The chief banks of Rio, in addition to the three British, one American, and other foreign banks above mentioned, as well as the Banco do Brazil, are the Banco Commercial do Rio de Janeiro; the Banco do Commercio; Banco do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Mercantil do Rio de Janeiro; and the Lavoura e Commercio do Brasil. São Paulo, besides the foreign establishments, has the Commercial do Estado de S. Paulo; Banco do Commercio e Industria de S. Paulo; Banco de S. Paulo; Banco de Credito Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado de S. Paulo; the Banco de Construcções e Reservas, and the União de S. Paulo.
Among the local banks doing excellent service are the Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado de Minas Geraes (headquarters in Bello Horizonte); the Provincia do Rio Grande do Sul; Banco do Porto Alegre; the Banco do Recife (Pernambuco); the Commercial do Pará; Credito Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado da Bahia; Banco do Ceará; Banco do Maranhão; but many other places also have comparatively small banks, and in addition there are many private “Casas bancarias”—financial houses—strongly entrenched, doing sound and useful work.
CHAPTER VII
THE WORLD’S HORTICULTURAL AND MEDICINAL DEBT TO BRAZIL
Loudon, the English horticultural authority, says in his Encyclopædia of Gardening (1835) that “some of the finest flowers of British gardens are natives of South America, especially annuals.” He mentions the dahlia—by the obsolete name of Georgina; the Marvel of Peru (Mirabilia) the Calceolaria and the Schizanthus, adding that “beautiful shrubs are not less numerous, but they are generally inmates of greenhouses.”
Since Loudon wrote Brazil, as other parts of South and Central America, has been the happy hunting ground of plant explorers, and the gardens of Europe and North America have been beautified to an extent of which that devoted horticulturist never dreamed. The tale of the indebtedness of the gardens of less fortunate climes to South America in general and Brazil in particular for plants and shrubs, both ornamental and of economic value, would occupy a large volume; the extent of the debt is no less great than general ignorance of it. Practically nothing is known of early attempts to introduce Brazilian plants, for they were failures, and failures they remained for two and a half centuries after South America was discovered. The science of botany and art of gardening were alike in primitive stages until the latter part of the eighteenth century, and, whilst South American plants were known by their local names, means for their successful transportation had not been found; nor, in the rare cases of their surviving long journeys by sailing boat, was successful cultivation of these exotics known. If, as is possible, there are yet in herbariums in Portugal any plants which the early colonists sent home, no printed record of them seems to exist.
It was not until the second decade of the nineteenth century that any serious attempts were made to reveal to the world the richness of Brazilian flora, and only within recent years that anything like a comprehensive account of it has been published: as far back as 1648 Willem Piso and Georg Marcgrav published in Amsterdam a large folio volume containing spirited woodcuts carefully coloured by hand of Brazilian flowers, shrubs, fishes, birds, reptiles, etc., but this was a natural history rather than a botanical book. Both these pioneers are commemorated in Pisonia and Marcgravia, species of which are still in cultivation.
In 1820 three scientific works dealing with Brazilian flora appeared. Mikan’s Delectus floræ ... brasiliensis was issued in Vienna: Raddi’s Di alcune specie nuove del Brasile and his Quarante piante nuove de Brasile, were issued in quarto volumes in Modena. Four years later St. Hilaire published in Paris his Histoire des Plantes of Brazil and Paraguay; between 1827 and 1831 J. E. Pohl’s Plantarum Brasilæ icones appeared in two folio volumes in Vienna. Other floras of Brazil, notably that of Martius, 1837–40, came out at intervals, and by the end of the century the plant life of Brazil was well covered by scientific publications.
So far as Great Britain is concerned, and it may be taken as a criterion of Europe generally, the most comprehensive record of sources and dates of the introduction of South American plants is Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus, first published in 1830. It enumerates something like thirty thousand species, exotic and otherwise. As the importation of South American plants was only in its infancy at that time many hundreds of flowers, now familiar in gardens and hothouses, are not recorded, but the book is reasonably complete up to the time of publication. Most of the more important introduced aliens, before and after the date of Loudon’s great work, may be found described and illustrated in the Botanical Magazine of London (issued monthly from 1787 to the present time), while others are dealt with in Loddiges’ Botanical Cabinet, 1818–24, and in many other of the quantity of horticultural publications appearing in Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century—notably in Nicholson’s Dictionary of Gardening and in the revised edition of Johnson’s Gardener’s Dictionary, bringing the record to the end of the nineteenth century.
Whilst many European botanists, such as Langsdorff, Burchell, Lhotsky and others had, during the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, explored certain parts of Brazil, nothing was of more importance to general knowledge of the plant-treasures of the country than the work accomplished by a Scotch botanist, Dr. George Gardner, afterwards Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens of Ceylon. His Travels in the Interior of Brazil during 1836–41 is a record of high merit, not only on account of its contribution to Brazilian botany and natural history, but because it is a faithful and genial picture of life and conditions in the interior of Brazil three-quarters of a century ago. The amazing richness and beauty of Brazilian flora had never before been revealed to Europeans as through Gardner’s book and his collections of thousands of specimens; it is extraordinary that these fascinating Travels should have remained out of print.
Of all the groups of plants introduced to the rest of the world from the southerly countries of the New World, orchids easily rank first, as the most precious, the most varied and beautiful, and the most costly: the first brought to England came from the East and West Indies. Epidendrum cochleatum found its way from Jamaica to England and was flowered for the first time in 1787; another species of the same lovely family, Epidendrum fragrans, came also from Jamaica in 1778 but was not flowered until 1788. In 1794 fifteen species of epiphytal orchids were at Kew, chiefly brought from the West Indies by Admiral Bligh, and for many years these islands, and India, were the main sources of orchid importation. But in 1793 a species of Oncidium was introduced to England from Panama: in 1811 another came from Montevideo, and by 1818 Brazil had begun to contribute species of the same genus. In 1825 Loddiges of Hackney, London, had in cultivation some eighty-four species of orchids from South America and the East, and by 1830 the Royal Horticultural Society of London had collectors in various parts of Brazil, hunting for rare plants.