Yet at our feet there lay a colossus that fell only three days ago, and seemed to point to the final destiny of all earthly glory. It was no tempest that had thus laid it low. Healthy, straight, and tall, it had fallen before it could be weakened by age, simply because the fatality of the action of underground forces crowding upon it from all sides had decreed that it should end then and there. We felt it, measured it, and examined every part of the gigantic corpse, and not one was inclined to quote the assassin of the Duc de Guise—"I thought it larger." No. Lying here at our feet it was no less amazing in its might than it had been in its ephemeral glory. Even in the beauty of death the splendour of life is impressive. In the clearings, where the slender stems of tall palms sway their parasol tops in the wind, flocks of large parrots were busy exchanging opinions as to the reason of our presence; and, if one may judge by the inflections of their cries, they thought it an ill omen. In the patches of blue sky visible between the branches we could see them swirling overhead, uttering loud curses. I had been promised a glimpse of monkeys, but it appears that our cousins retreat before the sound of wheels, and only tolerate—at a safe distance—the company of pedestrians. I thought if I separated from my fellows I might happen on the sight of one or two. Failing a specimen of the Pithecanthropus erectus any little chap on four legs would have found a brotherly welcome. Since none came, why not go after them? But walking is a dangerous pastime, since at every moment one stands a risk of treading on a trigonocephalus concealed in the brushwood, here as high as a man's waist, to say nothing of the fact that there are no landmarks, and that before I had taken a hundred steps I should have hopelessly lost my way. I walked about twenty yards, and that calmed my ardour. I saw neither monkey nor snake. I was not inconsolable, however, for the Brazilian snakes had no mystery for me.
I saw them in all their forms collected in a charming little garden which Dr. Vital Brazil has laid out expressly for them at Butantan. The coral serpent, the trigonocephalus, the rattlesnake, glide about the grass, climb the bushes whose branches effectually conceal them, or seek the shelter prepared for them in solitary corners. But for the absence of Mother Eve one might fancy oneself in Eden. I must add that a moat full of water, with a wall above, renders impossible the machinations of the Evil One; but I confess I did not go near them, even under these conditions. Dr. Brazil showed them to me in his laboratory, preserved in transparent jars, where the aggressive force of the creeping beast is revealed by means of sectional surgery, and again in the narrow yard of his menagerie; here one alarming-looking reptile after another was fished out of its prison on the end of a stick, and then seized by the throat and forced to choke up its venom into a small glass.
You may suppose that in all this Dr. Brazil has some plan. You are right, and it is worth explaining. He is engaged in a quest after a cure for snake-bites, or even perhaps for some way of rendering humanity immune. Brazil and India have a specialty of the most venomous of snakes. Dr. Brazil, who spends his life in their company, declares that even the most deadly species is without hostile feeling for man. No one has ever been attacked by a snake. His poison (I refer to the snake) permits him to paralyse instantaneously the prey destined for his food. But if by mistake you walk on his tail he is carried away by a desire for reprisals. I do not want to argue about it. It is sufficient to state that some hundreds of Brazilians and some thousands of Indians whose pleasure it is to walk barefoot in the forests die annually from the deadly sting of this philanthropist whom they have unwittingly annoyed, notwithstanding the humanitarian opinions of snakes in general. This is the evil for which Dr. Brazil is trying to find a remedy.
The Butantan Institute, half an hour distant from Saint Paul, prepares antidiphtheric and antitetantic serums, but its specialty is the antiophidic serum. Dr. Calmette was the first to discover a method of procuring immunity, but the serum of the Lille Institute, prepared from the poison of Indian cobras, proved, in the hands of Dr. Brazil, powerless against the Brazilian rattlesnake. In this way Dr. Brazil made the discovery that each South American species had a special poison, the serum of which took no effect on other poisons. Accordingly, at Butantan three different serums are prepared—two act on special species, and the third, called "polyvalent," is used in cases where the owner of the poison has omitted when stinging his victim to leave his visiting-card and thus establish his identity—the most common case. [55] But Dr. Brazil is not satisfied to cure or render immune those who seek ophidic inoculation. He has discovered a superprovidential serpent, which, having no poison of its own and being invulnerable to the stings of its kind, renders them all innocuous to humanity by eating them. This is the friendly mussurana. They offered him to me for inspection, and he looked neither better nor worse than the trigonocephalus—I should not at all like to find him in my bed. I tried to coax him, however, to munch a poisonous comrade. He had just breakfasted, and wanted only to sleep. Dr. Pozzi, luckier than myself, had the pleasure of seeing him swallow a certain jaracaca, whose slightest caress is deadly. The story has been published in the Figaro. How must we regard this phenomenon unless as a freak of Nature? To try to multiply the mussurana in order to exterminate rattlesnakes seems to me a dangerous experiment. Dr. Brazil has not yet succeeded in obtaining a single young one, and for my part I cannot yet see man and the mussurana living in harmony together.
As a final surprise, we were informed that Dr. Bettencourt Rodriguez had obtained some excellent results by treating yellow fever with antitoxic serum. The most certain method seems, however, to suppress the mosquito, the propagator of the disease, as Rio and Santos have done.
Santos, now a healthy city, is an agreeable place whose only mission is to receive the coffee from Saint Paul and export it to all the continents of the world. We had a brief look at it as we passed, and saw enough to wish to return there. But this time, instead of approaching by sea, we descended upon it from the plateau, 2500 feet in altitude, which shuts the city in with its salt marshes, bounded by mountain and sea, using the famous electric railway which is celebrated throughout the world for the picturesque moving panorama it offers to travellers. From an industrial point of view the port is not equipped to cope with the present traffic, statistics for 1908 showing that 109 ships left its quays, carrying 50 millions of kilogrammes of coffee—three quarters of the total output of the world. As for the Brazilian floresta, it is difficult to judge of it at a distance. I was placed on a little balcony in front of the motor, between the Minister of the Interior of Saint Paul and Señor Augusto Ramos, and thus enjoyed an unrivalled point of view, while, at the same time, I was relieved from feeling any excess of heat. Mountains, valleys, forest-clad slopes—it might have been Switzerland or the Pyrenees, and I have assuredly no inclination to belittle either. Yet what a difference from the impression produced by a walk in any part of the forest, where every step lifts you to an ecstasy of admiration. Shall I confess it? The railway stations, melancholy halting-places on the mountain, have left the best souvenir in my mind. In the first place, there were rows of cups of coffee awaiting us there—coffee which revives and refreshes a traveller and perfumes the air with an aroma unknown in Europe. Then, and still better, there were delicate orchids climbing over the verandas, irradiating showers of warm light, and left there out of respect for one of Nature's chefs d'œuvre, for they ill support the fatigue of railway travelling. The orchid season was just beginning when I left Brazil. What I could see of it in the forest, where the earth was piled up with all kinds of decaying vegetation which the marvellous harvest was already preparing, delighted me, for such beauty gains much from being viewed in its natural setting. And in the desolate railway stations, from all these wood chips, there spring sheaves of vivid colours transforming everything, as if the yawning rags of some beggar revealed a fabulously rich treasure.
For the Brazilian flora has extraordinary resources. When I crossed the Bay of Santos to take the tramway, which runs in twenty minutes to Guaruja beach, I had no idea that the pleasure of the journey could excel that of my first arrival. The Guaruja beach is extremely fine. It lies in a frame of rocks and forests, and in its fine sands it filters the high waves that rush in from the open sea in magnificent cascades of fury, which suddenly melt away into great rings of pacified foam. But how find words to express the enchantment of the road! The low shores of Santos Bay are but a broad marsh, where a frail vegetation rejected by the forest has full sway. On both sides of the road there is an ever-changing sorcery of leaf and blossom in the most lurid of hues. Not an inch of space between two boughs but is promptly filled by stem, bud, creeper, parasite, and some kind of growth, large or small. Trees that are wasting beneath the cruel tendrils eating into their flesh don a robe of orchids. Cannas make patches of flaming scarlet in the thickest part of the brushwood, and the wild banana-palm lifts a tall head from above the two-cornered spirals of saffron-coloured flowers, which gives an effect like monstrous crustaceans warring with the branches—a wild scene, in which it looks as if all the forces of terrestrial fecundity were convulsed in one impudent spasm.
Just as I was closing my visit to Brazil, with great regret at leaving so much unseen, I had accepted an invitation from Señor Teixeria Soarès, the owner of a fazenda in the State of Minas Geraes. Señor Soarès is the manager of a railway company besides being devoted to land and its fruitful joys. Modest and quiet, he tries to efface himself socially, but his methodical and clear mind is attracted by every big problem, and forces him into the front rank of all the different enterprises which are an honour to his country. I was greatly impressed by the way he spoke of his fazenda, the management of which he has confided to his son. It was easy to see that he had centred there, if not the best of his energy, at least the highest pleasure that can be derived from the collaboration of man with the soil. When I inquired of one of the fazenderos whether it was true, as Señor Soarès boasted, that he grew the best coffee in Brazil, and obtained for it the highest market prices, I was told that the fact could not be disputed, but that Señor Soarès had the reputation of spending more on his coffee than it could bring in. I could not help fancying the words covered an acknowledgment of inferiority. Idealism, in agriculture as elsewhere, is apt to be costly. It may not, however, exclude the active qualities that make for success. Señor Soarès devotes himself more particularly to the improvement of coffee-plants and the raising of new species. Now it was said that he had got from an horticulturist (of Montmartre) a certain plant with whose fame the world would shortly ring. He wanted me to open the new plantation, and as an ex-Montmartrois, I certainly could not refuse the invitation.
I shall say nothing of the journey. As usual, there were miles of forest destroyed by fire. In the villages cabins and colonial houses were scattered about on the river banks amongst great groves of trees. The Parahyba made amends for the melancholy waste of the land by its innumerable rocky headlands, its tree-stems, its islets where a note of beauty was lent by the brilliant plumage of birds.