But Belém, or Pará as it is more generally called by foreigners (one may take his choice, since the full corporate name is Santa Maria de Nazareth de Belém do Grão Pará), is by far the largest and most interesting of them all, for not only has the wealth that has poured into it in recent years transformed it into a big city of about two hundred thousand inhabitants, boasting, like Manãos, all the modern public utilities and conveniences, but it is old and rich in relics associated with its romantic history, much care has been taken in the adding of the new to beautify it, its climate is much more delightful than the others (the mean annual temperature is only 82° F.), and it is also charmingly clean and picturesque. “Who comes to Pará,” runs a local proverb, “is glad to stay; who drinks assai goes never away”—though assai need have no real terrors for that reason. It is nothing more seductive than a most refreshing beverage made from the fruit of the assai palm.
Almost at the very threshold of the city, on the approach from the sea, one encounters some of the wonders in which the region abounds—first the “pororoca,” which is the name originally given by the Indians to the huge waves that are created by the conflict of the descending waters of the river with the inrushing current of the Atlantic and follow each other in series of three or four, with thunderous intonations. For nearly an hour in the progress through the great estuary the conflict can be observed. Then the river seems to prevail; its surface grows more placid, the color changes from the dark hue of the ocean to light green, and, on beyond, to the tawny yellow of the Amazon. Yet they say the ebb and flow of the tide is perceptible as far up as Obydos, 700 miles away, and, when it ebbs, that the tawny yellow can be seen many miles out at sea. Then, scattered about, here, there, and everywhere on the twenty-mile-wide bosom of the Pará, as though in the titanic struggle some larger body had been broken into bits, are hundreds of wooded islands, moist and radiant in the sunlight, their varied greens in delightful contrast with the silvery sheen on the waters and the bright turquoise of the sky.
The city, seen from a distance, with its background of forests and rows of white-walled, red-roofed houses, separated into clusters by the parks and tree-lined avenues sloping down to the shores of its own spacious bay, has the gay, holiday appearance of a summer resort. Only a closer view dispels the illusion, for its harbor is filled with vessels of every size and description, from the little monatrias, or canoes, of the Indians, to the great liners of the Brazilian Lloyd. Its compact business section in the vicinity of the quay, the Custom House and market and the warehouses of the steamship companies present a commercial aspect substantial and busy enough to command the respect even of a Chicagoan or New Yorker. As already stated, more than three fifths of the rubber supply of the world comes from Brazil, and two of these three fifths pass this very port, to say nothing of the cacao, nuts, oils, tobacco, woods, and other things shipped there, or of the importations.
One of the features of a stay in Belém, by the way—that is, for any one interested in seeing how the first crude form of an article so familiar in its finished forms is produced, is a trip to one of the near-by rubber estates. It has not yet been necessary in this section, if anywhere in Brazil, to resort to cultivation to any great extent, and so the huts of the seringueiros (gatherers) are located right in the woods, where the rubber trees grow promiscuously among the others, and each seringueiro is allotted as many as he can attend to. The sap, which resembles milk in color and consistency, is collected in cups placed under incisions in the bark, then brought into camp in bucketfuls and reduced by a primitive process of evaporation to the slabs or cakes forming the raw article of commerce. One does not have to leave Belém itself, however, to see rubber trees and most of the other species, too, for there the people have been generous enough to preserve within the city limits a large tract of primeval forest, which has been cleared of underbrush and converted into a park, known as the Bosque Municipal. Also there is a wonderful botanical garden and a museum where the rarest specimens of the vegetation, and animals and the birds and reptiles of the country are assembled.
And even in the business section there are charming public squares. The one nearest the quay, named for the Bishop Frei Caetano Brandão, whose statue is in the center, is particularly interesting because facing it is a fine old seventeenth-century cathedral of the Portuguese type, massive and grave, an old marine arsenal now used as a hospital, and an ancient fortification, called the Castello, which has been maintained because of its historical associations. Then there is the Praca da Independencia, where the Governor’s Palace is, and a quaint old blue-walled City Hall, built in colonial times for a Portuguese minister, the Marquis de Pombal, who dreamed of the permanent transfer of the seat of the Lusitanian empire to the banks of the Amazon. In the heart of the city, on its most elevated ground, is the celebrated Largo da Polvora, now commonly called the Praca da Republica, after a superb monument it contains—of marble surmounted by figures in bronze, symbolic of the republic proclaimed when the Emperor Dom Pedro was dethroned in the bloodless revolution of 1889. It is from this point that the four principal avenues extend through the city in the cardinal directions.
“The Largo da Polvora,” Arthur Dias pays it the compliment of saying (though this may, perhaps, be rather too enthusiastic), “shames our Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon; if they could place there the Arc de Triomphe, it would rival the Champs-Elysées.” It may be that for most its fascination lies not so much in its beauty as in its other attractions, for it is the great social and amusement center of a prosperous and pleasure-loving community, the thoroughfare along which the best of its hotels and clubs and the fashionable cafés and concert halls are located and many of its finest residences. It adds the lively mundane touch that is needed to relieve the impressiveness of a region where all nature is so overpoweringly beautiful. In the midst of the gardens, which are separated by luxuriantly shaded streets, is the Theatro da Paz, regarded as one of the best in Latin America, and the Apollo Circus and Paz Carrousel. Near by is the handsome Paz Hotel, with its popular café.
In the evenings, when the cool breeze sets in from the ocean, the whole scene becomes animated. The brilliantly lighted avenues and driveways in the park are thronged with the carriages and motor cars of the “four hundred,” the sidewalks with crowds of pleasure-seekers, cosmopolitan and well dressed. Then the cafés all have out their little zinc tables, jammed with customers of both sexes (these cafés are not mere drinking places, most of them, but a sort of peculiar combination of café, candy store, and ice-cream saloon), dozens of orchestras play, the places of amusement are in full blast, and music and gayety reign supreme.
II
Because of peculiar economic conditions, the railroads of Brazil, as originally planned, were not intended, like ours, to facilitate commerce among the States, but only for the purpose of bringing the products of the various developed sections of the country to the nearest shipping points. Thus Recife, the seaport of the State of Pernambuco, is the focus of one system, São Salvador da Bahia of another, Rio de Janeiro of a third, Santos, the port of São Paulo, of a fourth, and Porto Alegre, the chief port of Rio Grande do Sul, of a fifth. Not long ago, when these conditions began to undergo radical changes, the government realized the desirability of establishing connections by means of lines running north and south. The Rio de Janeiran system was extended north to the growing port of Victoria, in the neighboring State of Espirito Santo, and connected with the systems of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1910 pushed still farther south into Uruguay, so that by the end of the year it was possible to travel by rail from Victoria to Montevideo, a distance of more than two thousand miles.
The lines north of Victoria, however, have not yet been connected and the nearly twenty-five-hundred-mile journey from Belém to Rio, therefore, must still be made by sea. But, long though the trip is, it is very far from being a monotonous one, if only the tourist has the time to make it on a coastwise steamer that stops at the principal ports of call. São Luiz da Maranhão, “the City of Little Palaces”; Fortaleza, the port of Ceará, regarded as one of the loveliest in Brazil; Pernambuco, with its canals and lagoons and bridges, a city that inspired a famous Brazilian poet to exclaim: “Hail, beautiful land! O Pernambuco, Venice transported to America, floating on the seas!” and terraced, crescent-shaped São Salvador, enthroned on the hills beside its magnificent bay—all these are so interesting that they richly repay a visit. All are older than the oldest English settlement in the northern continent, yet, unlike Jamestown, there is not one of them that has not kept pace with the national progress.