Santos is six thousand miles away from Europe, and we only got letters once a month.
Richard's study was the most important feature in the house. It was a long room, running out on an eminence forty feet long, with a good terrace at the end of it, on which we had a telescope, and every convenience for astronomy and observations; and perhaps the other most striking part of the house was a large room, which occupied the whole centre of the house, and opened on the stairs. This was dining-room, receiving-room, and everything. Directly below that was a similar place, that was more like stables than room. It was my refuge for the needy and homeless after dark; they were fed and housed, and turned out in early morning.
On the 27th of July he notes in his journal: "Dream that a bad tooth fell out, followed by five or six big drops of blood; noted the day, and found that my poor friend Steinhaüser had died of heart disease quite suddenly in Switzerland that day." On the 14th of August, 1866, the first through-train went from Santos to Jundiahy. There was a fête in consequence, and the company had the bad taste only to omit the Consul and his wife from the invitations to all the English. On the 22nd of August Richard went to stop with the priests of the seminary (Capuchins), which he often did, in their chacara, or country-house, where he studied astronomy with Fray João, and metaphysics, physics, and algebra, with Père Germain. Here he was engaged in writing "Vikram and the Vampire," and he got a concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, in São Paulo. On the 21st of December we went down to Rio for our Christmas, which we spent at Petropolis. On the 12th of November some one put a stone on the railway to throw the train off, and on the 19th it was said that a part of the rails was pulled up.
In Santos and São Paulo we remained from 1865 to 1869, and I may say that his career here was equally active and useful, both on the coast and in the interior. We thoroughly explored our own province, São Paulo, which is larger than France. (I do not bore you with two pages of Brazilian names of places, because very few would know where they were, unless they had lived there and had worked in wild places, which is not likely.) We spent a good time at the gold mines and diamond diggings of Minas Gerães. He canoed down the river of San Francisco, fifteen hundred miles. He went to the Argentine Republic of the Páta-Paranà; he went to Paraguay for the purpose of reporting the state of the Paraguayan War to the Foreign Office. He crossed the Pampas and the Andes to Chili and Peru, amongst the dangerous Indians, whilst on sick leave for an illness which brought him almost to death's door. He visited the Pacific coast to inspect the scenes of the earthquake at Arica, returning by the Straits of Magellan, Buenos Ayres, and Rio de Janeiro.
Letters from Richard to Fraser's Magazine appeared in three numbers, headed, "From London to Rio de Janeiro." He likewise wrote three books—"The Highlands of Brazil," 2 vols., which I edited and brought out in 1869; "Vikram and the Vampire," one vol. of Hindú tales brought out in 1870; "Paraguay," 1 vol., brought out in 1870. He interested himself immensely in the coffee and cotton produce, Mr. Aubertin being at that time the "father of cotton" in Brazil, but his chief interest lay in the mining and mineral productions of the country. As I have said, he obtained the concession for the lead mines of Iporanga, and Sir Edward Thornton was very angry with him—took it in the sense of Consuls trading, and reported him home. Fortunately, we had the large mind of Lord Stanley (Lord Derby) at the head of the Foreign Office, and he, knowing how caged and misplaced Richard was at such a Consulate, thought he might at least be allowed that little bit of amusement, and sent back a despatch that he did not think that being interested in mineral production could be exactly classed under the head of trading.
Amongst other things, Richard discovered something remarkable. On one of our Expeditions we were stopping at a shanty close to a river, and seeing something glistening, he walked up the bed of the river, which was not deep, and scooped up some of the sand and put it in a jar. On washing it we found that it looked very like rubies. We sent it home to Mr. Crookes, F.R.S., the great chemical savant, and he wrote back, "If you get any more, bigger than this, throw up the Consulate and stick to the rubies." Now, Richard told me that this was only the dust washed down, and that the great stones must lie further up the head of the river. The shanty belonged to an old woman with a right for a good stretch up the river, and she would have joyfully sold it for £50. When I implored Richard almost on my knees to buy it, he would not, saying it would be quite wrong to defraud that poor woman out of her place, when she did not know that rubies were there; that if she did know, she would ask him an exorbitant sum; and, what was more, that no one could live there for three days without getting Brazilian fever, so that we should end by being like the dog in the fable, with the bit of cheese and the shadow in the water, and drop the reality for a shadow.
Life in Brazil, if in Rio, was very gay; life at São Paulo was very like a farmhouse life, with cordiality and sociability with the other farmhouses, and some of the good Brazilian society was very charming. The Brazilians are to the Portuguese what the Americans are to us. The Portuguese is heavy; the Brazilian is light, active, nervous, spirituel. Their parties are much enlivened by music and dance. They have several native dances, which are danced at the balls—one especial one, which is called the carangueijo, which is very active, very amusing, and very significant. The gentlemen and ladies dance it as furiously as the common people, as the Hungarians do the czardas. The Music consists of the modinha, which answers to our ballad, and is generally mournful; the lundú, which is mostly comic, and almost always in the minor key; and the recitativo, which consists of playing a flowing melodious accompaniment, and in a voice pitched and attuned to that, reciting a story of love or war or anything, often improvised at the moment. The negroes have their balls in the Plaza, or Square, and they will dance furiously for three consecutive days and nights to the same tune. It is amusing to watch for about an hour out of a window. The negro girls come out décolletée in pink or blue cotton—those are the swells—the others dress like natives.
What is so beautiful is Nature, the luxuriance of vegetable and animal life. Everything is so large—the palms, the cacti, and all the things which here are treasured as plants and bushes, are there fine trees. I have seen arums of which one leaf would be six feet long and five broad, behind which a big man could easily hide himself. The virgin forests are unspeakably beautiful, with their wild tangle of creeper and parasite. Orchids, of which (during the rage that lasted in England for them) one single one would have sold for £60, here grow wild—one only had to go out with a knife and grub them up from the trees or rocks; we sent boxes home to our friends. The fir of the country is the araucaria; the gum copaiba is eighty feet high. Flights of gaudy-coloured parrots and all sorts of beautiful coloured birds are on the trees; butterflies, some of which measure ten inches from one wing-tip to the other, when spread, float about the air like large sheets of paper—scarlet, peacock blue, emerald green, cream, white—in fact, every colour; and coming in and out of your room, are little humming-birds the size of a large bee, looking like an emerald or a ruby flitting about, and if you have the sense not to offer to touch them, and put a little wet sugar in a saucer, they will stay there for days; but if you try to catch them, they break their hearts and die. The tints of Brazil are always the tints of the opal in fine weather. The heat is awful, like the damp heat of a conservatory; I flourished in it.
En revanche, Brazil has no history save three hundred years, which relates its discovery and its gradual transfer from Indian natives to the first Portuguese settlers. The Jesuits erected all the buildings on the best sites, made roads, and cultivated; but the Indians are not exterminated—they are only driven inwards—and about ten days from our home our nearest Indians were the Botacudos. You may see them in the Crystal Palace with their under-lip distended by a bit of wood. The nearest to us were friendly ones, and they would come down to São Paulo on rare occasions. They walk in Indian file, and when they passed our house, or any other friendly house, they threw their arms out towards the house—as if the whole file were pulled by a string—till they had gone by it; and that is their mode of friendly salute. When the railway was opened, they came down out of curiosity to see it. They looked upon the engine as a sort of malignant beetle, but at last they got less frightened, and all clambered upon it; but when it was time to start, and the driver gave the preliminary whistle, they sprang off like mad, and ran for their lives, nor could they be persuaded to mount again.
Another drawback was the reptiles and vermin. There is a large mosquito that fastens its prongs into your hand. I have seen a man let it suck, and then cut half its tail off, and it has gone on sucking and the blood running through—the mosquito being not in the least aware of its loss. Then there is a little grey, almost invisible, mosquito that makes no noise. In Trieste they call them papataci (papa-hold-your-tongue). There is the jigger, that gets into your flesh, generally under your toe-nail or under the sole of your foot, and the first time you are aware that there is anything the matter is by your limping, and you then discover that there is a something about the size of a pea in your foot. You send for a negress, who picks at your foot for a few minutes with a common pin—they won't use a needle or any other instrument, because if they did the bag would break, and the eggs would get into your blood—and presently, with a little hurting, she triumphantly holds it up at the end of the pin, puts on a soothing ointment, and you are all right at once. A man thought he should like to take a jigger home to show an English doctor, but it was six weeks from home, and his foot was cut off before he got there.