Santos is the name of a commercially important harbor situated on the east coast of South America about three hundred miles southwest of Rio Janeiro, after which city it is the greatest export harbor for coffee in Brazil. Otherwise it is about as uninteresting a spot as can be found on the continent. It became a city so late as 1839, and contains some twenty thousand inhabitants. Its annual export of coffee will reach an aggregate of two hundred and twenty-five thousand sacks. The bay is surrounded by a succession of hills, and is well sheltered, except on the southwest. The town is situated on the west side of the harbor, and hugs the shore, many of the houses being built upon piles. Behind the town to the westward rises a succession of mountain ranges. The immediately surrounding country is low and malarial, causing fevers to prevail all the year round. During the present season Santos has suffered more seriously from yellow fever than any other place on the coast in proportion to the number of its inhabitants. As a commercial port it has no rival in southern Brazil. Santa Catharina, Porto Alegre, and Rio Grande, the three harbors south of Santos, are rendered inaccessible for any but small craft, owing to sandbars at their entrances.
This is the present terminus of the United States and Brazil Mail steamship route from New York, and notwithstanding its many drawbacks in point of sanitary conditions, is yet growing rapidly in commercial importance. Its wretchedly unhealthy condition causes one to hasten away to the more elevated country, where St. Paul is situated, and where the traveler runs little or no risk of contracting yellow fever or malarial affections of any sort.
Santos is the port for St. Paul, with which it is connected by rail, and from which it is separated by about forty miles.
This capital of the state of São Paulo, St. Paul, contains some ninety thousand inhabitants. The province is credited with a million and a half. The city lies just under the tropic of Capricorn, southwest of Rio, about two thousand feet above the level of the sea, upon a high ridge, covering an elevated plateau of undulating hills. It enjoys the sunshine of the tropics, modified by the freshness of the temperate zone. It is venerable in years, having been founded in 1554, but it seems to have taken a fresh start of late, as its population has doubled in the last decade. As intimated, it is entirely free from yellow fever, which is so fatal at Santos, and has excellent drinking water, together with good drainage and well paved streets. The city contains some fine public buildings, and has many handsome adornments, being largely peopled by North Americans and English; the former prevail in numbers and influence, indeed, it has been called the American city of Brazil. There is also a large Italian colony settled here. St. Paul has a good system of tramways, several Protestant churches, and a number of educational and charitable public institutions, together with many of the attractions of a much larger capital. Among the popular amusements, the theatre of San José is justly esteemed, and is a well-appointed establishment in all of its belongings. There are two spacious public gardens, embellished with grottoes, fountains, choice trees, and flowers, while the private gardens attached to the dwellings are numerous and tasteful.
In the district round about the city venomous serpents are frequently met with, whose bite is as dangerous as that of the rattlesnakes of our northern climate. As the land is cleared and cultivated, they naturally and rapidly disappear. These reptiles fear man, and avoid his vicinity quite as earnestly as human beings avoid them. It is only when they are molested, trodden upon, or cornered, as it were, that they attack any one.
The city is connected with Rio Janeiro by a railway, and two other railroads run from it far inland. The Rio and St. Paul railway is fairly equipped, but the roadbed is not properly ballasted, and consequently one rides over the route in a cloud of dust, while suffering from the oscillations and jolting of the cars. This railway, however, is one of the most successful and profitable in the republic. It is some three hundred miles in length, and passes through a dozen or more tunnels, one of which is a mile and a half in length. This tunnel required seven years' labor before it was passable. There is just now a great "boom" of land values in and about St. Paul. It is towards this state that the tide of Italian emigration is largely directed, for some reason which we do not comprehend, but it is probably stimulated by a combined effort to this effect.
The passage southward from Rio Janeiro or Santos to Montevideo occupies about five days, but a large amount of rough ocean experience is generally crowded into that brief period, added to which the coasting steamers are far from affording the ordinary comforts so desirable at sea. Of the food supplied to passengers one does not feel inclined to complain, because a person embarking upon these lines does so knowing what to expect; but as regards the domestic conveniences and cleanliness generally, there is no excuse for their defective character. We are sorry to say that the class of Portuguese and Spaniards one encounters on these coasting vessels is far from decently cleanly in daily habits, carelessly adding to the unsanitary conditions.
The wind in these latitudes is not only inclined to be fierce, but it usually goes entirely round the compass at least once or twice during the voyage, and is more than liable to wind up, off the mouth of the river Plate, with a regular and furious pampero. This is a hurricane wind, which is born in the gorges of the Andes, and thence pursuing its course over nearly a thousand miles of level pampas, gains speed and power with every league of progress. The season in which these hurricanes—for in their fury they deserve to be thus designated—prevail, is from March to September, but they are liable to come at any time. The wind is considered by the people of Montevideo to be wholesome and invigorating, as far as the land is concerned, but seamen dread it on shipboard, and call it a Plate River hurricane. We know of no more disagreeable roadstead than that of Montevideo, when a pampero is blowing. We have seen ships under these circumstances, with two anchors down, obliged to resort to the use of oil on the sea, to prevent themselves from being swamped. Though the inhabitants represent a pampero to be comparatively harmless on the land, yet it does sometimes commit fearful havoc there also, especially among the unprotected herds of wild cattle on the plains, and upon all trees or plantations which lie in its devastating course. It is true that it brings with it a bracing and life-giving atmosphere from the snow-capped Andes far away, and if it could only do so with less forceful demonstration, it would be a welcome visitor in the heated days of these regions.
The most direct way to illustrate what these South American pampas are is to compare them to the vast prairies of our Western and Southwestern States. Any one familiar with those far-reaching, horizon-bounded plains knows what the pampas of the Argentine Republic are like. Beginning near the foothills of the Cordilleras, in their very shadow, as it were, these smoothed out, level lands extend hundreds of miles eastward to the great estuary of the Plate River, on the borders of the Atlantic Ocean. Though apparently sterile, the soil of the pampas, like the dry, baked land of Australia, only requires irrigation and cultivation to rival the most attractive valleys of Southern Europe. It is believed by scientists that these plains were once covered by a broad inland sea, connected directly with the Atlantic. In their present condition these pampas can hardly be called barren, since they give excellent grazing for extensive herds of wild cattle, which thrive and fatten upon the abundance of coarse, natural grass, similar to what is known as bunch grass in Texas and New Mexico. This product ripens and makes itself into standing hay, retaining its natural vitality and nutritious qualities throughout months of atmospheric exposure. After being close-cropped by the roving herds of cattle, the bunch grass renews itself, reproducing in great abundance.
Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is situated on the remarkable estuary of the Plate River,—Rio de la Plata, or "Silver River,"—whose spacious mouth is marked by two capes, Santa Maria and San Antonio, more than one hundred miles apart. Only a nautical observation will show just where the line of ocean ceases and that of the estuary begins. The unobservant passenger believes himself still sailing upon the broad ocean until he finally sights the land on which the city stands. The flag of Uruguay flying from various crafts—blue and white, in alternate stripes, with a glowing sun in the upper corner near the staff—indicates the near approach to the land it represents.