Ouro Preto means “black gold.” The hills and young mountains lying in tumbled heaps about the town are honeycombed with abandoned mines, as the town itself is said to be with secret subterranean passageways. Not even Ayacucho in the Andes is so overrun with churches. Only an accurate man could throw a stone without hitting one, most of them of light colored rock, beautified with age, bulking far above the few little old houses apportioned to each, both by their size and by their places of vantage on some eminence or mountain nose. Evidently whenever they killed a slave or committed some particularly dastardly crime the old Portuguese adventurers salved their consciences or quieted their superstitions by building a church. Between them the little old houses straggle in double rows far up every steep valley that has room for them, here connected by very old stone bridges over narrow, yet deep, gorge streams, with time-crumbled stone benches along them, there refusing to follow when the cobbled street suddenly lets go and falls headlong with many a racking twist into another abyss.
In general, the old capital of the mining province is built along both sides of a small swift stream, which spills down through town with a musical sound, picking up some of its garbage on the way. Old colonial ruins, built in the leisurely, plentiful, massive fashion of long ago, still bear coats-of-arms and cut-stone Portuguese emblems, some half-hidden behind masses of white roses or climbing flowers. Old fountains of variegated colors, very broken, much weather- and time-faded, still have tiny streams trickling forth from the stone mouths of human heads or strange creatures unknown to natural history; scores of quaint old balconies, mysterious corners, and queer porticos jut out over streets or abysses. There was evidently no building plan except that imposed by nature. Each householder built on his few feet of space at any height and slope he chose, so that although the buildings nearly all cling close together for mutual support, they present most fantastic combinations, each with its red-tile roof faded from bright to drab according to its age and situation.
In the main praça up at the top of the town, which is rectangular and square-cobbled and singularly quiet, is a statue of “Tiradentes” high up on a slim granite pedestal, his hair wild, his shirt open, his wrists weighted down with chains. This nickname of “Pull Teeth” was given a sergeant who, way back in 1792, started the first revolution for Brazilian independence, but who was captured, executed, and his head hung up in an iron cage in this same praça. There is a School of Mines, the principal if not the only one in Brazil, in an old viceregal palace that was later the seat of the state government until that honor was taken away from Ouro Preto. The Indians of Minas could not or would not be enslaved, and the workmen required in the mines were brought from Africa early and often. I do not recall a mountain town anywhere with so large a percentage of African blood, though it is not now, of course, pure African, for the old Portuguese settlers were not slow to dilute it with their own, and with the exception of a very few of the proud old families of Minas, who have overridden their environment and kept their veins free from the taint of slaves, there are not many of full white race. In the morning the inhabitants straggle home from the outdoor butcher-shop, carrying strips of raw meat by a grass string run through them; in the later afternoon the frequent clash of jogging horse-shoes on the irregular cobblestones calls attention to some young blood come prancing by the window of his desire, peering out from her window-ledge over the otherwise silent and almost deserted street.
As to my own job, I did not even have to go out to look for contracts, for as I sat reading the newspapers and recovering from a Brazilian lunch, there came slinking in upon me the local pharmacist and owner of the “Cinema Brazil.” He had heard that I had come, and why, and as he was eager to outdo his one rival in town, he—ah—er—he, too, had come. If we played in Ouro Preto it meant four important days—Christmas, followed by a Saturday and Sunday, and a Monday also, for the trains did not run on that day. The only entertainment in town, my visitor rambled on, in his eagerness to attract us, was that provided by two old Italian “women of the life,” who offered a song and dance nightly at the other cinema. At a town eight kilometers away there were many “Englishmen” employed in the gold mines, who would be delighted to come in and see their fellow-countryman Edison—what, he was not coming himself?—well then, his invention. No doubt Senhor Edisón did not think poor old Ouro Preto worth visiting, now that it was no longer the capital, but it had many wonders even for a great inventor, if one really knew where to look for them. By this time I had handed him our printed contract, through which he carefully spelled his way, while I read several columns of newspaper. Then he brought me back to Brazil with, “Ah yes, very good, only—er—sixty per cent. is a very large percentage and——” At which point I broke in with “Why, I ought to charge you eighty per cent. for being way off here on a branch line, in a town without even wheeled vehicles!” Whereupon he shuddered and begged me to figure to myself that he had not said a word and, reaching for the contract, he signed it on the dotted line.
Rain was pouring and the night was still black when I followed my baggage down the steep cobbled road to the station. There I discovered, in a sudden flash of genius, why all Brazilian trains start at daylight and stop at dark; it is not because they are afraid to go home in the dark, but so that the languid employees will not have to light the car-lamps. Even the government night expresses rarely have more than a firefly of a gas-lamp or a couple of flickering oil-wicks in the end of each coach. Brazilians are not a nation of readers, and do not demand decent lights, though there is nothing to prove they would get them if they did. The print-loving stranger is often warned that it is dangerous to the health to read during, or just before, or until long after meals, which may be true, but the Brazilians themselves are living proof that it is still worse never to read at all. In most stations there are waiting-rooms only for women, and not a spot for the mere male to sit on unless he boards the train itself, which is also the favorite lounging-place of scores of the local population who have no intention of traveling on it. Here an affectionate crowd was embracing and fondling one another after the Brazilian fashion and gradually filling a tightly closed car in which it was not easy to breathe. It is really foolish, too, to ride first-class on the trains of the interior, for it means little more than paying double price, when the single is bad enough, for the privilege of sitting in a cane seat at one end of a car, instead of in a wooden one at the other. However, a few kind words may unhesitatingly be said for the railways of Brazil. One may leave all he possesses in a train seat and not only will no one touch it, but his fellow-travelers will stand for hours rather than disturb the smallest parcel left to hold a place. Nor is the baggage-smasher indigenous to Brazil. Several pieces of our outfit were delicate, yet during a year’s travel by every known means of conveyance except aëroplane through nearly every state of Brazil, it was never seriously injured—though on its return to my beloved native land it was badly damaged between New York and the Edison factory, an hour away.
Diamantina spills down into the stream in which are found some of its gold and diamonds
A hydraulic diamond-cutting establishment of Diamantina
