A few of the interests of the Brazil Railways are in a prosperous state, as the lumber and cattle businesses, but the position of the company as a whole suffers from the weaker elements of the group, perhaps particularly the Amazonian, which were injected into the earlier South Brazilian plans; many of the development companies not only do not pay but need money to carry them along. The affairs of the company are now in the hands of an American receiver, and the latest report presented to long-suffering shareholders at a London meeting was optimistic in tone. It is the most ambitious group of enterprises under one control in Brazil, and perhaps this is one reason why its plan of line, land and port management has not been always looked upon with a favourable eye by Brazilian authorities. Objection seems also to be made to the introduction of foreign capital not for the purpose of development work of a new kind, but when employed in acquiring properties already existing.[[8]]
In South Brazil the company operates over three thousand miles of line, including the State-owned Sorocabana, the São Paulo-Rio Grande, the Paraná line, the Auxiliaire traversing Rio Grande do Sul, and the little Thereza Christina in Santa Catharina.
São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are linked by the line owned by the Federal Government, the Central do Brasil, a series running off from a point on the S. Paulo line into the State of Minas Geraes; the writer followed this road when visiting Bello Horizonte, the new capital of Minas, a beautifully placed city with mountains rising behind it and terraced plains and valleys sweeping away in front. The line into Minas traverses a hilly country, green, fertile, well-watered with turbulent rivers whose valleys are sedulously followed. From near Bello Horizonte a long arm of steel reaches out past Sete Lagôas, Curvello and Curralinho, where a branch runs to the famous diamond fields of Diamantina, and to Pirapora on the river São Francisco: from this point steamboats meeting the trains take their goods and passengers down the waterway to Joazeiro in Bahia State. It Is from this river port of Pirapora that an extremely bold railway has been planned, to run almost due north to the city of Pará, the latter part of the route following the valley of the Tocantins river: the line would be some two thousand miles in length, traversing country never properly explored or charted. Authorization to contract for the work was given in 1911 to the brilliant Brazilian engineer, Frontin, to whose genius the beautifying of Rio de Janeiro is due, and a beginning was made between Pirapora and Formosa, but the universal lack of money has given a check to operations. The headquarters and main station of the Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil are situated in Rio de Janeiro. Three trains are run daily each way between Rio and São Paulo, those starting in the early morning landing passengers about six in the evening; they are equipped with a satisfactory and inexpensive restaurant service. The two night trains leave each city at intervals of an hour and a half every evening; the first leaves about seven o’clock, and is modestly furnished with beds on the North American Pullman plan, while the famous “luxo,” on which newspaper reporters always attend to take down the names of the illustrious, starts at nine o’clock; each camarote is a separate apartment with an individual toilette, fans, electric light, bells, and very prompt attendants always at hand, in the style of the best European trains. Leaving Rio the track runs through a pretty green valley, intersected with palm decked little ravines and numbers of round hills, until the uplands of São Paulo are approached. The line has never paid its way under Government control, although deficits have been recently much reduced by stern elimination of free passes for politicians and their friends. Expenses of operation were in 1915–16 abnormally inflated by the cost of coal which at one time reached one hundred and twelve milreis a ton (over twenty-eight dollars) and alterations were made in many of the locomotives to permit the use of oil as fuel. Coal used in Brazil is practically all imported, development of national southerly fields not being yet sufficient for a tithe of the needs, and while Welsh hard coal soared high when the British Government checked exports, North American was offered at prices little inferior on account of the making-hay methods of United States shipowners. Oil, too, is imported, but the Federal Government procured a large stock before changing the fuel methods of the Central, and is able to buy supplies from three different firms. Several railroads of Brazil, in these days of stress, burn wood.
From Rio de Janeiro city is an exceedingly important “rede” of lines, for in addition to the excellent system of the Central is the series belonging to the Leopoldina company, an admirable constructor, operator and developer company. The Leopoldina owns about one thousand eight hundred and fifty miles of track, serves an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and penetrates the three States of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Geraes and Espirito Santo, linking the port of Victoria to Rio by a lateral line with little branches joining up small ports by the way, and passing through the rich sugar country of Campos and the active town of Itapemirim (Cachoeiras) where several industries obtain power from the falls; other lines run off from Itapemirim, Campos, Macahé and several points penetrating fertile interior country with good transportation service. This coastwise series, and another running to Nova Friburgo and on in a general northerly direction, start from Nictheroy, across the bay from Rio city: the bay is traversed by a thoroughly up to date system of ferries, of the Cantareira Company, which originally belonged to a Brazilian firm but was purchased and is now operated by the Leopoldina.
The fine line to Petropolis starts from the Praia Formosa in Rio, the ascent taking two hours, apparently never grudged by the scores of business men whose homes are in the mountain city during the summer and who travel daily to Rio; from Petropolis it runs on into the Minas interior, serving a coffee and dairy country.
The Leopoldina Railway Company was formed in London in 1897, and with the capital subscribed existing lines were acquired which have since been improved and largely extended; the series was bankrupt when taken over but with unification of the lines and the encouragement of agriculture along the course there has been a respectable dividend-earning for the last ten years. The company maintains demonstration farms at Nova Friburgo and Bem Fica in the interior of Rio State, where irrigation is applied to the rich little valleys that intersect a multitude of hills; on the hilltops coffee has been grown for half a century, and while this process has been one of gradual but certain exhaustion the valleys have been neglected. It is interesting to see, all along the Leopoldina’s lines, efforts made by the Brazilian small farmer to imitate the methods of Bem Fica. Another demonstration farm at the station of Campos, on the way to Victoria, was changed in a few months from a piece of waste land to a lusty field of cotton as an example; all this coastal belt is an old sugar country which should also be a great producer of cotton and fibres and fruit. Running on to the capital and port of the State of Espirito Santo, Victoria, the line serves at the latter end a hilly coffee country with one of the most wonderful winding panoramas of scenery in South America; a dormitory and restaurant service of high-class type operates between Rio and Victoria, and from this exquisitely framed little port, “O Rio em miniatura,” go out four million bags of Brazil’s coffee crop. The city lies at the end of a bay entrance of great beauty, green, broken by fantastic hills reflected in pellucid water; port works of the best modern design have been begun by the Leopoldina engineers, but when the writer visited the port in late 1915 work had practically ceased as a result of financial stringency. The hopes of Victoria to become one of the busiest centres of activity are high, for in addition to her coffee export trade she may serve as a great doorway for outgoing minerals from Minas Geraes: enormous iron deposits for which Victoria is probably the most logical outlet have been acquired by a British company and with the war over, are awaiting loosened purse-strings, for development.
In addition to the coastwise link with Rio, the State of Espirito Santo is traversed in a north-westerly direction by a line which enters the valley of the Rio Doce and passes on into Minas Geraes; about four hundred and fifty kilometers are in traffic of this system, which, linking up with other lines in the south of Minas, will serve a fine region and add to the prestige of Victoria.
Looking up the coast from Victoria there is observable a gap between that pretty port and the cacao centre, Bahia, as regards railroad connections parallel to the sea coast. The greatest networks of lines have ceased in Espirito Santo, and above this region there is only one linking series of lines, the system of the Great Western of Brazil, serving the whole of the great north-east promontory of Brazil. The lines of Bahia do not form a coherent system, important as they are as regards local needs.
Below the port of Bahia (properly the city of São Salvador, but as little popularly known by that name as Rio is recognized by her official title of São Sebastião) there are two lines penetrating from coast towns inwards to cacao-producing country: the most ambitious runs from Ponta da Areia, close to the port of Caravellas, westwards across the narrow southern neck of Bahia State, into Minas Geraes to the town of Theophilo Ottoni, a distance of three hundred and seventy-six kilometers. The second penetrating line runs from the port of Ilhéos to Conquista, a distance of eighty-two kilometers. During the war and post-war booms this was a notable freight carrier and profit maker, for the cacao plantations tributary to the line have yielded unprecedentedly large crops at a time when every ounce of cocoa in the world has been called for at high prices. The isolated little Ilhéos rolled in unexpected money in 1915–16, and prospered again in 1919.
Bahia’s great port farther northward stands on a peninsula at the north of a large, deeply indented, island-studded bay. There is no river delta here to assist transportation problems, and connection between the lines originating at different parts of the bay is rendered difficult by the depth of sea inlets and the marshy character of the intervening land. It is for these reasons that a line runs south from Nazareth, itself south of the bay, west from São Felix, north-westerly from Cachoeira, with the most important line of all running from Bahia city across country until junction with the legendary river S. Francisco is effected at Joazeiro: this latter line branches off at Alagoinhas (“Little Lakes”) to Aracajú, the port of the little-known State of Sergipe, and forms the only linking railroad of the series serving Bahia. The cacao crop of the State is all marketed in and shipped from Bahia city: it reaches that distributing point from the producing centres of the more southerly lands by sea, a state-owned service of small steamboats, the “Navigação Bahiana,” helping in this transportation work, besides operating on the S. Francisco river and running to and from certain productive islands off the Bahia coast. In 1915 Bahia exported 41,546 tons of cacao with an official value of 37,000 contos of reis, or about nine and a quarter million dollars, yielding in taxes to the State 6,388 contos, in addition to large sums contributed by the tobacco and coffee export. As far as rail connection is concerned Bahia is practically out of touch with active regions of Brazil, but since her one city of first-class importance is situated on the sea margin, and she is very well served both by cabotagem and by ocean-going vessels, national and foreign, no complaint is heard in Bahia concerning the deficiency. The line from S. Felix, a town reached by boat across the bay from Bahia which has achieved fame for cigar manufacture, penetrates richly producing tobacco country: Nazareth is the headquarters of a district exporting manganese ores.