplored wilderness. In this area there are over a million square miles of virgin forest, "the largest and densest on earth." The forest region of the Amazon is twelve hundred miles east to west, and eight hundred miles north to south, and this sombre, primeval woodland has not yet been crossed. [Footnote: Just as this goes to press the newspapers announce that the Brazilian Government has appropriated $10,000 towards the expenses of an expedition into the interior, under the leadership of Henry Savage Landor, the English explorer.]
Brazil's federal capital, Rio de Janeiro, stands on the finest harbor of the world, in which float ships from all nations. Proudest among these crafts are the large Brazilian gunboats. "It is a curious anomaly," says the Scientific American, "that the most powerful Dreadnought afloat should belong to a South American republic, but it cannot be denied that the Minas Geraes is entitled to that distinction." This is one of the vessels that mutinied in 1910.
Brazil is a strange republic. Fanatical, where the Bible is burned in the public plaza whenever introduced, yet, where the most obscene prints are publicly offered for sale in the stores. Where it is a "mortal sin" to listen to the Protestant missionary, and not a sin to break the whole Decalogue. Backward—where the villagers are tied to a post and whipped by the priest when they do not please him. Progressive—in the cities where religion has been relegated to women and children and priests.
Did I write the word religion? Senhor Ruy Barbosa, the most conspicuous representative of South America at the last Hague Conference, and a candidate for the Presidency of Brazil, wrote of it: "Romanism is not a religion, but a political organization, the most vicious, the most unscrupulous, and the most destructive of all political systems. The monks are the propagators of fanaticism, the debasers of Christian morals. The history of papal influence has been nothing more nor less than the story of the dissemination of a new paganism, as full of superstition and of all unrighteousness as the mythology of the ancients—a new paganism organized at the expense of evangelical traditions, shamelessly falsified and travestied by the Romanists. The Romish Church in all ages has been a power, religious scarcely in name, but always inherently, essentially and untiringly a political power." As Bishop Neely of the M. E. Church was leaving Rio, Dr. Alexander, one of Brazil's most influential gentlemen, said to him: "It is sad to see my people so miserable when they might be so happy. Their ills, physical and moral, spring from lack of religion. They call themselves Catholics, but the heathen are scarcely less Christian!" Is it surprising that the Italian paper L'Asino (The Ass), which exists only to ridicule Romanism, has recently been publishing much in praise of what it calls authentic Christianity?
"Rio Janeiro, the beautiful," is an imperial city of imposing grandeur. It is the largest Portuguese city of the world—greater than Lisbon and Oporto together. It has been called "the finest city on the continents of America,—perhaps in the world, with unqualifiedly the most beautiful street in all the world, the Avenida Central." [Footnote: Clark. "Continent of Opportunity.">[ That magnificent avenue, over a mile long and one hundred and ten feet wide, asphalt paved and superbly illuminated, is lined with costly modern buildings, some of them truly imposing. Ten people can walk abreast on its beautiful black and white mosaic sidewalks. The buildings which had to be demolished in order to build this superb avenue cost the government seven and a half millions of dollars, and they were bought at their taxed value, which, it was estimated, was only a third of the actual. [Footnote: "But as a wonderful city, the crowning glory of Brazil—yes of the world, I believe—is Rio de Janeiro."—C. W. Furlong, in "The World's Work.">[
Some years ago I knew a thousand people a day to die in Rio Janeiro of yellow fever. It is now one of the healthiest of cities, with a death-rate far less than that of New York.