These monster warships will be named the Minas Geraes, São Paulo and the Rio de Janeiro, in honour of the three most powerful states. The first named has already been delivered, and is now in Brazilian waters. The other two will follow at intervals of a few months, and the smaller boats will all be added to the navy during the year 1910. One innovation is the placing of twelve-inch guns in the upper towers instead of the ten-inch guns which have been used heretofore. This feature, the British builders claim, gives these boats the most powerful armament of any ships afloat. Nine-inch armour has been used where seven and eight inch has generally been used. Then secondary batteries of great strength have been added in the centre line of the boats, which are also a novel feature. A speed of almost twenty-two knots an hour for these leviathans has been generated by the builders on the several trial runs. Each of the new battleships will be five hundred and forty-three feet in length with a displacement of nineteen thousand two hundred and eighty tons and a draught of twenty-five feet. The two scout ships will be named Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul after two more states. These vessels have been built for speed, and will be able to rush through the water at the rate of twenty-six and one-half knots per hour. They are now considering the advisability of adding submarine boats to the navy in order to complete the naval equipment.
“These new ships,” say the Brazilian authorities, “make it impossible for the great powers to start any so-called pacific demonstration against Brazil. To have any chance of success against the Brazilian Dreadnaughts, and other subsidiary ships, a power ought to have a number of ships at least double; but there is no country, England included, that can send so far from home such a considerable part of its navy without danger.” It has had one effect, and that has been to stir up its ambitious neighbour on the east coast, Argentina, and that country has recently let a contract with an American shipyard for two battleships which, according to Argentinian naval authorities, will be still more powerful Dreadnaughts than the new Brazilian ships.
For the education of young men for the army and navy the government maintains a number of schools. The Escola Militar, or military school of Rio Janeiro, is the West Point of Brazil. Here cadets are educated in military science and fitted for positions as commissioned officers. A military school is also maintained at Porto Alegre, where the children of military officers are educated at the government expense. There is also a Navy College in the same city for technical instruction in naval science. Schools for apprentices are also maintained in a number of the principal ports. The majority of those who enter these schools, both army and navy, are of mixed nationality, either negro or Indian. Instruction is given in all of the elementary studies in addition to army or naval science. The few years instruction received in those institutions by these men, who generally come from poor and ignorant homes, makes them not only better educated men but better fitted to assume the duties of citizens of a great republic.
CHAPTER XV
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES
The Indians, whom the Portuguese found in Brazil, had not advanced in civilization as had the Incas in Peru, or the Aztecs in Mexico. They were more or less nomadic, although the different tribes kept within certain general limits as did the North American Indians. Perhaps the bounty of nature and the hot climate deadened the impulse to mental effort and exertion that leads to a higher civilization. There are evidences of the existence of the family relation and marriage customs, but polygamy was practised. Cannibalism was common too; and it is said that they not only devoured their enemies killed in war, but even ate their relatives as a special mark of favour and consideration.
The Indians generally believed in three great or chief gods. The sun was the god of the animal kingdom, the moon of the vegetable kingdom and Ruda was the god of love and reproduction. In addition to these chief gods there was a multitude of inferior deities who served various purposes. The fact that there was some idea of a future life, or a “happy hunting ground” in the beyond, is shown by the burial custom of depositing in the grave of the dead warrior the bow and arrow, and vessels in which to prepare food. It was also the custom to hang a number of friends or relatives upon the death of a chief, in order that the departed might have congenial company in the next world. The importation of negroes from Africa also brought in a great deal of superstition, and a tendency toward idolatry and fetichism, which can be traced in the religious and moral customs even to this day.
It is impossible not to admire the early missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church. They followed side by side with those adventurers and explorers who pushed their way through trackless forests and almost impassable swamps in their search for earth’s treasures. It was the Jesuits who did most of the early evangelizing work in Brazil. This order was more humanely disposed toward the natives than some of the orders who accompanied the Spanish Conquistadores, for they endeavoured to protect the natives from injustice. It was in the middle of the 16th century that the members of this order began their evangelizing, work in Brazil. They plunged into regions hitherto unpenetrated by white men. They went out alone among the cannibal tribes who dwelt on these shores, and lived with them. They learned the languages, and soon were able to preach to them in their own tongues. These brave missionaries exhorted the Indians to lay aside their practice of cannibalism and polygamous marriages, and adopt the new faith. In order to appeal to their childlike natures every device and paraphernalia of pomp and procession was adopted in their services. Miraculous appearances and finds became common, so that sacred sites for the building of the religious edifices were frequently located by this means.