SELLING CATTLE IN RIO GRANDE DO SUL.
The process of preparing this meat is quite interesting, for it is so much different from the methods of preparing and preserving beef in our own country. Pelotas is the greatest centre of this industry, but thousands of head of cattle are also killed at Bagé, Quarahim, San Gabriel and other towns. The work of killing and curing is done in the season from November to May, which are the summer months. After an animal has been killed the carcass is taken to a long and broad dissecting shed, where it is immediately set upon by a man and boys armed with long knives. In less than ten minutes, as a rule, the hide has been removed, and all the meat cut in strips and removed from the bones. These strips of meat are made as large as possible. After being cut up the strips are hung up for a time on poles to cool, but no artificial cooling process is used. They are then immersed in immense tanks filled with strong salt brine. Later, they are placed in a tank filled with a still stronger brine, and, finally, into a third solution of great strength.
After being sufficiently soaked in this strong brine, the strips of meat are piled up with alternate layers of salt. From these piles the meat is laid out on rows of railings, and thoroughly dried in the sun, which gives it the final process of curing and seasoning. This meat then becomes the xarque, or jerked beef, which forms a most important article of food in Brazil, and can be seen for sale in the meat markets all over the country. It is bound in bales of about two hundred pounds, covered with sacking and shipped to the markets. To use it the meat must first be soaked for a time in water to remove the excess of the salt preservative, and then it is boiled or roasted, making a nutritive diet of which the people are very fond. The tongues are prepared in the same way, and shipped to the northern markets. The hides are salted to preserve them, the bones, horns and hoofs are boiled to remove all the tallow and glue, and all of these products are shipped to Europe. The process as followed to this day is a wasteful one. The same care and economy of manufacture followed in the United States would yield far greater profits to the manufacturers. A half million or more of cattle are slaughtered and cured in this way, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul each year, and it could be developed to far greater proportions under proper management. It will not be, however, until foreign capital develops the industry, as it has in Argentina.
VIEW OF PORTO ALEGRE.
At the northern end of the lagoon is the principal city of Southern Brazil, Porto Alegre. It is a neat and prosperous city, in which nearly all the foreign banks and business houses doing business in Brazil have branches. The view in travelling up the lagoon is not especially attractive, for it consists mostly of flat fields along which are miles of racks, on which the jerked beef is laid out to dry. The city itself is built on a promontory which juts out into the river. The commercial prosperity of this city began with the colonizing of a lot of Germans soon after the revolution of the middle of the last century in Germany. The Teutonic element is very marked in Porto Alegre, as well as in other cities of the state, such as Novo Friburgo and São Leopoldo, which are still more distinctly German. There is a large municipal theatre, city hall, cathedral and other public buildings. In fact, commercially as well as in every other way, Porto Alegre is the leading city south of São Paulo.
Rio Grande do Sul has a population of about a million and a quarter, thus making it fifth in population in the republic. Its climate is temperate, and the winter season sometimes becomes quite cool. Snow occasionally falls, and, when the cold winds blow in from the west, the still waters freeze over. It resembles very much the plains of Uruguay, on which also immense herds of cattle feed. A number of minerals are found, and it contains about the only profitable coal mines that have yet been discovered in Brazil. Near Porto Alegre are some coal mines that have been worked for years; but they are not worked near to their full capacity, because the freight rates are so high that the coal cannot be shipped profitably to the other Brazilian states. A little gold is mined as well as some silver, lead and copper. A number of precious stones such as amethysts, topaz, tourmalines, aquamarines and moonstones are found in certain sections.
Rio Grande do Sul has had a chequered career almost ever since its settlement. For a long time its ownership was contested between Spaniards and Portuguese, although at an earlier time, when the capitancias were formed, no one considered it worth the taking. Many of the original settlers came from the Azores, and some of the inhabitants are still glad to call themselves Azoreans. It was not until 1822 that it was definitely united with the rest of Brazil, but at that time it was joined to the empire as a separate province. The independent and martial spirit, engendered by the many wars, has made the state very independent, and this has caused it to be turbulent. Quite a good deal of railway construction has been done in the past decade, and this has added to the prosperity of the country by opening up new districts to trade and commerce. The construction of railways is comparatively easy. The Uruguay River on the western boundary furnishes good communication with Uruguayan and Argentinian ports, and regular steamship service is maintained on it. There are also some rivers emptying into the lake, which are navigable for small craft.
The state of Matto Grosso, (the dense forest) is an empire in itself, for it contains a greater area than the original thirteen colonies. It is one-sixth as large as the United States. It is not only an undeveloped, but practically an unexplored country, whose resources are only half understood. Much of it is as wild as it was when Sebastian Cabot made his way up the Paraguay River early in the sixteenth century. All of its supplies are conveyed up the waterways of the La Plata system, and it takes a month to reach Cuyaba, the capital, from Rio de Janeiro. It has a population not exceeding one person to each four square miles of territory, so that there are few towns. Cuyaba has perhaps twenty thousand souls, and has long ago passed the century mark of its existence. It is said to be quite an attractive little city.