The train line up the Serra is a very steep incline, one in nine, and is managed by a chain with a stationary engine at the top, a train being hooked on at each end of the rope. On one side was a mountain wall, and the other side a bottomless abyss, but the whole thing was quite beautiful through virgin forest. At this time it was not far advanced enough, and we rode up on mules. At the top a locomotive was kept to take us into São Paulo, which reminded us of Bergamo, in Italy, where we all dined at the little French inn. The next day we took a trip to what was then the end of the line, twelve miles beyond São Paulo, but at this time these trips were part mules, part trollies, part walking ones. We came back to dinner; there were speeches, and we wished the "Tritons" good-bye. Richard went down with them to set up his Consulate, and I remained to look for a house, and set up our first real home. After twelve or thirteen days, I went down to Santos by the diligence, by bad roads, but with a lovely panorama. The diligence takes one as far as Cubatao, where a little steamer plies for a couple of hours, first up a fine stream, between banks of tangled magnificence in the vegetation line, then an arm of the sea, or rather lagoons. The journey occupies seven carriage and two boat hours.
The worst of Santos, besides the steaming heat enclosed within and at the bottom of the hills, arising from the mangrove swamps, was the sand-flies and the mosquitoes. Richard was quite impervious to all other vermin, but the sand-flies used to make him come out all over bumps. For the rest, he used to say that he liked to have me near him—it was just like having "catch 'em alive" for flies, as everything came and bit me, and I was not fit to be seen, and spared him.
The fact is, I had fresh English blood, and it was rather a treat to them. The nicest thing was to drive out to the Barra. Captain Richard Hare, R.N., then came in, and we made a large party to stay there. The Barra was our fashionable bathing-place; the sea rolled right in to the strip of sand between it and the mangrove swamps, on the edge of which were (at that time) a few huts, with windows and doors opening on to the sand. In some there were no windows; they only closed by a wooden shutter.
After staying there for some time with Richard, I went up to São Paulo again, because I was getting feverish; it was wet and windy, and it took me eleven hours and a half. On going up, I engaged a very curious little fellow in our service, who deserves a few lines. Chico was thirty-five years of age; he was about four feet high, but perfectly well proportioned, as black as a coal, brimming full of intelligence, and could put his hand to anything. He had just been emancipated. He remained with us the whole time we were in Brazil, and became my right-hand man—more of him anon.
At last I found an old convent, No. 72, Rua do Carmo, which opened on the street in its front, and ran a long way back behind on an eminence, which commanded a view of almost boundless horizon into the country, and was exceedingly healthy. I immediately took it, cleaned it, painted and whitewashed it, and furnished it, and engaged slaves, paying their masters so much, and so much to them, as if they were free men. They were all Catholics, and I made a little chapel for them.
The slaves in Brazil, as a rule, formed, as it were, part of the family, and in ninety-five houses out of a hundred they were kindly treated and happy, but the remaining five out of the hundred were brutal; but, however, in all cases, the poor creatures were told, or, if not told, were allowed to believe, that they had no souls, and nothing to look forward to. I, on the contrary, taught them, and had regular lecture and catechism for them, that not only had they souls, but that, although they were condemned by class and colour and custom to be slaves upon earth, just as it was in the Bible, that once dead, they, and we, would stand equal before God. The priest used to come to my little Oratory, where I had the Bishop's leave to have Mass and the Sacraments, and we all received Communion together. They were very happy, the house went upon oiled wheels, and I never had occasion to dismiss a servant the whole time I was there. The differences were chiefly amongst themselves. Richard having settled his Consulate at Santos, and I having prepared our home in São Paulo, he came up and joined me, and for the first time since our marriage we were absolutely settled in a home of our own.
Up the country in Brazil, people always get one or two things in their first few years. You either break out all over boils, so that you cannot put a pin's point between them, and if you have a weak place, they come there in clusters, and you can neither sit nor stand, kneel or lie, and you are an object of misery for some months; but if you have strength, and can pull through it, you bloom out with stronger health than ever after that. This happened to me. I had to be slung up. A friend gave me a barrel of porter, and it was alternately "faint" and a "glass of porter," which revived me for a few minutes, and then more faint and more porter, ad infinitum. By the time the barrel of porter was finished, I was convalescent, and when any new ones attempted to break out, a friend gave me two things to try—and I tell it for the sake of those who may follow me; it was to draw a ring of caustic round one, and a ring of laudanum round the other. The caustic ones did not answer, but the ring of laudanum made them disappear, and I got splendid health, which lasted at least seventeen years. Now, people who do not get the boils are bound to get one or more of the complicated diseases of the country, and that is just what happened to Richard. We had no doctors up there, that I am aware of.
On the 17th of January, 1866, we had an awful storm, worse than any known for twenty-five years; there was an awful blackness, the lightning was red, the wind drove in the windows, the hail was jagged pieces of ice one inch in diameter, sharp and long, and made round holes like a bullet, there was a network of flashes, rain from all quarters—a regular cyclone. It drove through the room fronting north, which was like a ship's cabin in a gale. We saw the cathedral struck, the cross knocked off, tiles blown away; the hotel room was like a shower-bath, with a continuous stream of rain. Several houses were struck, some of the doors split, and the streets quite flooded; people were frightened, and lighted candles, and brought out the Madonna. There were sharp rattlings like earthquake; it blew a clock against the walls away; the people all met as after a revolution in Paris. The windows were everywhere broken, and the water looked black. It was quite local, and did not touch the shipping. In the town four were killed and five wounded. The next day was very hot.