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BRAZIL TODAY AND TOMORROW

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

HEW VORE • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON • BOUBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

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S w o a ^ §

^BRAZIL

TODAY AND TOMORROW

BY

L. E. ELLIOTT, F. R. G. S.

LITBKASY EOrrOS, FAN-AMESICAN UAGAZINB, NBW YOKK

ILLUSTRATED

"The time will come when the Ocean will no longer limit the known lands, when a new world shall be opened up to the followers of the sea, and Thule will be no longer the Ultima Thule of the earth."

Seneca, " Medea,"

IStto fork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1921

All riihts restned

CopyuGHT, igi7

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published March. 1917.

TO

M. L. E.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction i

Brazil's Great Extent — Virgin Interior — Development dur- ing Last Hundred Years — Variety of Soil and Climate — Amazon Basin, Central Plateau, Coast — Diversified Indus- tries and Populations — Divergent Interests — Brazil Over- Praised and Over-Blamed — South American Stand- point— North and South Americans — ^Ties with Europe.

CHAPTER I

History of Brazil lo

Discovery — Henry the Navigator — Search for Cathay — Captain Cabral — Duarte Coelho — ^The Capitanias — Ramalho and Caramaru — Sao Paulo, Bahia and Pernam- buco — ^The Jesuits — Mamelucos — First Entradas — ^The Sertao — The Bandeirantes — Raposo — Fernao Dias — Gold and Diamonds — Destruction of the Missions — Brazil un- der Spain — Corsairs — ^The Dutch in North Brazil — Portu- gal regains Independence — Evacuation by Dutch — ^The French in Rio — Interior Mines and Settlement — ^The Marquis de Pombal — Expulsion of Jesuits — Dom Joao in Brazil — Dom Pedro I — Independent Monarchy — Dom Pedro II — Abolition of Slavery — Republic.

CHAPTER II Colonization 56

Group Immigration Planned — Swiss in Nova Friburgo — First Germans in Rio Grande — Petropolis and Blumenau — Joinville — German Emigration Forbidden — Portuguese Colonies — Parceria System — French and Alsatians — North Americans — Santa Barbara and the Consul — New Italian Stream — Colonos and the Patronato Agricola — Poles and Russians — Conditions of Settlement in SSo

viii CONTENTS

Page

Paulo — Present Status of Colonies — ^Japanese at Iguape — Numbers of Immigrants entering Brazil — Future Immigra- tion— Best Points of Settlement — Class needed.

CHAPTER III

Social Conditions 76

Brazilian Courtesy — European Influence — ^Titles — Domi- nating Class — Fazendeiros and Commerciantes — Mixed Blood and the Labouring Classes — Bacharelismo — The Sertanejo — Life in the Interior — Festas — ^The Tropeiro — Lotteries — The Bicho — Coffee Drinking — Religion — Saints' Days — Ceremonies — Position of Women — ^The Brazilian Girl and Wife — City Life — Literature — Novels — Poets — ^The Stage — ^The Press — Influence of Blood, Euro- pean and African — Negro Cooking and Folklore — ^The Native Brazilian — Pottery and Weaving — Ideas and Abil- ity— Work of Rondon — Fate of the Indian — Education — Brazil not Revolutionary — ^The A. B. C. Treaty.

CHAPTER IV

Transportation. I. River and Road 123

Early Water Communication — Waterways Penetrating In- terior— Great rivers — Early roads — New Automobile highways

II. Rail 129

First Railroad Planning — First Construction — Coffee Rail- ways— Climbing the Mountain Barrier — Work in Empire and Republic — Borrowing — Linking Centres — Radiating Lines — Roads Serving States, South to North — Brazil Railway Company — ^The Central Line — Leopoldina — Bahia Roads — Great Western — Northern Lines — Roads Passing Falls — Financial Conditions — Status of Owner- ship— Future Lines.

III. Shipping 161

Steamship River Service — Sea Communication — Na- tionality of Lines — Brazilian Mercantile Marine.

CONTENTS ix

CHAPTER V

Page Industries 167

The Coffee Industry of Brazil — ^The Rubber Industry of the Amazon — ^The Meat Industry: Cattle Raising and Packing-Houses — Cotton Growing and Weaving — Herva Matte — Sugar — ^Tobacco — Wheat — Fibres — Cacao — Min- ing— Brazilian Manufactures: Artificial Industries; In- dustrial Centres; Capital; National Industries Competing with Importations; Imposts; Factories of Sao Paulo; Tex- tiles; Locality of Mills in Brazil; Labour and Consumption of Material; National Dyes; Water-power.

CHAPTER VI

Finance. I. Currency 276

Value of the milreis — Fluctuations — Caixa de Conversao — Convertible and Inconvertible Paper — Emergency Issues — Treasury Bills — Paper Currency, at Different Dates — Metal Coinage — Effects of Fallen Exchange,

II. Investments 285

Blood, Brains and Money — British Investments — Rail- ways— Public Utilities and Industrials — External Loans — French Investments — German Work — North American Interests — Banks in Brazil.

III. State Debts — Municipal Debts — Federal Debts — Funding Loans — Resumption of Specie Payments — Sources of State and Federal Revenue. 297

CHAPTER VII

The World's Horticultural and Medicinal Debt to

Brazil 306

Brazilian Origin of Well-known Flowers — First Botanists — Piso and Marcgrav — Loudon's Hortus — Gardner — Or- chids— Cattley — Flowers and Shrubs — Fruits — Medicines — Ipecacuanha — Copaiba — Jaborandi — Guarana — Native Remedies — Mineral Waters.

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII

Page

Brazil's Exterior Commerce 316

Dominant Districts and Industries — Figures of Ten-year Periods of Commerce — ^The Nine Principal Articles — Sao Paulo's Share — United States Purchases — Imports — ^Their Origin — Balance of Trade.

List of Brazilian States, Area and Population 324

Glossary of Brazilian terms 325

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece, Botafogo Bay, Rio de Janeiro

Opposite page

Entrance of Rio de Janeiro Harbour, 4

Ponte Santa Isabel, Recife; Pra9a Maua; Waterfront at Bahia, 20

Falls of Iguassu, 32

Old and New Brazil, 38

Two views of S. Paulo City, 46

Two views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio, 50

Agriculture in S. Paulo, 66

Barra Road, Bahia; Resaca, Rio; Upper Amazon, 74

Monroe Palacio, Rio; Municipal Theatre, S. Paulo, 88

Igapo near Rio Negro; Caripuna Indians, Madeira River, no

Agricultural School, Piracicaba; Butantan Institute, 116

The Sao Paulo Railway, 132

Rua Barao da Victoria, Pernambuco; Avenida 7 de Setembro, Bahia. 150

Porto Velho, Madeira-Mamore; Igarape S. Vicente, Manaos, 154

Waterfront of S. Salvador (Bahia); Floating docks at Manaos, 162

The Sao Paulo Coffee Industry, 176

Rubber on the Amazon, 2CXJ

The Cattle Industry, 212

Carioca Cotton Mill, Rio; Catende Sugar Mill, Pernambuco, 244

Coffee-loading equipment, Santos; Sugar lands in Pernambuco, 264

Ministry of War, Rio; Avenida Nazareth, Belem, 284

Fishing Boats; Rocks at Guaruja; Bertioga; Cantareira Water Supply, 302

On the Madeira River, Amazonas; Victoria Regia hUes, near Manaos, 310

Map showing factories, employees, etc 274

Map showing agricultural production, 324

Coloured map of Brazil, showing railways, rivers, mountains, chief

towns, 328

BRAZIL TODAY AND TOMORROW

BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

The greatest of all American countries is compara- tively the least developed. Brazil, with her 3,300,000 square miles of territory, four thousand miles of coast, and her incomparable system of great waterways, has the largest extent of wild and almost unknown country of any political division of the New World; she, and she alone, owns thousands of square miles of forests where no one has set foot but the native, still really living In the Stone Age, mountain ranges never properly prospected, with their deposits of minerals scarcely scratched, and millions of acres of grassy uplands wait- ing for the farmer and the stock-raiser.

Brazil is not scantily developed because little has been done; on the contrary, a wonderful amount of development has been accomplished, but the period of expansion has been short and the country so great and varied that whole regions remain out of the track of progress. Until a century ago, when Dom Joao opened Brazilian ports to international commerce, Brazil lay in a trance, bound hand and foot to Portugal, isolated from the world. Her erection into a separate monarchy found her without capital, without education, for she had neither adequate primary nor technical schools, without a press, and without any knowledge of her own resources except that gathered by the interior raids, wanderings and settlements of her own hardy people.

2 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

Everything that has been done to bring Brazil into the race of nations is the work of the last hundred years; the most intense period of rapid building since the establishment of the republic has lasted less than thirty years, for in that time has taken place the great acquisition of private fortunes in the industrial regions of Brazil. Much of the civic building, creation of pub- lic utilities, establishment of transportation lines, has been due to foreign capital and technical skill, but Brazil herself has contributed no small share of enter- prise during the last fifty years; descendants of Portu- guese fidalgos have taken up engineering, agriculture, commerce and city-making with energy and intelligence which is not always given a due share of recognition by those onlookers who think that all development of Latin America must come from without. In Brazil much progress, much creation, has come from within, and will come to an even larger degree in the future with improvement in technical education; but the country is enormous, the centres of population have always lain on or near the sea border, and interior Brazil, the virgin heart of South America, remains practically untouched.

The two great interior states of Matto Grosso and Goyaz cover an area of more than two million square kilometres; they make up one-fourth of the whole Brazilian territory, and Brazil covers half of South America: but this huge heart-shaped wedge in the cen- tre of the continent has no more than half a million population. This is not because the country is tropical or worthless, but because it is unopened and unknown.

Within her wide area Brazil encloses a great variety of soils and climates: she has no snow line, because she has no great mountain heights; a peak less than three

BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW 3

thousand metres high, Itatiaya, in the Mantiqueiras, is the point of greatest altitude. But she has almost every other climatic gift that can be included within the fifth degree of North and thirty-third of South Latitude; between the eighth degree East and thirtieth West Longitude of the meridian of Rio de Janeiro. Brazil is a vast plateau with a steep descent to the sea along half her coast, and a flat hot sea margin of vary- ing widths; this plateau, scored by great rivers, sweeps away in undulating prairies, sloping in two principal directions — inland, in the centre and south, to the great Parana valley; and in the upper regions, northward to the immense Amazon basin. This is not a basin so much as a wide plate, for not only is the course of the huge rio-mar almost flat for the last thousand miles of its journey to the sea (Manaos is only 85 feet above sea-level) but this practically level ground extends northward all the way to the confines of Venezuela and the three Guianas, and southward until the Cordilheiras of Matto Grosso are encountered. Great expanses of this plate are filled with the sweltering forests of trop- ical tradition, forests containing a thousand kinds of strange orchids, immense and curious trees, insects, reptiles and animals; from Orellana and Lopez de Aguirre to Humboldt, Bates, Wallace and Agassiz, from the Lord de la Ravardiere to Nicolas Hortsman the practical Dutchman who announced that El Dorado did not exist, to Charles Marie de la Condamine, Mar- tins, Spix, Admiral Smith, Lister Maw, Schomburgk and Wickham, every traveller upon the Amazon has tried to describe the indescribable Amazonian forest. Deep, monotonous, silent, dark and changeless, the forest unconquerable walls in the uncountable rivers

4 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

traversing it from the snows of Peru and the interior plateau of Brazil, closing in upon the little cities where man has settled himself in a puny attempt to steal treasures out of its mighty heart.

There is a remarkable contrast between this humid forestal area of the north and the cool high cattle-lands of the centre, the pine and matte woods and wheat lands of the south and the hot coastal belt of the great promontory with its deep fringe of coconuts, its sugar country, tobacco fields and cacao plantations; between the coffee country of Sao Paulo and the regions of the carnauba palm and the babassu. No physical contrast could be more acute than that of the flat tropic swamps of Para and the austere, fantastic and beautiful granite peaks of the Serra do Mar near Rio — the slender Finger of God in the Orgao Mountains, the curved up-rearing of the Corcovado, the cloud-wreathed head of Tijuca.

Nor is there less contrast in the different industries resulting from the different products of the widely diver- sified regions, and the population inhabiting them. The extreme north exists largely upon the rubber business, where independent individuals extract gum from wild trees in regions that are sometimes scarcely charted; in the south an Imported Italian population performs routine tasks on the highly organized coffee plantations.

In between these two sharply marked divisions there are many industries and many grades of labour, from the cahoclo half-Indian of the north to the negro of the centre and the Japanese, Syrian and Pole of the south- erly colonies, as well as the descendant of the Portu- guese. There is in some parts of Brazil such a mixture of races and tongues that it seems as if the Jesuits were

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BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW $

needed again to invent a new lingua geral. Contrasts in personality, as well as in soil and climate in Brazil, and the difference in accessibility between an open seaboard and a deep and roadless interior, have all aided to bring about the marked diversity of interests which have more than once proved the salvation of the country. Publicists in Brazil sometimes sound a note of warning against the decentralization that has grown more emphatic since the erection of the Republican system gave autonomous powers to the States; there have been suggestions of separation of north from south on account of their distinct interests; but it is impos- sible to doubt that a country with a score of industries and of products to offer to world markets Is in a better economic position than lands depending upon two or three main sources of Income.

In the Argentine the city of Buenos Aires is the centre and fount of business; every great house has its headquarters there, its railway links and commercial arms reach out Into all productive parts of the country. To Buenos Aires everything comes to be marketed whether from the Interior or from abroad: It is the city, the head and heart of the Argentine. It Is not possible to point to any one city in Brazil and to say the same. Not even lovely and splendid Rio, federal capital and gay vortex as she is, can claim to represent the commercial interest of the country; she is the spending-place of much of Brazil's Income, but she is not the greatest earner. This honour falls to Sao Paulo, with Santos as the biggest exporter of values; no one denies the commercial palm to the Paulistas, but It is not heresy to say that the elimination of the coffee industry would not destroy the life of Brazil as, for

6 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

example, the disappearance of the cereal or cattle indus- try would threaten the Argentine. She would still retain her herva matte ^ her cattle, her mines; her rubber, wax, fruit, cotton, sugar, and tobacco; her hardwoods and forestal drugs and dyes, her cacao and fibres and nuts. A whole world of interests divides Sao Paulo from Bahia, Bahia from Para, Para from Pernambuco, Maranhao from Victoria, Maceio from Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro from Manaos, Ilheos from Paranagua, Mossoro from Sao Francisco, Fortaleza from Florian- opolis; some of these ports are great economically, alive with shipping, while others are little developing points which have not yet achieved international fame; but each has its distinct raison d'etre and has a divergent social and economic impulse from that of many of her sisters. It is true that certain states seem to produce almost everything tropical or sub-tropical as well as being endowed with minerals, as Minas Geraes, grow- ing coffee, cotton, raising cattle, mining precious stones, gold and iron ore, weaving her cotton and running a great dairy business with interstate shipments of her famous cheese and butter; or Pernambuco and the other states of the great promontory, with a host of different products; or Sao Paulo, where an energetic Brazilian fazendeirOj to show what his state can grow besides coffee, cotton, rice and sugar, has gardens containing "every known fruit" of temperate and tropical zones. But the distinct local industries of the widely varying Brazilian soil and climate are the most striking and promising elements of her economic life.

Many parts of South America have suffered from over-praise as much as from unmerited blame. None

BRAZIL : TODAY AND TOMORROW 7

have suffered more than Brazil, shut off from the non- Latin world rather more than is Spanish America be- cause of her Portuguese idiom. There is little enough thorough study of Spanish on the part of Anglo-Saxons, but it is mighty compared to the study of Portuguese, a beautiful language and probably rather more readily acquired than the formal and clear-cut idiom of Castile. Non-comprehension of Portuguese and Spanish has been a bar to understanding of the soul of Latin America ; nearly every person who wishes to learn something about any part of the Southern Continent runs to the libraries for a book of travels, generally written by a foreigner, himself sparsely acquainted with the lan- guage of the country about which he is writing, and frequently entirely from an outside viewpoint. There is a remarkable absence of study of South America from the South American's viewpoint, and it is for this reason that I have tried in this book to quote from Bra- zilian books and newspapers rather than from the ideas of foreigners, however distinguished. It is a loss to the Anglo-Saxon that so much fine and acute comment and description of South America by South Americans falls on deaf ears because of the language difficulty; perhaps the next few years may see the new interest in things South American stimulated by translations from many more of the writings of South American authors.

Only by understanding the South American better can the Anglo-Saxon see the relation that mutually exists, and realize the depth of the gulf between them at the same time. Especially since the outbreak of the European War we have seen an astounding number of agreeable but visionary articles written on the subject of the strong logical tie, geographical, political and

8 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

mental, between North and South America. The truth is however that the two continents have little geo- graphical connection — Panama was once a strait — and perhaps even less racial, religious, and mental leanings. Both sections of the Americas have drawn their blood, language, religion and political ideals from Europe, but from two strongly marked sections — one, the Protestant Anglo-Saxon, commercial, mechanically inventive: the other, the Roman Catholic Latin section, artistic and mentally brilliant but not usually a born commer- ciante.

It is just as well to realize this difference clearly, to know that, at least In the past, the Americas have been more closely bound to Europe than to each other; the ties are especially strong in Brazil, more tender than in many parts of the New World, because separation In a political sense was obtained without violence. It is only through understanding of the mental and social attitude and conditions of the Brazilian that the new- comer can avoid pitfalls.

Mistakenly advised, and often lured by too golden promises, the stranger has often rushed to one or an- other part of South America, has found bitter disap- pointment, and gone home with denunciation of all things South American upon his tongue; but in many instances the fault lay within himself, in his want of knowledge of circumstances, physical and mental, and of his improper equipment for the task that lay to his hand. There are many such tasks, but they must be approached with equipment and spirit equally prepared; no fortune is to be attained by a mere rub of the magic lamp.

BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW 9

This book is offered chiefly with the hope of helping to stimulate interest in Brazil, to induce a more thor- ough study than these pages can offer in the only place where Brazil can be studied — in her own fair confines. If it supplements what has already been written, brings up to date for the time being the story of Brazil's devel- opment, if it awakens in more of the energetic and able people of the world a wish to take part in the opening-up of the great Brazilian resources, this book will have served its modest purpose. It is the fruit of seven years' travel in and study of Latin America, and two years' special work on and in Brazil, where seventeen out of the twenty States were visited.

A debt is owing to many Brazilian publications, sources of much statistical matter as well as illumina- tion of Brazilian thought, as the Jornal do Commercio of Rio, Brasil Ferro Carril, very many local journals of different States, Wileman's Brazilian Review, the Diario Official issued by various authorities; the invaluable Mensagens, with their financial and industrial surveys, issued by State Presidents; to many kind and helpful friends in Brazil, England and America; to the South American Journal; and especially to Mr. W. Roberts of the London Times, to whom I am indebted for most of the subject matter in "The World's Horticultural and Medicinal Debt to Brazil."

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL

Brazil and the Brazilians cannot be understood without knowledge of their history, for here as in no other part of Latin America the past has led up to the present without any violent upheaval. While the Spanish colonies of Central and South America were plunged first in revolutionary and afterwards in civil war, shedding not only blood but also tradition and brotherhood with their kin, Portuguese America was saved from similar conditions by the odd turn of fortune that made her a monarchy, independent of Europe and yet ruled by a European prince, during the most critical years of the nineteenth century.

Thanks to Napoleon Buonaparte, no furious chasm, difficult for even thoughts to bridge, was opened be- tween Brazil and the Mother Country; it was never necessary for young Brazilians to be taught that Europe was an oppressor who must be bitterly fought. Brazil gained in the arts of peace and in the retention of pleasant relations between herself and the lusitanos, while, in contrast, Spanish American feeling is still so strongly anti-Spanish that in times of unrest it is the immigrant of Iberian blood who is singled out for special ill-will. These republics are without memorials to their Spanish discoverers or rulers; Mexico, for example, has no statue or tablet to the memory of Hernan Cortes, great figure as he was. Admiration for the conquistadores is generally forgotten in bitterness against

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL ii

Spanish rule, all history before revolutionary times is coloured with this deliberately fostered feeling, and only occasionally does there arise a speaker or writer broad- minded enough to take up the cudgels for Spain and the rich inheritance she left to her children.

Brazil was more fortunate. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement down to the present day she has never suffered any great internal conflagration: there were persistent Indian troubles in the first cen- turies until the survivors of these unlucky natives moved back to the interior forests, but among the population that grew up in Brazil, hardy and prolific, there has been little strife with the insignificant excep- tion of the feuds of the Emboabas, the Mascates and the Balaios.

Brazil was discovered twice. First came a Spaniard, Vicente PInzon, an old companion of Columbus: he found and reconnoitred the mouth of the Amazon, and sailed south to a point which he named Santa Maria de la Consolacion, but which Is now known as Cape St. Augustine. On his return to Spain his report roused no interest at a Court where new discoveries of land only added to the embarrassment of riches, and the attention of the adventurous was already taken up with the West Indies; the second discovery (if we Ignore the tale of the sight of Brazilian shores by DIogo de Lepe, whose wanderings were, in any case, unfruitful) was a pure accident, but, occurring to a Portuguese, was Imme- diately seized upon as a basis of claim to part of the new lands in the West. This was on May 3, 1500, three months after the voyage of PInzon to the Amazon. Spain, to whom the all-powerful Pope Alexander VI had allotted in the famous bull of 1495 all the new

12 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

lands discovered or to be discovered in the West, while Portugal was given rights to discoveries in the East, might have contested this claim but for two reasons: the first was that the Treaty of Tordesillas had shifted the Pope's dividing line westward to a point 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands so that Portugal could retain her Atlantic island discoveries; the second was that either by accident or design the early cartographers drew Brazil's easterly outline about twenty-two de- grees more to the east than it should have been, so that the whole of the enormous tract of what is Brazil today fell within the legitimate claims of Portugal. It was but a matter of equity that Portugal should have a share in the lands of the West, for to the work of that Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, the initiative for sea adventure was due. Henry, Inheritor of sea traditions on both sides of his parentage, for his mother was an English princess, daughter of John of Gaunt, spent his life in a long sea dream translated into deeds; for forty years he lived on the lonely promontory of Sagres, his observatory full of charts, the haunt of shipmasters and geographers, with his shipyards below the windows ever busy with the building of stout caravels: from 1420 until his death in 1460 the Naviga- tor urged and bullied his captains to go southward down the coast of Africa, where no sailor had pene- trated within Christian times, whatever they had done in the days of the bold Phoenicians.

Thus were the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira re- discovered and settled, the pilots venturing with terror into that "Green Sea of Darkness" where sea monsters threatened their passage, and at last daring to sail farther into the southern waters where not only the

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 13

water but the land boiled with the terrible heat, they said. Rounding Cape Bojador they found a coast populated with sturdy blacks, began the slave trade that demoralized half the world; in i486 Bartholomeo Diaz rounded the "Cape of Storms" and proyed that there was indeed as Henry, dead for a quarter of a century, had dreamed, a southern gateway to the Spice Isles of the East — the goal of adventurers ever since Marco Polo's tale was spread abroad.

By this discovery the whole imagination of seafaring Europe was awakened : small wonder that Columbus in the end got a hearing when he talked of a sea-path to the East by way of the West, or that, on his return with a story of rich lands, Spain should have been satisfied to believe the theory that the shores of Cathay had been found. Columbus, who became half demented towards the close of his life, never knew that he had found anything but lands on the edge of Cathay; he once forced his men to take an oath to this effect under the penalty of hanging them to the yards of his ship.

To his obsession was chiefly due the lack of any clear conception in Europe of the existence of a great new continent until the Portuguese captain stumbled upon Brazil in 1500, although three years before Alonzo de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci had coasted the Carib- bean, charting the north coast of Venezuela and Colom- bia as well as the east of Central America. That year of 1497 was the great year of discoveries, in sea adven- ture, for then began the series of voyages of the Cabot family, Labrador being discovered in that first scour- ing of the north seas by Europeans; from that year also dates that strange chapter of oriental history, Portu-

14 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

guese rule in India, when Vasco da Gama sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and reached Calicut.

Early in 1500 Captain Pedro Alvares Cabral was despatched with a fleet of thirteen ships to follow up the conquests of da Gama; warned of the calms off the African coast which later became notorious among sailors as the "doldrums," he stood far out to sea, was caught in strong currents, and found himself to his as- tonishment off an unknown coast.

Sailing south until a safe landing place was reached (Porto Seguro, some twelve miles north of the little town on the Bahian coast that today bears the name) he landed on Good Friday morning, was received in a friendly manner by the South American natives to whom Europe was thus discovered, took possession of the territory in the name of the Portuguese King, sent a ship back to Lisbon under Andre Gongalves to report the discovery, and sailed on again to India.

Dom Manoel was sufficiently interested by the tale of Gongalves to make farther investigation, equipped three vessels and sent them under the command of the Sevillian pilot Amerigo Vespucci to examine the new Terra da Vera Cruz. On the way they met Cabral's fleet returning from India, and this explorer put his helm about and with them re-found eastern South America, sailing along and charting most of the coast of Brazil. It is the precision and not the inaccuracies of these sixteenth century maps that form their most re- markable feature.

On this journey much hostility was shown by coast- dwelling natives, and a couple of landing parties met with disaster; the cannibal taste of the "Indians" was plainly demonstrated. No settlement was made. A

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 15

year later, in 1503, Duarte Coelho came with another fleet, seeking the waterway to India that was one of the dreams of adventurous Europe: another, allied to the first, was the quest of Prester John. Anyone who could find a quick sea-path to India and at the same time find and form an alliance with the mysterious Christian Priest-King, would wield power beyond rivalry.

Duarte Coelho was unlucky. His flagship and three other vessels were cast away on Fernando Noronha island, the other two reaching the shelter of what is today Bahia. Here the natives were kindly disposed, a little colony of twenty-four men elected to stay be- hind near Caravellas, and after a stay of five months the rest of the explorers went back to Portugal. They took with them logs cut from the coastal forests which proved to yield a dye equal to that known in Europe as "brasil," a much prized deep red colour: they also carried back Brazilian monkeys and some of the parrots and macaws still common in the north. Many of the old maps of Brazil are marked "Terra dos Papagaios" (Land of Parrots) instead of the official "Terra da Vera (or Santa) Cruz," but it was not long before the new country became generally known as the Land of Brazil- wood, and finally as Brazil.

From 1503 onwards no attempt at settlement or conquest of the land was made for thirty years; cap- tains on their way to India called at the coast for fresh water, and on the return sailed into some northern wooded bay and cut brazil-wood. The real attention of Portugal was taken up with the splendid spoil that fell so readily to her hands In India; she loaded her caravels with the silks and spices and precious stones

i6 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

of the East, just as Spain a little later loaded her stout ships with the treasures of the Aztecs and the Incas. Territory offering nothing more and nothing less than fertile soil and genial climate was little considered in the midst of those visions of gold : since then the whole world has been plunged in blood for the sake of such wide spaces of land. Land in great areas only became highly valorized, both in the Americas and Africa, when the virile races of Europe needed space for their teeming, dominating children.

Brazil benefited from her lack of wealthy cities offer- ing loot. As a consequence of that lack she was not flooded, as were Mexico and Peru, with gold-seeking, brutal adventurers, but was instead slowly colonized by genuine settlers. Some of them did not come will- ingly, for Portugal used certain tracts spasmodically as penal settlements, but in the Middle Ages severe punishment was frequently dealt out for offences that would today be considered light, and many of the con- victs thrust across the Atlantic turned out to be good citizens : good or bad, they were the stuff of which bold pioneers are made, and to their extraordinary hardi- hood and that of their tireless descendants of mixed blood the conquest of interior Brazil was due.

Portugal delayed occupation of Brazil until other Eu- ropean countries began to establish themselves along dif- ferent parts of the neglected shore. In 1515 the mouth of the Rio de la Plata had been discovered by Juan de Solis, and Spanish settlements were set up south of the Portuguese claims — still indefinite. In 1540 the Span- ish captain Orellana made his wonderful journey from Peru over the Andes and down the Amazon, and roused

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 17

the interest of Europe, but long before then the Dutch were trying to establish outposts on northerly Amazon- ian tributaries, and the French had settled a little colony at Pernambuco.

Of these the Portuguese made short shrift, a fleet being sent from Lisbon specially for their expulsion, but the settlement made by royal orders on the same spot met with no better fate, for in 1527 French raiders sacked the Infant colony, to be followed a few months later by an English raiding party under Hawkins. The Portuguese Government, forced to take measures, determined on a plan which had already given good results on the Island of Madeira. Instead of assuming the burden of colonization on the account of the govern- ment, large grants of land were made to Portuguese of high standing or wealth; on them fell the burden of settlement, but on the other hand to them would accrue the chief rewards of tropical adventure and industry. The Crown attained several objects at one stroke — the colonizing of a difficult country, the rewarding of many noblemen whose claims were apt to be troublesome, while at the same time an outlet was provided for the adventurous and turbulent. The waning of her power in India left Portugal with a surging class of stout- hearted folk upon her hands: she sent them to Brazil, and suffered as Brazil benefited.

The allotment of Brazil into separate capitanias (cap- taincies) was made in 1530; the average coastal strip presented to the holders was fifty leagues, and as to the depth of the land commanded was a matter for the individual captain: he could have as much as he could conquer. No one had any Idea of what the hinterlands contained, for, with the exception of the riverine ex-

i8 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

plorations of the Spanish on the Orinoco and the Plata, Europeans had not visited the South American interior east of the Andes.

Martim Affonso de Souza came out in 153 1 as Ad- miral of the Coast, empowered to mark out the capi- tanias and to keep one for himself; he found French vessels hovering about Pernambuco, seized them, and went on to Bahia (Bahia de Todos os Santos) named thirty years before and frequently visited, where he found a Portuguese sailor, survivor of a shipwreck, mar- ried to the daughter of an Indian ruler and living like a patriarch with a large family already grown up about him. This Caramaru, "big fish caught among rocks," was of great help to the Portuguese when the colony was founded, and his half-breed family, possessing Indian knowledge and Portuguese leanings, formed the nucleus of the true hardy Brazilian of the north coast. Sailing south on his delimitation errand, Affonso de Souza entered Rio harbour, but passed on to mark out his own capitania on the hot sands of the Sao Paulo coast, near the present Santos, under the name of Sao Vicente. By a freak of fate, here the story of old Caramaru was duplicated. On the uplands beyond the Serra do Mar another Portuguese sailor was living, one Joao Ramalho married to the daughter of the native chief Tibiriga, and also surrounded by an extraordinary number of descendants: these children and grand- children of Ramalho were the first mamelucos, that bold tribe who were thorns in the flesh of the Jesuits, but who were instrumental in giving Matto Grosso, Goyaz and Minas Geraes to Brazil.

Martim Affonso de Souza marked out twelve capi- tanias, but of the accepted applicants few besides him-

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 19

self made serious and systematic eflForts to settle and hold their great lands; the rights offered them were very large, including almost every authority of the king himself except that of coining money: possession was perpetual and hereditary.^ "If these hereditary cap- taincies had continued to exist," says the Brazilian his- torian, Luis de Queiros, "we should have today so many republics, corresponding to the number of territorial divisions, and not a homogenous whole which a nation so full of life and hope as Brazil constitutes. By good luck, however, almost all of the recipients of the grants were unsuccessful in their attempts at colonization, and some of them did not make any real beginning. . . ." In the far north nothing was done by the donatario to colonize Ceara, and it was not until the French had for years established themselves on that coast and inside the mouth of the Amazon that, in 1616, a Portuguese military expedition from Maranhao turned out these rivals and founded Para. Genuine colonization work was done at three outstanding points — Pernambuco, Bahia, and Sao Vicente, or rather, Sao Paulo, which became active nuclei of agricultural production, of a sturdy population born on the soil, dowered with a clannish fighting spirit that, local as it was, did much that was of extreme value in the evolution of Brazil. The strength of two of these centres, S. Paulo and Bahia, was largely

* Martim AfFonso's capitania, then the most southern part of Portuguese territory, had one hundred leagues of coastline, with headquarters at S. Vicente; next came Santo Amaro (Itamaraca) and Parahyba do Sul (present Rio de Janeiro State); Espirito Santo; Porto Seguro; Ilheos, stretching up to the south of the Bahia; Bahia itself, running from the Bay to the mouth of the S. Francisco river; Pernambuco; Maranh'o, divided into 3 captaincies of which two, totalling 150 leagues, went to Joao de Barros, the third, of 75 leagues, to Fernao Alvares de Andrade; most northerly came Ceara.

20 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

derived from the two old Portuguese castaways, the battered heroes Ramalho and Correia; that of the third markedly successful colony, Pernambuco, was due to the powerful personality and real ability of the Captain, Duarte Coelho; he was aided by the fertility of the soil of the north-eastern promontory, Pernambuco showing itself so prolific a producer of sugar that it began to feed the mother country from very early colonial days, no less than forty-five ships a year calling to fetch sugar and brazil-wood. Settled with good immigrants by Duarte Coelho, who protested successfully against the dumping of convicts upon his capltania and ruled his people like a feudal lord, Pernambuco was the only territory that escaped control by the Captain-General sent out by the Crown in 1549 to try the eff"ect of cen- tralized power upon the languishing capitanlas. Hardy and jealous of their independence, the Pernambucanos remained a little kingdom apart, ruled over by Duarte Coelho and his wife's relatives after him, until the Dutch appeared In strength off the north Brazilian coast and from 1630 onwards for over twenty years held possession of Pernambuco and a long strip of the coast above It. The Pernambucanos have always been a factor to be reckoned with In Brazilian affairs : the terri- tory they hold Is richly productive and has never looked back in commercial Importance. They do not forget that great tracts of land were In early days won by their ancestors by hard fighting from the Indians, nor that they have sent many an able son to high places In the governing of Brazil. It was the productivity of the Pernambuco ("Nova Lusitania") and Bahia colonies that made colonial Brazil valuable and attracted hardy settlers to her shores.

Ponte Santa Isabel, Recife (Pernambuco). Prafa Maua — one of Rio's wharves. Water-front at Bahia, Lower City.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 21

Bahia was the queen city of Brazil from 1549, when Thome de Souza was sent out as Captain-General and made this the administrative and political head of the country, until 1762, when Rio de Janeiro became the Vice-regal Capital; she also was a fighting city, seized and sacked now and again but successful in getting rid of her foes in the end, and she was the centre of tobacco cultivation from early days. When gold and diamonds were discovered in the interior valleys and serras the Bahianos played a plucky part in exploration and opening, as well as charting, regions of forest and sertao hitherto unseen by white men. To the men of Bahia, as well as to the courageous legions of Pernambucanos led by the Albuquerque family, Brazil owes much: but the great pioneers, the unsurpassed confronters of hard- ship, the men who made Brazil the huge country that she is instead of the strip upon the Atlantic seaboard that she might have remained, were the handeirantes of Sao Paulo.

When the gallant Martim Affonso de Souza, sailing first to Cananea, eventually built his modest mud and palm leaf town at S. Vicente, he was saved from the hostility of the Tamoyo Indians by the friendliness of Ramalho, father of many children by a daughter of Chief Tibiri^a. The Tamoyos as a rule gave a great deal of trouble to the Portuguese, although the French in their numerous attempts at settlement along the Brazilian littoral always managed to make fast friends of this tribe. To anyone who knows the Sao Vicente of today, it is difficult to imagine on what the first settlers lived; the shore is hot, sandy, backed by mangrove swamps, producing beans, maize, mandioca and sugar.

22 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

Small wonder that an early chronicler said that to live in these colonies it was necessary to forget all Euro- pean habits of life, to begin a new existence upon new food, with all old ideas of comfort and even necessity thrown aside.

When a company of Jesuit priests, headed by Jose de Anchieta, came to S. Vicente, they found their ministra- tions thrown away on a disorderly and undisciplined band of settlers. Conceiving their duty to be here, as the Padre de las Casas and many of his cloth conceived it in Mexico and Central America, the Christianizing of the natives, Anchieta decided to leave the coast (where Braz Cubas had now built his little chapel and hospital on the island where Santos stands today) and seek converts in the uplands. The mountain barrier was climbed, and on January 25, 1554, an altar was set up on the green and well-watered plains of the in- terior, and mass was said on a site named Sao Paulo de Piritininga, in honour of the saint whose day it was. The habit of early missionaries and discoverers of naming new places with the Roman calendar in their hands has helped the historian to fix many a doubtful date.

A few miles away from the mission was the town of Joao Ramalho, who had been tactfully confirmed in his possession of lands, the "Borda do Campo," by Por- tugal, while his settlement was formally named a town- ship with the title of Santo Andre in 1533. Its site was near the present Sao Bernardo, an open sunny region of prairie with woods on the horizon.

With this tribe of Ramalho's making the Jesuits sought no connection; they could not convert those half-breeds any more than they could make the hardy

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 23

impenitents on the coast give up stealing Indians. Better and more pliable material was to hand in the pure Indian tribes; two groups, one under Tibiri9a and the other under chief Cai-Uby, built their cabins in new S. Paulo, Tibiri^a's people forming a line which is now the Rua Sao Bento, while the other converts guarded the road that led over the hills to S. Vicente.* It was not long before trouble came. Joao Ramalho's children plagued the priests: the priests retaliated by getting an order from the then Captain-General, Mem de Sa, by which Santo Andre was razed to the ground and its inhabitants forcibly Incorporated in Sao Paulo. The latter soon changed its character as a peaceful mission settlement, the Indians suffered from aggres- sions by the whites who now came up from S. Vicente or their own half-white kin, and in the end a concerted attack was made by the natives upon the town, only old Tibiri^a remaining loyal. The Indians were beaten, but the Jesuits saw that the mission could not be re- stored; they determined to carry the cross farther afield. With indomitable energy and indifference to suffering the band of priests made their way across the interior plains and woodlands, until they founded a new city (Cludad Real) at the junction of the Parana and PIquery, and began to gather the Indians together in new settlements.

For a time they were undisturbed. But the life of the new Portuguese colonies depended upon agricul- ture; the white men were neither many enough nor sufficiently acclimated to till the fields themselves, and they seized the unfortunate natives and forced them to field labour. It was unsatisfactory work, as a rule: ' Calculation of the Brazilian historian Theodoro Sampaio.

24 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the native of the eastern coasts of South America was not a cultivator of the soil by habit, but rather a hunter and fisher, as he is still in his interior retreats. They were too on the whole a gentle as well as an idle race, and they died like flies under the whip.

It was not long before the coast plantations of the Portuguese were denuded of workers: to get more slaves it was necessary to follow the Indian across the sertoes. It was about 1562 that the first slave-hunting expeditions, the "entradas," began; they were headed by the mamelucos, the descendants of Ramalho, who had no hesitation about betraying their native kinsfolk to the white man. Violence was avoided : the preferred plan was to coax any tribe approached "cow muito geito e enganos" and only when blandishment failed was force resorted to. Tamed natives accompanied the "entries" and when the children of the woods heard tales of waiting pleasures told in their own tongue, whole clans often followed willingly to the coast, never to return. When they retreated more deeply and be- came more wary, and it was found that the Jesuits were advising them, a grimmer system was planned; it was decided to conduct open warfare against the missions.

By this time, in the first part of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits had attained remarkable success with their converts; they were not content with teach- ing them the Christian faith, but insisted upon the girls learning spinning and weaving while the men planted and reaped. Results were much the same as those desired by the coast settlers, but methods dif- fered. About Ciudad Real, in the Guayara region, fourteen great missions flourished when the Paullstas began to disturb them: by the middle of the sixteen

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 25

hundreds they were all broken up, the fields waste, the priests fled, and the Indian converts prisoners in S. Paulo or hiding in the forests.

To accomplish this, more careful expeditions were arranged than the earlier "entradas," although the mamelucos had made some wonderful journeys, across the river Paraguay, over the Chaco and into Bolivia, now and again having a brush with the Spanish settlers of the South, who, later on, were expelled from tentative settlements in Rio Grande do Sul : no land was too wide for the Paulistas to hold. But the "bandeiras" were now organized like an army, men enlisted in them reg- ularly and accepted rigorous discipline. Beginning with the deliberate object of uprooting Jesuit control of the Indians, explorations continued in this form for over eighty years with other aims added — conquest of the interior, discovery for its own sake, and search for mines of gold and precious stones, as well as the repres- sion of Spanish entries from the south and from Peru.

At the time when these extraordinary expeditions began the interior of South America was still unknown. The high sertao and the forests were still full of mystery, although the coast had been stripped of such marvels as the giants who frightened Pinzon's sailors, the men fourteen feet high seen by Magalhaes, and the alligators with two tails which Vespucci reported. In the interior magic still reigned, with its trees yielding soap and glass. Lake Doirada with shining cities about its margin, and the marvellous kingdom of Paititi, lure of many disastrous expeditions, where some of the natives were dwarfs, others fifteen feet tall, some had their feet turned backwards and others had legs like birds. The

26 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

bandeirante opened the sertao and dispelled these wonders.

In his book, 0 Sertao antes da Conquista, Sampaio says that the Paullsta "was compelled by his habitat to be a bandeirante: the conquest of the interior was written in his destiny." If that is true, at least these labours were taken up with a kind of fierce joy. There was scarcely an able-bodied man of the time who did not join one or more of the bandeiras, and there Is on record the case of Manoel de Campos who made twenty-four of these journeys. Many bandeirantes never returned, re- maining in the sertao to found towns In MInas, Matto Grosso or Goyaz; some, returning after years of absence, found their wives married to other men, while "many heroes brought back from the sertao children whom they had not taken In," says Rocha Pombo.

The bandeira went always under the supreme com- mand of a leader to whom implicit obedience was due; before setting out the bandeira In a body heard mass, the leader confessed and made his will, invariably in- cluding the phrase . . . ^^ setting out to war and being mortal and not knowing what God our Lord will do with me" ... A priest accompanied each bandeira, not only to shrive the dying and bury the dead, but by way of easing the conscience of the band regarding their mission and "reconciling it with the Divine Mercy." The outfit for every man was made at his own cost, and if it is possible to judge by the baggage of Braz Gongal- ves, who died on an expedition in 1636, and whose goods were scrupulously recorded and sold at auction, it was simple. His greatest possessions were three negro slaves, but he had also an awl, a bit and a ham- mer, a pair of worn slippers; some lead and gunpowder,

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 27

one tin plate, a chisel, a mould for casting shot, a ball of thread, an old cape.

It was only possible to face what lay beyond the out- posts of settlement when equipped and ready for war; the bandeirantes knew that there was constant risk of attack by Indians and that nature opposed them with as fierce a menace. The country through which they passed was likely to be foodless, and they were prepared to sow seeds of grain in green valleys, camp, and wait until the crop was harvested before going on their way.

The rivers of the interior plateau, flowing westward with the tilt of the sertao, themselves offered a great highway of adventure to the early bandeirantes, bring- ing them into Paraguay and the outskirts of Bolivia and the Argentine, but as they went farther afield the Parana was left to the east, Goyaz and Matto Grosso were traversed, and the path of the pioneers led up un- known mountains, through untracked woodland; they marched across boundless prairies as if navigating the ocean, with only a sea-compass and the starry night to guide them. Nothing checked these explorers; had not the discovery of the General Mines turned their minds to gold-hunting, they might have followed Antonio Raposo across the Andes and disputed Peru with the Spaniards. Wherever they penetrated they established outposts and forts counting a collision with the Spanish as the best reason for creating a stronghold ; it was the work of these untiring sertanistas that led the way to the present magnitude of Brazil.

The bandeira was the original creation of the Paulista, without parallel in history; not even the white pioneer of North America had the same functions: he neither wandered so far nor performed such deeds. Joao Ribeiro

28 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

remarks that "as in the case of the caravans of the desert, the first virtue of the bandeirante was a resigna- tion almost fatalistic, and abstinence carried to an ex- treme; those who set out did not know if they would ever return, never expected to see their homes again — and this often happened." The bandeira in its greatest phase was a travelling city, a commune linked by mutual interests, that surged forward over the silent country; nothing deterred them, whether mountain passes, precipices, hunger, weariness, or constant fight- ing. If they had a path it was that of the crosses on the graves of the men who had gone before them. They went always on foot.

There is a long list of great sertanistas. It includes many names well known in Brazil today — ^Martins, Soares, de Souza, Barreto, Tourinho, Sa, Leme, Paes, Almeida, Dias, Ribeiro, Carvalho, Rodrigues, and a host of others; few men escaped the lure of the sertao, and some leave stories which are the Iliads of Brazil, putting these among the great adventures of all time. There is for instance Antonio Raposo, who headed a bandeira which left S. Paulo in 1628, and which was "the biggest and most devastating known." Three thousand people composed the expedition, and its main object was the destruction of the Jesuit missions on the Parana river, near Ciudad Real. One by one the missions, which had grown into thriving industrial com- munities, were attacked, besieged, and smashed; as they fell, escaping brothers or converts carried the warning to other convents, stiff fights were made, and in some cases long resistance was maintained. But in the end the Jesuits were broken and dispersed, and the bandeirantes went back to S. Paulo with thousands of

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 29

Indian slaves. The courageous Jesuits went deeper into the interior, collected such remnants as they could of their property and their proteges, and began the work again.

Raposo, years afterwards, made another journey which brought him into fame as a legendary hero; he crossed the Paulista sertao by Tibagy, thence traversed the heart of Brazil from south-east to north-west, entered Peru, scaling the Andes, crossed to the Pacific and waded into those waters sword in hand; returning, he discovered the headwaters of the Amazon, sailed down it, and when at last after years of travel he came back to Sao Paulo no one recognized him.

A magnificent figure among indomitable bandeirantes is that of Fernao Dias de Paes Leme. Well may the wild sertao be haunted by the shade of such a man as this, or of his lieutenant, Borba Gato, or that father and son who were known among the Indians of Govaz as Old Devil the First and Old Devil the Second.

Fernao Dias, the "Hercules of the Sertao," was the discoverer of the emerald mines of Sumidouro, after ten years spent in search. He was a famous slave- chaser of the sixteen hundreds, an extremely religious man whose zeal was only assuaged by much building of chapels and convents with the money earned in long raids; practical, astute, suave, he won his ends by tact rather than violence, among his exploits being that of leading the whole of the allied Goyana tribes to Sao Paulo. Approaching their territory Dias made no threats, but camped nearby, cultivated fields of cereals and vegetables, and so ingratiated himself into the confidence of Tombu the chief that one day the old Indian collected his people and agreed to go to the

30 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

pleasant lands of which the Paulista spoke. Five thousand natives thus marched voluntarily into cap- tivity; Tombu remained the worshipper of Fernao Dias until his death, but with the exception of runaways none of the Goyanas ever saw the sertao again.

This was in 1661. Three years later the Portuguese court, greatly desiring the discovery and development of mining regions which should yield tribute to Lisbon, offered special rewards to discoverers of mines, ap- pointed an Administrator of Mines in Espirito Santo, where some coloured stones had been found, and Af- fonso VI wrote to Fernao Dias asking him to search the interior that he knew so well for the source of the "emeralds" whose beauty raised hopes of finding mines equal in value to those of the Spaniards in New Granada (Colombia), still today the cradle of the finest emeralds. As a matter of fact the green stones found in Brazil are the beautiful but semi-precious tour- malines.

Consenting, the famous bandeirante made some pre- liminary excursions and in 1676, when he was over eighty years old, led out a great comitiva; the first win- ter's camp was made in a valley beyond the Rio Grande, the second at Bomfim, the third at Sumldouro. At last in the Serro Frio some showings of gold were lo- cated, and on the way back Dias died by the Rio das Velhas, in the far interior across Minas Geraes. The bandeira had gone through great suffering, and scores of men were buried by the way : at one time the rem- nants of the expedition had appealed to Dias to give up the hunt and return, and on his refusal made a plan to kill him. The conspiracy was headed by a young man who was the son of Dias by an Indian girl, and

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 31

dearly loved by the old sertanista, but when convinced of his boy's guilt Dias hanged him, pardoning the other plotters but driving them from the camp.

To Fernao Dias was due the exploration of what Is now the State of Minas Geraes, the whole of it falling practically under his sway as the founder of at least a dozen towns in that hilly interior, the majority sur- viving to this day. His search had a curious sequel: his son-in-law and faithful aide, Borba Gato, who had found gold mines in Sabara and registered them in 1700, was returning to S. Paulo after the death of his leader when he met with a party headed by the official Administrator General of Mines. Borba Gato's charts and proofs were demanded, refused, a quarrel broke out, and the servants of the pioneer set upon the Ad- ministrator and killed him. Not daring to face S. Paulo with this tale, Borba Gato fled to the interior where a tribe of Indians friendly to him dwelt by the Rio Doce, and there lived hidden out of the reach of the law for twenty years. At the end of that time, at- tempts to find the Sabara mines having failed, he was offered a pardon in exchange for the secret; he accepted the offer, returned to civilization, and presently retiring to a farm with his family died peacefully in his bed at the age of ninety.

A direct result of the murder of the Administrator was the stocking of the sertao of Minas with cattle: the entourage of the dead man, as much horrified by the deed as was Borba Gato, instead of returning to the capital took to the bush with the seeds, stores and live- stock without which no expedition set out, and formed nuclei of fazendas in a score of different places.

32 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

One of the earliest discoveries of gold in Brazil was made by Bartholomeu Bueno da Silva in the Serra Doirada, in Goyaz, about 1682. He it was who found the Indians wearing scraps of gold as ornament, and tricked them into showing the place of its origin; dis- playing a bowl of agua-ardente (aguardente — spirit made from sugarcane) he set light to it, telling the Indians that it was water and that he would in like manner set fire to all their springs and rivers if they did not reveal the source of their gold. Southey calls Bartholomeu Bueno "the most renowned adventurer of his age," and to him is due the opening-up of Goyaz, until then only entered by passing slave-hunters: but his discoveries were not followed up and it remained for his son, nicknamed by the Indians Anhangoera the Second his father having been known to them as Old Devil the First on account of the incident referred to above, to re-find the mines and extend the gold-mining fever to Goyaz. It was in 1722 that this son, then a man of over fifty years, succeeded in obtaining govern- ment help for exploration : by this time Minas was over- run with gold seekers from every part of Brazil and the authorities were ready to give active help to new min- ing expeditions. This bandeira set out with great eclat, crossed the Rio Grande and wandered for three years, the leader seeking landmarks dimly remembered from his boyhood. Persistent, patient, conciliating his weary followers, he founded the town of Barra, at last located the gold mines, returned to Sao Paulo and got together a new band of men, led the way back and settled them at what is now the City of Goyaz, and so closed with a remarkable colonizing feat the last of the great expedi- tions into the high sertao.

^^^^^gj^

The falls of Iguassu.

On the boundary of Argentina with Brazil; this series of lovely cascades is said to have altogether four times as much force as Niagara.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 33

A little later gold-miners penetrating to Matto Grosso began operating at Cuyaba,^ and almost im- mediately the discovery of diamonds at Diamantina brought a new rush of people into this far interior region. The day of the explorer, the true bandeirante, was over, and the age of mining was by this time in its epoch of greatest excitement.

Few writers on Brazil have refrained from scourging the bandeirantes for their cruelty to the wretched na- tives and for their destruction of the Jesuit missions. It is true that they were brutal, but theirs was a brutal age, and in explanation, not extenuation, of their deeds it should be remembered that they, the white civilian colonists, were fighting for their own preservation against hostile Indians whose hand, quite naturally, was against the invader, and secondly against their economic ruin by the line of action taken by the Society of Jesus. Not only did the patient Jesuits coax and catechise the Indian, but they put him to work in the fields and sold abroad the product of his hands: when later on conflict raged in North Brazil between colonists and Jesuits the chief grievance was that the Society, for whose support the civilian community was taxed heavily, used the Indian labour denied by Royal decree to the settlers, and also maintained great stores {arma- zens) where every kind of European merchandise was kept.

It was for this reason, and not because they were bad Christians, that the colonists of Maranhao once stood on the shore with guns in their hands and refused to

' Brazilian historians differ as to dates, but Southey says that the first discovery of gold in Matto Grosso was made in 1734 by Antonio Fernandez de Abreu.

34 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

allow a shipload of Jesuits to land until they had given a solemn promise to do nothing with the Indians except to convert them; they regarded the members of this religious body as business rivals. Nor were the Jesuits tactful in their dealings with colonists or colonial gov- ernment authorities; secure in the support given them not only by the Pope but, especially perhaps in the period of Spanish rule in Brazil under Philip II, by the King, they made no concessions, defied the civilians, and apparently courted trials of strength: right or wrong, they were able to count upon judgment in their favour in any quarrel referred to Europe.

When the bandeirantes began their unmerciful raids upon the Jesuit communities in the south Brazilian sertao the number of missions had increased from thirteen In 1610 to twenty-one in 1628, and to them had been largely drawn the natives who once, as Thome de Souza said in writing to Portugal, had been so thick that "even if they were killed for market there would be no end of them." Attacked, the padres might well have counted upon help from the Governor General of Brazil, but for the fact that about this time the whole military attention of the authorities was taken up with the determined aggressions of the Dutch upon the northern capitanias; the affairs of Sao Paulo were left in the hands of the Paullstas. The great matter of regret is that in the case of the Jesuits much excellent construc- tive work was wasted, just as the fine colonizing work of the French in Rio and in Para and Maranhao was destroyed, and that of the Dutch on the Amazon and in Pernambuco; the spirit and the interests of the times forbade the Portuguese to allow settlers of other races a foothold in Brazil, but nevertheless it was unfortunate

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 35

that so much good blood and good work was thrown away in a huge land that so badly needed both.

While the Paulistas were exploring and adding great tracts to the colony in the south, a law unto themselves, undisturbed by invasion except an occasional attempt by the Spaniards from the Plate and attacks on S. Vicente by English and French corsairs, the history of the north was one of constant aggression and desperate defence. Until the year 1578 no concerted attempts were made by England, France and Holland against the colonies of Portugal, a country towards which feel- ing was not unfriendly but in that year King Sebastiao of Portugal, with the flower of his nobility was killed in North Africa in the terrible battle of Alcazar el Kebir, and Philip II of Spain, the "Demon of the Middle Ages," seized Portugal and all that was Portuguese two years later. The South American colonies automatically came under his sway, and at once fell heir to the feud between Spain and her European neighbours. Brazil was fair game, and during the sixty years that elapsed before Portugal was able to re-assert her independence the easily approached northern capitanias were threat- ened, sacked and occupied by one or another of the three chief enemies of Spain. Sackings of coast towns made no great difference to the development of Brazil; when the ransom was paid the raiders sailed away and the business of life was resumed without any vital change; no towns were ever ruined by such predatory visits. Occupation of districts was another matter, and, with the exception of loss of lives every one of which was precious in young colonies, the effect was good rather than harmful; the period of Dutch rule on

36 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the northern coast of Brazil was a lasting beneficial stimulus. Nor was Spanish control of any direct hurt to the Portuguese colonies: their internal management was little interfered with, Portuguese officials continued to be appointed to Brazilian posts, and if Spain did not adequately defend them because her hands were al- ready desperately full she at least did Brazil the kind- ness to leave it alone. The one serious administrative measure she took was the formation in Lisbon of a Junta to care for Brazilian commerce, similar to the Council of the Indies sitting in Madrid, and this was undoubtedly useful: the narrow monopolistic trading policy pursued was simply in line with the ideas and practice of the times. It was protection carried to an extreme, was useful at the time of its initiation, and, if it outlived its usefulness in its most irksome manifesta- tions, the principle has so far survived that today, in the third lustre of the twentieth century, it may be said that only one great commercial nation has ever def- initely thrown It aside.

The group of capitanias extending from Esplrito Santo northwards to Ceara were when Brazil came under Spanish rule the most productive of all; it was but eighty years from the date of Cabral's discoveiy, and only fifty from the time of colonization, but flourish- ing populations were settled along the seaboard, growing sugar, tobacco and cotton and cutting stacks of dye- woods to fill the fifty ships a year that called at the main ports. Bahia, seat of the Captain-General's administration, was also a bishopric, and the chief religious orders had settled in each considerable town and founded churches, schools and convents. In 1570 a Royal Decree forbade the compulsory use of Indians as

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 37

labourers, and to fill the ranks of field workers Africans were brought in: to this idea the Portuguese were inured, for the West Coast of Africa had been a source of labour supply for them since 1440; it was the dis- covery that negroes could be transplanted to the Americas and would there work with docility, thrive and multiply, that made possible the cultivation of thousands of square miles of land, both in North and South America, and warmly as we may reject the prin- ciple of slave-labour now, it was the only one which could have opened American lands to the extent which they attained in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies. The white man could not have performed this physical labour.

Indian labour was abolished at the instance of the priests; it was remarkable that to the enslavement of Africans under circumstances equally brutal no objec- tion was made. Negroes were brought to Brazil from 1574 onwards until the abolition of the slave trade, though not of slavery, in 1854. The debt of Brazil to the African negro is a very heavy one.

Soon after the junction of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns there began the series of purely plundering attacks delivered by European enemies of Spain which lasted until the establishment of the Dutch at Pernam- buco, but which were of so little political importance that in the meantime the Portuguese authorities were able to destroy entirely the French settlements at Maranhao and Para which lasted from 1594 to 161 5. The work of replacing French with Brazilian settle- ments was carried out by Jeronymo Albuquerque, son of a dominating Pernambuco family, and not only were well-started French colonies ruined but the exploration

38 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

of the Amazon, commenced by the famous Daniel de la Touche (Seigneur de la Ravardiere) was abruptly ended.

In 1 62 1 the Dutch Company of the West Indies was founded, companion organization to the rich East Indies Company; with the approval of the Dutch Govern- ment the Company was equipped for settlement and conquest, and could call upon the home authorities for the help of ships and armed men if war occurred in the course of operations. A fleet of thirty-six vessels under Admiral Jacob Willekens sailed for Brazil early in 1624, made directly for Bahia, and took the city without much trouble. Holding it was a difl'erent matter, the popula- tion taking to arms, and a year later a combined Span- ish and Portuguese fleet arrived and forced the Dutch to capitulate. Another impermanent attack was made in 1627, and in 1630 a different point of aggression was chosen by a great fleet of seventy vessels: the Pernam- bucan city of Olinda was besieged and taken, the Dutch secured themselves in power and remained masters of this and three other capitanias afterwards seized; they were governed by the West India Company for nearly twenty-five years.

Evidences of the occupation of Olinda and its sister settlement, Recife, now the capital and a very flourish- ing city, are to be seen in the many houses surviving with curved gables, high unbroken fronts, the exterior walls shining with blue and white glazed tiles; the Dutch brought with them their love of order and clean- liness, good methods in plantation management and excellent organizing power, and the only genuine ob- jection to the rule of the Hollander in Brazil was that the country did not belong to him. All Brazilian his- torians bear witness to the merit of Dutch methods.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 39

The West India Company was able to induce an ad- mirable Governor to take charge of the new possession, Prince John Maurice of Nassau; he reached Recife in 1637, and inaugurated a conciliatory policy towards such Pernambucanos as would accept Dutch rule: those who would not were pursued into the interior forests where they retreated under one of the Albuquerques, and were forced to flee from Alagoas into Bahia. When such resisters were caught they were shipped to Dutch settlements in the East Indies.

Religious freedom was promulgated by the Protes- tant rulers, more systematic administration of settle- ments and estates inaugurated, better sugar milling methods introduced as well as farming implements, and the scientific exploration of the interior was made. Prince Maurice brought with him map-makers, geol- ogists, botanists and expert mineralogists, and sent them to the valleys and hills of the Bahian hinterlands. Elias Herkmann took an expedition of one hundred men from Recife in 1641, to make scientific investigations, and although he did not find mines of importance he studied native relics and language, subsequently publishing a book on the Tapuyo race.

George Marcgraf and Wilhelm Piso are also Dutch names of note in connection with Brazil; the former studied Brazilian topography and water systems and wrote a treatise on the subject as well as the Historia Rerum Naturalium Brazilium; the latter was the first classifier of Brazilian flora and fauna. "We owe to him," says Dr. Egas Moniz of Bahia, "the discovery of the emetic-cathartic properties of ipecacuanha and copaiba" as well as the therapeutic virtues of jab- orandi and red mangue and several other drugs ob-

40 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

talned from the Brazilian matto. The first scientific charting of the sertao behind Pernambuco, Alagoas and north Bahia was done during this time; herds of cattle already wandered over interior pastures, and settlers led by the independent spirit which renders the Brazilian indifferent to solitude had formed fazendas along river borders; explorers had wandered by these water paths looking for mines, but systematic maps and charts were lacking.

In 1640 Portugal revolted from Spain, regained her independence, and offered the crown to a member of the House of Braganza, a line which retained its in- heritance until a few years ago. The effect upon the Americas was again notable; the Pernambucanos, still carrying on guerilla warfare from the forests, were heartened, obtained help from an enthusiastic Bahia, and redoubled their efforts; the Dutch came to an agreement with Portugal that all possessions conquered by them during the Spanish regime should be held, and tried to extend their holdings farther north — an effort which was vain in itself, costly in life and money, and hardened the determination of the colonists to do for themselves what the mother country would not do on their behalf. In 1643 Prince Maurice returned to Hol- land: he had the interests of the colony as such at heart too much to please the West India Company. A liberal minded man, he wished to see the colonial ports opened to free commerce, succeeded in getting the Company to forego all monopolies except that of taking dyewoods away from Brazil and sending in slaves and munitions of war, any Dutch captain being free to visit ports controlled by his compatriots; these were not agreeable pills for a monopolistic organization to swallow. On

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 41

the other hand in recalling Maurice of Nassau the Company lost prestige, henceforward carried on a losing struggle with the virile Brazilians, and were forced out of section after section until by 1648 only the forts of Parahyba, Rio Grande do Norte, the island of Ita- maraca and the city of Recife were in Dutch hands. A certain embarrassment was created in Europe by this situation, and the Portuguese Government, taken to task by Holland, sent emissaries to the insurgent Per- nambucanos to order suspension of hostilities: the leaders replied that they "would go to receive punish- ment for their disobedience after they had turned the invaders out of Pernambuco," and went on with the war. Holland herself, now at loggerheads with Eng- land or rather with Cromwell on account of her support given to the Stuarts, could not help her Brazilian col- ony; a severe defeat was inflicted by the Pernambucans in 1649, at the battle of Guararapes, and the Dutch, never recovering from this blow, were finally obliged to capitulate to Francisco Barretto in January, 1654. The Pernambucan attackers were nerved to this final effort, the storming of Recife, by the news of the dis- aster inflicted on van Tromp's fleet in the English Channel at the hands of Blake.

Three months later the Dutch commander with all his troops left Brazil, and the only fragments remain- ing to the States General after a tremendous outlay of money and blood were a few islands in the West Indies and a piece of the Guiana country: small return for great effort. Portugal paid eight million florins to the Dutch in settlement of Brazilian differences and agreed to allow Holland free trade with the American colonies in all articles except the precious brazil-wood.

42 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

The chief results of Dutch occupation of the four capitanias of the north-eastern promontory for twenty- four years were, first, stimulation of world interest in this part of the vast Americas, for the sea-captains who carried Brazilian products for the first time into other parts of Europe than Portugal acted as advance agents of Brazilian commerce: second, scientific investigation into natural products and demonstration of the value of drugs peculiar to this part of South America: third, introduction of better town management systems: fourth, creation of a healthy national spirit in the north- ern provinces, with lasting effect upon character: and the quickening of colonization in the extreme north. It was not until the Dutch and French settled in Ceara and Maranhao and on the Amazon that serious efforts were made to develop these tropical territories under the equator; the year 1620 witnessed the first arrival of settlers of Portuguese nationality in Maranhao when two hundred families came from the Azores.

Another interesting and direct result of the Dutch in- tervention was the creation of the Companhia do Com- mercio do Brasil (Commercial Company of Brazil) by the Governor General, intended as a set-off to the Dutch West India Company. It was established In 1650, received monopolies and concessions of a valu- able character, and in return was obliged to provide a powerful armed fleet to convoy merchant vessels through enemy-infested seas. The Commercial Com- pany did as a fact render great services to the Brazilians fighting against the Dutch, blockading northern ports while Insurgent armies attacked by land.

While the north was struggling with the Dutch and French and incidentally becoming solidified by the

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 43

tussle until a genuine national feeling came into exist- ence, Bahia, beating off attacks and remaining the administrative residence of a Captain-General, was the centre of the wealthiest part of the colony; all the slaves brought from Africa were sold here, and although they were partly distributed, this was the chief slave-owning region and is still the place where more pure negroes are to be seen than anywhere else in Brazil. Farther south Espirlto Santo, one of the oldest of Brazilian colonies, was growing cane and raising cattle, but suffered from raiding foreigners, as also did Ilheos; Rio de Janeiro became the seat of a second Captaincy-General in 1608, for a time, with command over S. Vicente and Espirlto Santo but had no importance until the dis- covery of mines made her the chief gateway to the golden regions. Out of the path of the Dutch, whose object was wide agricultural lands, Rio neither suffered nor gained as did the North; at this part of the Brazilian coast the mountain barrier comes right down to the sea's edge, the granite wall shouldering into the waters of the deeply indented bay: there Is very little land suitable for plantations except in narrow valleys until the Serra do Mar is climbed. It was this lack of sugar land that kept Rio uncolonlzed, lovely as she is, for half a century after the colonies on either side of her were started; settlement by the Portuguese might have been put off still longer If the French under Admiral Vlllegalgnon had not taken possession of the bay in 1555, made friends with the Tamoyo Indians as the Portuguese were never able to do, fortified a rocky island, and established a Huguenot colony here — the ill-fated ^^ France Antarctique.'^^ The energetic Mem de Sa, Captain-General after Thome de Souza, brought a

44 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

fleet from Bahia, drove the French into hiding on the mainland, sent his nephew, Estacio de Sa, to Portugal to get help, and this gallant young man returned with a strong force in 1565. In two years' time, with troops from Bahia and Sao Paulo assisting, the unfortunate Huguenots were utterly defeated, the remnants of the exiles retiring into the woods with their Indian allies and disappearing from history. The body of Estacio de Sa, killed in the last decisive fighting, was buried in the shade of the Pao d'Assucar near the first Portuguese town founded in the bay and named Sao Sebastiao. Another member of the same family, Correia de Sa, was sent to head the new Portuguese settlement, and event- ually died there at the age of 113.

Division of Brazil into two captaincies-general In 1608, to be united again soon afterwards and again subsequently divided, was part of the experiments made by the European home governments, apparently with the sincere wish to develop the country; it was supposed that a region so vast could not be governed by one man, but as a matter of fact the occupied territory was along the seaboard on the whole, and communica- tion by sea was fairly speedy; from 1549 onwards, when the first Captain-General was appointed, the mother country bought up when convenient the strips of land belonging to the heirs of the donatarios; some new cap- taincies were also added from time to time, as that of Grao Para in 16 16, Minas Geraes, Matto Grosso and Goyaz after the discovery of gold and diamonds, and an independent State of Maranhao, governed separately from the rest of Brazil was also created in 1621, thus adding to the governmental confusion in spite of good intentions. Decentralization was increased by the

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 45

lack of commercial exchange between the different regions, and no successful effort improved this fault until the notable Marquis de Pombal took matters in hand in a statesmanlike manner in the latter half of the eighteenth century, buying the capltanias which were yet in private hands, creating Brazil a viceroyalty and Rio the viceregal capital.

But before that date much water had flowed under Brazilian bridges. It is not the purpose of this book to give in detail the history of Brazil, but to show the chief events and their effect upon development. Following the creation of the capltania system and its series of coastal settlements came the penetration of the south- ern interior by the Jesuits in their "reductions," and the scattering of these centres of Indian population at the hands of the bandeirantes; the next happening of extreme importance for Brazil was the seizure of differ- ent parts of the coast by the Dutch and French, with their stimulating effect upon Portuguese colonization; It was after this that the gold rush to the interior of MInas, Goyaz and Matto Grosso populated and opened up the sertao in tiny patches, but at the same time half denuded the coast of its settlers and injured the agri- cultural production of the country, the prosperity of which was almost entirely owing to the introduction of negro slaves, another great factor in Brazilian progress.

Today the mining industry of Brazil accounts for a very small item on her exports lists, chiefly because the diamonds which go out are mostly contraband, the gold is produced by only two principal mines, and while there is a promising export of manganese it is insignifi- cant compared to the big business of the country or to

46 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the possibilities contained in Brazil's mineral seamed mountains. In the early eighteenth century Brazil was a famous gold country, and it is reckoned that over five hundred million dollars' worth of this metal has been taken out. Nearly all this gold was found in placers easily washed out by hand in the crudest man- ner; when the rich alluvial deposits along river valleys were exhausted Brazil ceased to be a gold producer on a spectacular scale. In Minas Geraes rich sands were found near the present Ouro Preto, the first mining city that was founded bearing the name of Villa Rica; all about It the whole country Is still in heaps, turned over by the miners who came a couple of hundred years ago. In that day people flocked into Minas, coming by road from S. Paulo, by the S. Francisco river from Bahia, and by a shorter cut over the mountain passes from Rio. The bones of many folk remained by the way: it Is said that of one band of 300 Paullstas setting out in 1725 only five persons, two white men and three negroes, reached their objective, the far Interior mines of Cuyaba. It became necessary for the authorities to forbid the taking of negroes to the mines, so general was the abandonment of plantations, but the protest of the Crown was only half-hearted; it was eminently satis- factory that a stream of gold and diamonds should flow across the Atlantic to Lisbon, and it was of as little use for governors to point out the bad economy of coastal depopulation in the seventeen hundreds as It had been for Governor Diogo de Menezes to write to the King in 1608: *^Your Majesty may believe me that the true mines of Brazil are sugar and brazil-wood, whence your Majesty draws so much advantage without costing the Royal Treasury a single penny."

				Wi«F» ■•'^:
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			""'^^SsSm'"^^	'.sinew
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Two A'i'^wj- 0/ Sao Paulo City.

Sao Paulo, premier city of the leader State of the Brazilian Union, stands on the breezy uplands of the southern plateau; it is a busy, prosperous centre with the first modern civic equipment. Population 550,000.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 47

Quarrels at the mines led to the "Guerra dos Em- boabas," a factional disturbance between the Paulista discoverers and stranger gold-diggers; in the end the Paulistas were driven back, retired to their own up- lands, and Minas Geraes was politically separated. Indomitably energetic, the men of S. Paulo turned their attention southward, where the Spaniards had entered and settled, drove the intruders out of Rio Grande do Sul and thus secured another, and one of the finest, regions for Brazil.

In 1750 King John V of Portugal died. The death of Portuguese monarchs did not as a rule make more than a perfunctory difference to the Colonies, but in this case the succession of Jose I was important because, with infinite faith in his brilliant Minister Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Mello, afterwards Marquis de Pombal, he left the chief affairs of the kingdom to these able hands. Pombal has been bitterly attacked: he was without doubt a man of iron; but he was a man of unusual fore- sight and intelligence who thoroughly realized the great value of Brazil, and did much to improve economic conditions in that huge possession. He seems to have had what Brazilians call a palpite concerning the destiny of Brazil and Portugal.

Almost the first act of this statesman was the cur- tailing of the powers of the Inquisition: he abolished autos da fe, which must have given relief to Brazil if the historian Porto Seguro is correct in saying that no less than 500 Brazilians had been burnt alive in Lisbon by the Holy Office. With a special eye to Portuguese America he reduced taxes on tobacco and sugar, had the diamond traffic strictly supervised, created com-

48 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

mercial companies to trade with Para, Maranhao, Pernambuco and Parahyba; specially encouraged the plantation of rice and cotton in the North; legislated most of the commerce which was in the hands of the enterprising English into Portuguese channels; inaugu- rated good ship-building yards in Brazilian ports; set- tled boundary disputes with the Spanish on Brazilian borders; brought all capitanias still in private control under the Portuguese Crown — Cameta, Caete, Ilha de Joannes, Itamaraca, Reconcavo de Bahia, Ilheos, Porto Seguro, Sao Vicente and Campos dos Goytacazes; and as his most powerful and bitterly assailed effort he laid hands on the Jesuits. The Society, overwhelmed in the South, was strongly entrenched in the North since the opening of Para and Maranhao; they had done wonderful and self-sacrificing work there; but they hostilized the colonists and made the mistake of arming their proteges the Indians against the settlers. They constituted themselves in Brazil as Bartolome de las Casas did in Mexico and Guatemala, the Defenders of the Indians; they were extraordinarily successful with them, and it is not impossible that if some working arrangement could have been found between the colon- ists and Jesuits a great problem might have been solved — that of obtaining some control over the natives and teaching them industries without undermining their peculiar physical constitution. With the best inten- tions in the world, more modern efforts made to hold the Indian tribes in civic life have ended in their speedy dwindling and extinction; no one except Colonel Ron- don seems able to teach the Indian and keep him alive. To break up the Jesuit missions, Pombal in 1755 de-

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 49

creed the "emancipation of the Indians of Para and Maranhao," a curious corollaiy to the laws that the Society had themselves obtained earlier forbidding the Portuguese settlers to enslave Indians. A little later occurred in Portugal an attempt against the life of the King: the Jesuits were, quite unjustly, accused of being concerned in it, and on this pretext they were ordered expelled in a body from Portugal and from all Portuguese possessions. This was in 1759, expulsion from Brazil taking place during 1760; not content with this, the abolition of the Society of Jesus was obtained from Pope Clement XIV in 1773. This severe measure was rescinded in 18 14, and the Jesuits came back to Brazil as to other world dominions, doing excellent educational work at the present time; their colleges are magnificent institutions, and It is commonly said in Brazil that the very best education for men is ob- tained in the Jesuit college at Itu, In the interior of Sao Paulo State.

Jose I died In 1777, and Pombal promptly descended from power; but his work in the stimulation of Bra- zilian Industries, the creation of a genuine Brazilian entity through strong centralization, and the erection of Rio into a viceroyalty, paved the way for the next great change.

Early In the nineteenth century, when the North American colonies of Great Britain had successfully revolted, and the French Revolution was an accom- plished fact, ideas of republican Independence began to agitate many heads In South America. Brazil had only one uprising, the famous Conspiracy of MInas, which got no farther than plans; it was headed by one of the influential Freire de Andrade family, and all the

50 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

plotters were eventually pardoned except one scape- goat, who was executed publicly in Rio in 1792, and thus achieved immortality: his nickname of Tiradentes is preserved in the name of a square in Rio and a public holiday on the anniversary of his death.

A few years later Napoleon was overrunning Europe. Portugal, friendly to his enemy England, incurred the Napoleonic wrath, tried to make terms too late, and was being actually invaded by the French when an English naval squadron appeared in the Tagus commanded by Sir Sidney Smith; the Portuguese royal family and a host of courtiers went aboard Portuguese vessels and were convoyed across the Atlantic, out of Napoleon's reach, to Brazil. It would not at all have suited Eng- land for the Braganzas to fall into hands which already held too many royal prisoners. It was one of the most remarkable transferences of a crown in history, this emigration of Dom Joao to his American colonies; it was a useful and a dignified refuge for him and at the same time was of great value to Brazil, probably sav- ing her from years of disorder and bloodshed.

The royal party arrived first at Bahia, where the town turned out in enthusiastic welcome and invited Dom Joao to make this city his seat of government; but his destination was Rio, and he sailed on, first giv- ing out a proclamation which ensured him a good recep- tion in the Capital — the Abertura dos Portos, or open- ing of the ports of Brazil freely to the ships of all the world "friendly to Portugal." Public printing presses were now permitted, a newspaper was started, chiefly engaged In training the minds of the nascidos no Brasil (Brazilian-born) to appreciation of the monarchical presence, but still the commencement of Brazilian

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Two Views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.

The beautiful Avenida, over a mile long, was driven through the city from the docks to the Avenida Beira Mar as part of the extensive city improvements costing over £20,000,000 begun in March, 1904; the avenue was completed in November, 1905. Rio has 1,250,000 population.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 51

journalism; foreign capital began to come, and active Europeans, attracted hy the advertisement that the transference of the monarchy gave Brazil, entered and established businesses; the Banco do Brasil was in- augurated; fine buildings were erected in Rio; the Regent's collection of pictures and books, brought with him, formed the nucleus of the excellent museum and library of modern Rio; the harbour was improved, a School of Art and Naval College founded. By the time that Portugal was free from the Napoleonic shadow, and, in 1821, called Dom Joao home again, he left behind a Brazil to which a tremendous impetus had been given, and which had been raised to the dignity of a kingdom equal in importance with Portugal and Algarves six years earlier. North and south of Brazil the newly freed Spanish-American countries were deep in troubles born of a sudden injection into independence of unaccustomed populations. Brazil herself could scarcely have avoided being drawn into the vortex had her citizens still to complain of the narrow policies and repressive measures of the colonial system; they had become too proud and too strong for development to be longer retarded, and the European turn of fortune came in the nick of time. It was lucky that Dom Joao was a man of shrewd good sense. Dom Pedro, son of Dom Joao, remained in Brazil as Regent, and the country was still linked to Portugal; it was soon ap- parent that this condition could not endure. The jealous legislature in Lisbon wished to reduce Brazil again to the level of a colony under tutelage, despite the efforts of Dom Joao; the news came to Rio together with a peremptory order for the return of the prince, and he, a good diplomat, elected to throw his lot in

52 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

with Brazil, and declared the Independence on the his- toric hillside of Ypiranga, in 1822.^

Proclaimed Emperor soon afterwards, Pedro ruled for nine years and then abdicated in favour of his five- year-old child, Dom Pedro segundo. To this rather stormy period of control is due the commencement of deliberate colonization of Europeans into Brazil; it was a policy widely continued later on by Pedro II, and after- wards adopted both by the Federal Government and by separate States of the Union. A regency lasted until Pedro was fourteen years old, the most remarkable hand on the reins of power meanwhile being that of the astute priest, Father Diogo Feljo.

Pedro II endeared himself to Brazil by his kindly and tactful spirit, his genial broadmindedness; he was a scholar by instinct, and did his best to advance Brazil by the encouragement of railroad building, invitation to foreign capital, and the throwing open of wide spaces of southern land to good class immigrants. It was during his reign that the English, who had established them- selves firmly during the first monarchical periods, send- ing ships regularly and opening markets for Brazilian products, were followed by the commercial French and later by the German merchant. The industrial and educational advance of Brazil is largely owing to the personal initiative of Dom Pedro II. His reign was one of the longest in history, from 183 1 to 1889, and the development within this period includes inauguration of city tramways as well as railroads; the discovery that coffee would grow in Brazil and its systematic cultiva-

' Portugal swallowed her loss without much protest, there was no serious excitement in Brazil, and the Portuguese troops stationed in Brazil were shipped home without violence from more than one district.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 53

tion; discovery of the properties of rubber; the introduc- tion of factories; use of hydraulic power.

Following the world agitation against slavery, Brazil in 1854 forbade the introduction of negroes; there were however still large numbers of these people in bondage as well as a much larger number free.

Public feeling was much excited about the question in the eighties, and at last in 1888, when Dom Pedro during a period of illness had made his daughter, the Princess Isabel, Regent, the powerful influence of many highminded Brazilians was brought to bear, and the decree of abolition was signed.

Slave holders were not so pleased as statesmen, when their farm workers immediately forsook the field and flocked into the cities; agriculture undoubtedly suffered, and to the discontent of the planters is credited the agitation that now gathered head against the continua- tion of the monarchical system. The truth seems rather to be that the Empire had outlived its usefulness, and surrounded by republics could not survive. There was also a general fear lest Isabel, said to be priest- dominated, should be permanently appointed Regent, and this idea hastened the day that would otherwise have been postponed. In all probability, until the death of the good and highly revered Dom Pedro. A growing band of republicans, some of the foremost men in Brazilian affairs today, found themselves strong enough to proclaim the end of the Empire; Dom Pedro was informed and asked to leave the country within twenty- four hours, and did so; the Republic in Brazil dates from November 15, 1889.

The first years of the new regime were darkened by disorders, the worst being the revolt, long-drawn-out,

54 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

in Rio Grande do Sul. Two military presidents were succeeded by four civilians, and these in turn by a third militarist, and notably extravagant, presidency from 1910 to 1914. The present President, a lawyer. Dr. Wenceslao Braz Pereira Gomez, is making heroic efforts to redeem the financial condition of the country, and is fortunate in being aided by a group of exceed- ingly able men. The country became deeply involved during the last twenty-five years; if she were an old land the burden would be severe: her strength lies in her youth, internal vigour, and unsurpassed abundance of untapped resources.

The tremendous money spending of Republican times has been sharply censured since the outbreak of war in Europe suddenly pulled up the country to a realization of her debts; it is probably fortunate that she was just too late to arrange yet another, for which negotiations were opened in 1914. But while it is true that literally tons of money were borrowed and spent after 1889, it is also from that date that the great leap forward of the country is reckoned; her extravagance was a wide advertisement — the attention of the world was called to this spoilt child of the nations as no modest jogging along the beaten track would have done. Bankers, commercial firms, writers, settlers came to Brazil; there was a feverish expansion in railroad build- ing, and from this period dates the Inauguration of good modern port works in Rio, Bahia, Para, Pernambuco, Santos, Victoria, and many other points of call for ocean-going vessels; water-works and town drainage, the better paving of a score of cities, extinction of yellow fever and other tropical pests, were all accomplished with money borrowed in the hey-day of Brazil.

THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL 55

The check in facile borrowing of very large sums on easy terms has undoubtedly acted as a cold shower upon South America in general, somewhat accustomed to financial sunshine; the result has been salutary in awakening the people all over the continent to the need for unprecedented personal eifort. It has, too, brought about a new sense of North American rela- tions, created and needed, with South America. The European War is turning the United States from the position of a debtor to that of a creditor country, and while up to the end of 1916 her loans to the whole of South America have not exceeded one hundred million dollars, most of it sent to the Argentine, caution is mutually beneficial. There is, however, much work to be done which calls urgently for gold supplies, and it is but logical that the country accumulating money rapidly should be willing to take up a due share of the development work waiting; European interests need not and should not be ousted, but can be readily and happily supplemented.

The United States of Brazil today contain over 24,000,000 people, still largely concentrated upon the sea coast as far as the white, negro, and mestizo popula- tion is concerned, in a score of thriving cities. She is at peace with her neighbours, with no shadow upon her political horizon; her only great problem is the industrial, financial one, and this, with the concentrated effort of Brazilians and the right kind of external help, can be solved.

CHAPTER II

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL

The story of colonization in Brazil is unique in the annals of the human movement across the world that has been going on ever since man began to multiply and to seek elbow-room; it is one of the phenomena of exodus.

Arrival upon the shores of Brazil 6i an extraordinary variety of races was not a voluntary immigration in most instances. It was the result of a studied policy, inaugurated by the Emperors of Brazil, and carried on to the present day by the Federal Government and cer- tain of the separate States; experiments in various kinds of people were made on a concerted plan, the colonies were grouped, in many cases isolated, retained their language and customs, still produce the food to which they were accustomed in the home land, and only be- come assimilated as their populations leave them or touch in time the fringe of others. The official mother- ing which they received tended rather to keep them grouped than to spread them in the earlier years.

The first official, deliberate importation of colonists of blood foreign to Brazil or Portugal began in 1817, when Dom Joao brought in Swiss settlers. Agents of the Brazilian Government recruited no less than five thou- sand in Bern, although owing to delays and accidents only about two thousand sailed from Amsterdam and Rotterdam : landing on a hot coastal belt after a trying voyage, fever took the mountaineers, and but a sparse

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 57

seventeen hundred reached the foot of the Serra do Mar. Climbing to the pretty nook where the town of their founding, Nova Friburgo, stands today in a shelter of green mountains, sickness still followed them, and only the hardiest or most resistant clung to the colony, survived and left their name to another generation. Many dispersed to other localities. Nova Friburgo, now reached by the Leopoldina railway, and a thriving city, fresh, flowery, producer of cereals and peaches, owns few Swiss inhabitants today. A second batch of immigrants, three hundred and forty-two Germans, filled some gaps in the ranks: their readiness for labour may have been heightened by memories of the difficul- ties of transit to Europe, for the journey had taken one hundred and eighty days in a sailing ship. Germany at this period had not begun the industrial expansion which later kept all her people at home; economic condi- tions were severe on the ambitious worker, laws and social customs were irksome, and enterprising men looked across the seas for free lands. Germany became for about twenty-five years the very best recruiting ground for Brazil.

The second official colony was founded in Rio Grande do Sul, and consisted entirely of Germans — one hundred and twenty-six persons originally — who came in 1825. The colony was named Sao Leopoldo, used the water highway of the Rio dos Sinos until a railway line was built connecting it with Porto Alegre and with new colonies to the north, and has developed into one of the chief towns of the state, with forty thousand inhabit- ants. Its establishment was followed rapidly by that of Tres Forquilhas and S. Pedro de Alcantara, both in Rio Grande and both German, 1826; by another S.

58 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

Pedro de Alcantara, also German, in Santa Catharlna, 1826; Rio Negro, in Parana, 1828, formed by disbanded German soldiers. Petropolis, the model city in the hills above Rio, owed its inception to Dom Pedro and was founded with Germans and Swiss, but not until 1848, for more than ten years of civil war down south in Rio Grande, when the "Repiablica de Piritinim" was proclaimed, checked colonizing projects in the Empire. With the suppression of trouble German colonizing was resumed in the south, Santa Catharina creating the Santa Isabel colony in 1845, while Rio Grande started five new centres between 1849 and 1850. The latter year is also memorable for the founda- tion of Blumenau, in Santa Catharina, by the good Herr Blumenau of Brunswick. At the same point on the lovely river Itajahy a little nucleus had existed pre- cariously since 1827, added to by a group of one hun- dred and twenty-two Belgians in 1844; Herr Blumenau brought in Germans gradually at his own expense, supervising the colony in the role of a kind of paternal burgomaster, and in 1864 was able to count two thou- sand five hundred people; his efforts had, however, cost him about twelve thousand dollars. The Brazilian Government repaid him his outlay and made him official Director. Today Blumenau, once a small self- contained nucleo, is a bustling city with fifty thousand people, a lively exporting business and a railroad line. In 1850 the Dona Thereza colony in Parana was started, while the famous Joinville, first called Dona Francesca, began in 1851 in Santa Catharina; it owed its existence to the fact that an Orleans scion, the Prince de Joinville, married a Brazilian princess who inherited large estates chiefly consisting of matto in Santa Catharina. The

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 59

family ceded twelve square leagues of this land to the ''Colonizing Union" of Hamburg, whence settlers were promptly sent, both the Prince and the Brazilian Gov- ernment making a protege of the nucleo. The large sums of money spent resulted in a fine town, now num- bering some twenty-five thousand people, served by the Brazil Railways. A little later (1852) the Minas Geraes colony of Mucury was founded, but by this time Ger- man colonizing In arranged shipments had come to an end ; any additional German colonists came singly. The German Government, both alarmed at the losses in blood — for emigration to North America and other parts of South America was also proceeding, although along different lines — and by reports sent home as the result of investigation which gave a poor account of the condition of the isolated nucleos^ passed a law to forbid emigration to Brazil. Dom Pedro had to turn his attention to other countries.

Before the coming of the Germans, South Brazil was almost totally neglected; demand for tropical produce such as sugar and tobacco had kept the attention of Portuguese and their mixed-blood descendants for over three centuries to North Brazil, where negro slaves multiplied on the warm coast; the grassy uplands of the south attracted few Brazilians, and these chiefly bandeirantes whose main business was to keep out Spaniards from the Plate, and whose wild cattle strayed and bred on the natural pastures. So wild and un- tenanted was the country that up to the middle of the nineteenth century the German colonists had trouble with Indian raiders. But it was the right climate for the north-born Europeans, a wise choice that proved a success while other settlements dwindled out. During

6o BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the same period there were several attempts to colonize Espirito Santo, notably at Santa Isabel, and Cachoeiras and Transylvania, six or seven starting between 1847 and 1856. The energy of the settlers was discounted by the hot climate, and many moved south, where the great increase in settlers' populations is a fair criterion of their success. The official figures of German entries into Brazil from 1820 to the end of 1915 are one hun- dred and twenty-two thousand eight hundred and thirty, but the people of German blood in Brazil are now reckoned at about 250,000. The southerly towns under their influence are clean, well-kept, live centres, with constantly expanding industries. Rio Grande today is quite one of the best sections of Brazil: the influx of Italians brings them more than equal in numbers to the German element, taking the state as a whole.

With organized German settlement checked, Brazil during the eighteen fifties turned her attention to the mother country, and brought in Portuguese; they were settled in the warmer latitudes. In 1853, such a colony was begun in Maranhao, at Santa Isabel, followed by five more in the same northern and sultry state in 1855; in the same year three Portuguese colonies were estab- lished in Para, at Nossa Senhora d'O, at Pe^anha and at Sllva, while Rio de Janeiro was planted with another five. A little later Bahia was given Portuguese colonies at SInlmbu, Engenho Novo and Rio Pardo. These and others were not strikingly successful until or unless joined by other colonists, for the Portuguese, who are artisans rather than agriculturists, melted from the lonely settlements and found jobs in the coast cities.

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 6i

By this time coffee culture was coming into favour, the slave business was doomed, although the actual abolition of slavery did not occur until 1888, and plant- ers invited immigrants to their developing estates. The work of obtaining immigrants was undertaken by in- dividuals, as the Vergueiro family by Theophilo Ottoni and the Visconde de Baependy, with varying success, as well as by the International Society of Immigration of Rio, with headquarters in Antwerp. Colonists sent to coffee estates worked on the metayer or parceria sys- tem, inherently vicious. The colonist had the satisfac- tion of considering himself an Independent worker, but as he started with a large debt, never owned land and earned no wages, his lot was a poor one If crops failed or the fazendeiro chanced to be unfair. He arrived owing for the passage of himself and family, and was given a house and a quantity of food — of the country; he cul- tivated a certain number of coffee trees, or allotment of sugarcane, took the harvest to the owner's mill and received half the result after milling. It is said by J. L. More, in his book Le Bresil en 18^2, that the hard- working Bavarians and Holsteiners who worked on this system In Sao Paulo often paid off their debts In four years and then had money in hand; but other investiga- tors spoke adversely on the subject, finding colonists of ten and twelve years' standing still Indebted and living hopelessly. In the end the parceria gave way before a general wages system. The metayer plan still exists in some parts of MInas, Espirlto Santo, Sao Paulo and other coffee regions, and can be found in the sugar districts and in the cacao region of Bahia, but large ownership of great scientifically-run estates has driven it from general employment. Investigations made by

62 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

J. von Tschudi, sent hy the Swiss Government in 1857, and by the German Consul Haupt ten years later, proved the failure of the share system; colonists could be seized and imprisoned if they tried to leave the es- tate on which they worked, and, unable to support life on the produce of their allotments, would have been even worse off had it not been for the "many acts of benevolence for which the emigrants had to thank the kindness natural to so many Brazilians," says the author of Brazilian Colonization, a little brochure pub- lished under a pseudonym in London in the year

1873.

The same writer, giving a list of nationalities com- prising the immigration Into Brazilian states up to that time, nearly thirty-five years ago, before the great entry of the Italians had begun, or that of the Poles and Russians with their gift of hardy persistence, names a French colony taken to the banks of the Ivahy river in Parana about 1850, which expired for want of trans- portation and therefore of markets; this, with the influx of Algerian French in 1 868-1 869 to a spot near Curityba, also In Parana, is the most important attempt of the Gallic race to found settlements In Brazil; the disturbances of the latter, the first vine-growers of the state, gave the authorities as much trouble as the subse- quent adventures of the Russians ten years later In the same region.

"Jacare Assu" also mentions a few Alsatians in Nova Petropolls (Rio Grande); the Dutch families In Joln- ville, Rio Novo, Petropolls, and Leopoldlna (Esplrlto Santo); the Tyrollan wanderers; the Danes of Estrella; the Mongolians — five hundred and sixty-six of them, who came by contract in 1856; and the colony of Ice-

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 63

landers who went to Joinville, and were "said to be doing very welL" He also speaks of the "colonies of Brazilians" in Brazil, who were settled in Estrella, at Sinimbu, Iguape and Itajahy; and the North American influx of 1867. This later item was the result neither of population overflow nor invitation, but was the result of the struggle between the North and South of the United States, the disappointed slave-owning southerners seek- ing a land where their losses could be forgotten. The exodus, of course, was in several directions : groups went into Mexico, some to Canada, to different parts of South America ; I have seen an excellent colony of these migrants and their descendants at Toledo in the south of British Honduras, growing sugarcane and prospering. Those who came to Brazil were brought from the port of New York by the "United States and Brazil Mail Ships," since defunct, the first batch of two hundred leaving in December, 1866. They were followed by some thousands, but today it is difficult to trace them, the groups into which they were originally assembled having long since broken up.

Seeking these settlements, I visited Villa Americana in Sao Paulo state but found it long since turned into a villa Itallana, with only one family of American origin which seemed to have thriven; forty miles or so across country, at PIracicaba, however, I found an American school, admirably conducted by a little old lady who told me that she had come with the original settlers of Santa Barbara, founded In the parish of PIracicaba, but now a shadow. Her school was a delightful one, with the stocky girl pupils going through gymnastic exer- cises In unwonted rational clothes, but they were all Brazilians; the Americans had melted, the ones

64 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

who remained not being able to keep up in the struggle.

There seem to have been at least four definite at- tempts at settlement besides individual selection of dwelling places: these were at Santarem, on the Ama- zon's junction with the Tapajoz river; Cannavieiras, on the coast of southern Bahia; Juquia, or Cananea, below Iguape in southern Sao Paulo; and the Santa Barbara- Villa Americana group in central Sao Paulo. Some of the immigrants had money, but in many cases the war had swallowed it; former owners of slaves, they were often less fitted to make a living from the soil than the negroes they had left behind. The one crop that they understood thoroughly was cotton, and it seems to have been tried at each of the four spots named, but in at least two regions success was nullified by climate. In Sao Paulo's interior lands a fair measure of reward was obtained and an impulse to cotton growing dates from this time. The Cananea colony, where some English were introduced about the same time, was a notable scene of discontent; both groups of colonists hurried back to Rio and made so many complaints that the consuls went through sieges. The fact was that the site for the settlement was unsuited to Anglo-Saxon modes of life and that insufficient preparation had been made: a few years ago a colony of Japanese was given land a few miles from the ill-fated spot, at Iguape, and, settling down to grow rice, have made a striking success. But the points of view of the two nationalities, as well as colonization methods pursued by the organizers in the diff^erent cases, had nothing in common. At Can- navieiras there is today a thriving series of cacao planta- tions and a Brazilian population: these people keep in

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 65

order, carefully weeded, a grave. There is a fence of hard Brazilian massaranduba about it, perennial flowers blossom above; under the soil lie the three little children of the leader of the American colony, and of it there is no other trace.

Of the Santa Barbara colony there is a story told which is comedy instead of tragedy. The colonists grew, besides cotton, watermelons: one year just as the crop ripened, cholera broke out in S. Paulo, the sale of melons was forbidden, and the growers faced ruin. At this time President Cleveland had come into office in the United States, and had just appointed a new consul at Santos: he must, then, be a good Democrat. The settlers, who on landing in Brazil had ceremonially torn up the Constitution of the United States and offered thanks to heaven for having permitted them to reach a land where the sacred Biblical institution of slavery was still in force, remembered that they were American citizens. They wrote to the consul a letter of congratu- lation on his arrival and at the same time detailed their grievances with regard to watermelon sales. The consul replied cordially, suggested that he should visit them, and received post haste a warm welcome. The after- noon of his arrival at the colony found the entire popu- lation drawn up on the platform, a southern Colonel at the head of the deputation. The train rolls up, a first- class compartment door opens, a gentleman steps out with a suitcase, and walks up to the Colonel with out- stretched hand. It was the consul — but a consul as black as the ace of spades.

It is said that the Colonel, rising nobly to the occa- sion, gasped once, shook the hand of the consul, and that he and the other southerners gave the official the

66 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

time of his life; but when he departed they vowed that never, never again would they trust a Democratic administration. ...

There are a few descendants of this group who have attained true distinction in Brazil and genuinely work for the land of their adoption.

It was after the dwindling of the flow of German in- comers about i860 that a steady stream of Italians was directed towards Brazil. Their wooing was In a great measure due to the systematized efforts of the coffee- growers of S. Paulo state, and, after the establishment of the republic in 1889, of the state authorities. Work- ers from North Italy were found to be those who best suited the needs of conditions of the coffee industry, and to this part of Europe were directed the attentions of re- cruiting agents. Laborious, serious, economical, bent upon acquiring a little fortune, the Italians came with their wives and families, accepted their position as colo- nos upon the great estates, never very ardently attached to one particular piece of soil, and ready to pick up and move on wherever advantageous conditions beckoned.

From the year 1820 to the end of 191 5, a total of one million, three hundred and sixty-one thousand, two hundred and sixty-six Italians have officially entered Brazil as immigrants. With their children born in Brazil they total well over two millions today, greatly out-numbering any other entering race. Their coloniza- tion has been a marked success, due not only to their personal characteristics, but to the just treatment given them by the authorities. There was a time, soon after the abolition of slavery, when the colonos brought in to fill labour gaps complained of the relations between

Agriculture in S. Paulo State.

Cutting sugar cane. Rice cultivation. Coffee gathering.

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 67

themselves and the fazendeiros; realizing that the existence of friction and subsequent scandals would defeat their object, the Sao Paulo Government put machinery into working order, known as the Patronato Agricola which adjusted differences, looked into social conditions, and took in hand the work of giving medical care and schooling to Immigrants. The Italian has remained upon coffee fazendas, acquired land and coffee trees of his own or taken up commercial work in the towns, rather than remained in nucleos; he has identified himself with the modern progress of South Brazil, taken up manufacturing, built himself some of the most splendid and extravagant houses in Sao Paulo city, famed as it is for luxurious dwellings; the Avenida Paulista, pride of Sao Paulo, was "built on coffee," and much of the wealth displayed there is Italian wealth, created during the last twenty-five years. The year of greatest immigration in Brazil is said to have been that of 1 891 when out of a total of nearly two hundred and seventy-six thousand, about one hundred and sixteen thousand were Italians; their influence upon prosperity in Sao Paulo may be estimated by the fact that more than one million out of the State's three million popula- tion are of Italian blood. No other state has so systema- tized immigration, perhaps because none had the press- ing need and the immediate rewards to offer, as has Sao Paulo; she no longer pays passages on steamships, but she maintains free hotels in Santos and Sao Paulo city, where five meals a day are given, good airy rooms, baths, etc., and where immigrants are lodged for a week or until work is found.

Preponderant as are the numbers of Italians, they are by no means the only southern settlers of the last

68 . BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

fifty years; Poles and Russians came in notable quan- tities in the late 1870's and early i88o's, settling in the Parana uplands as well as in nucleos in Sao Paulo. At the end of the century there were two thousand Russo- Germans from the Volga, farming land on methods of their own in the neighbourhood of Curityba; an obsti- nate folk, they Insisted upon tilling prairies like their own steppes instead of choosing forestal land, shared all goods on the Russian communistic plan, and gave the Brazilian authorities so much trouble that there must have been sighs of relief when bodies of them deserted the nucleos and demanded to be sent back to Russia. From those who stayed has grown up the tribe of Rus- sian carters who do the road-transportation work of the high Parana plateau; there are groups of farmers, too, both Russians and Poles, who share land in com- mon and are raisers of wheat, their favourite rye, and other cereals; some have taken up the business of gathering and curing matte, the "tea" which South Brazil grows and exports to the Argentine.

There is one specially thriving Russian settlement to be seen In Sao Paulo state, at Nova Odessa; the wooden buildings are Russian in type, the tall churches are like pictures from a traveller's Russian notebook, and the institution of the samovar and the huge family stove is clung to. These people are great lovers of land, and its possession has contented them; as yet there is little mingling with the social or political life of Brazil.

The system under which land is made over to col- onists demands more explanation than space permits; Sao Paulo, briefly, only sanctions the establishment of nucleos near a railway line or navigable river, with an eye to marketing, and has inserted colonization clauses

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 69

in more than one railroad concession to help develop these settlements along the route; lots are never, orig- inally, of more than fifty hectares, and may be half this size if quite close to rail or river; "urban" lots are granted to settlers with money in hand to start a busi- ness, and "rural" lots to intending agriculturists; no- body can obtain a lot unless he has a wife and family, but sons twenty-one years old can also obtain grants while bachelors; payments are made on easy terms, generally at the end of each harvest for five successive years, prices varying according to locality from a few milreis to a couple of hundred per hectare — roughly speaking; I have never heard of unfeeling treatment in cases where settlers are unable to keep up payments in bad years, but encountered many stories of help given by the authorities. When the male head of a family dies before payments are complete, the widow and family are handed clear titles if three quarters of the debt has been liquidated, and if ability to continue work is demonstrated; if not, the family is sent back to Europe at State expense. Rebates of ten per cent are given to settlers able to pay on taking up land.

Following this plan, it happens that for several years after the foundation of a new centre the colony is in debt, becoming emancipado as the obligations are paid off; Sao Paulo state is dotted with pleasant examples of these "emancipated" colonies, today flourishing agri- cultural regions well-farmed by the industrious and ambitious Europeans, adding enormously to the pro- ductivity of the State. At the end of 19 15 the State was acting as god-mother to half a score of nucleos, of which the most promising are Campos Salles, Jorge Tibir^Ia, Nova Europa, Nova Veneza, Gavlao Peixoto,

70 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

and the Martinho Prado group. In the same year, the President's message states, two hundred and ninety- three colonists completed payments on their lots and received definite titles in place of the provisionary ones first issued : over one hundred and eighty-five contos was paid on lots. "The total population still under State ad- ministration is 13,793 persons, who occupy an area of 54,666 hectares; of these over 14,000 are in cultivation, yielding produce worth 1800 contos of reis last year," said Dr. Altino Arantes (July, 191 6). Twenty thousand people came into the state in 191 5, of whom six thou- sand were Portuguese, four thousand Spanish and four thousand Italian; this is but twenty per cent of pre- war average immigration to S. Paulo.

In the course of years very many colonies have devel- oped into regular towns, long since "emancipated;" Sao Bernardo, Sabauna and Bom Successo are notable in- stances, while the capital city itself has reached out and absorbed nucleo hangers-on to her spreading petticoats.

One of the interesting recent experiments of Sao Paulo was the cession of some twelve million acres of coastal land to a Japanese company with the object of creating an agricultural colony with Oriental brains and labour. The organizing syndicate, with the approval of the Japanese Government, was formed in Tokio in 191 3, used Japanese capital, emigrants and ships, and has already settled several thousand people. Studied preparations and soil experiments were made before any colonists were carried over. Practical results so far have included a large addition to Brazil's production of rice, while the resurrection of the once flourishing tea industry is also said to be in sight. This Japanese colony is notable for Its tactful introduction : wishing to

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 71

avoid even the chance of friction, the organizers stip- ulated its location in a spot which, able to communicate by water with markets, does not rub shoulders with other centres of population. Iguape is reached either by small steamers from Santos, or by rail from Santos to a spot on the river Iguape communicating with the colony by riverine boats, but little is heard of the Japanese settlement in Sao Paulo; they live to them- selves and their chief appearance is in statistical re- ports. Besides the members of this agricultural colony there are at least another eight or ten thousand Jap- anese in Brazil, chiefly house servants, greatly liked for their quick, sophisticated resource.

Apart from the serious, long-continued work of the Sao Paulo authorities to win labour from abroad, there is still a remarkable amount of support given to immi- gration by the Federal Government; nucleos to the number of twenty are supervised by the authorities, seven of which have been "emancipated" while thirteen are still paying for their allotments. The seven free centres, Tayo, Ivahy, Jesuino Marcondes, Itapara, Iraty and Vera-Guarany, in Parana, and Aff^onso Penna in Espirito Santo, contain nearly 33,000 persons, the remaining thirteen counting 19,000 persons: together the colonies had an agricultural yield in 191 5 worth 14,223 contos of reis, and own livestock valued at 2,427 contos.

The State of Minas Geraes has made repeated efforts to encourage immigration and spent large sums upon propaganda and the establishment of nucleos. She has under supervision sixteen state colonies, with a total population of 26,000 persons, agricultural production from the lands under cultivation amounting in 191 5 to

72 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the value of 3,155 contos of reis. There are also within the state borders two Federal colonies, one of which, Joao Pinheiro, has freed itself from indebtedness and is on the way to become an important agricultural and stock-raising centre; these two nucleos contain over two thousand persons.

In Rio Grande do Sul colonization has been seriously checked since 191 3, but there are two important centres under State control which call for mention: one is the Guarany nucleo, in existence for a quarter of a century but counting only 25,000 Inhabitants because it is off the line of communication with state markets; Its position Is strikingly contrasted with the Erechim colony, six years old, planted on the Rio Grande- S. Paulo railway line when the latter was opened to traffic, and which today has over 30,000 population grouped in six or seven bright little villages.

In 191 5, when entries from abroad were checked on account of the war In Europe there were still Immigrants from Portugal to the number of 15,000, 6,000 Italians, nearly as many Spanish, 600 Russians and 500 "Turco- Arabs:" also some two thousand Brazilians were moved from the "scourged" districts of the rainless north and sent south. From 1820 to the end of 191 5 the number of immigrants entering Brazil has been as follows: —

Italians 1,361,266 French 28,072

Portuguese. . . . 976,386 English 22,005

Spaniards 468,583 Japanese 15,608

Germans 122,830 Swiss 10,713

Russians 103,683 Swedes 5>435

Austrians 78,545 Belgians .... 4,727

Turk-Arabs . . . 52,434

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 73

In addition, official lists give another 200,0CX) of "di- versas" nationalities and a margin must also be allowed for persons who did not enter as immigrants.

Where is the future immigrant of Brazil to come from, and to what part of the country is he to go? I have put this question frequently to Brazilians, and have almost invariably received an answer to this effect: "We want white immigrants, and they can settle healthily either in the cool south of Brazil or on the high interior uplands." The sertoes of Matto Grosso and Goyaz will not attract foreign settlers until there is better communication; the land is there, but the markets are not available. But there is land and to spare still in Sao Paulo with Its network of railways and good riverways, and there is excellent cereal and cattle land In Parana, Santa Catharlna and Rio Grande do Sul, for the northern-born, who cannot face a semi- tropical climate: for him who can face It — as the Texas cotton-grower should do — there are extensive regions farther north in Pernambuco and her sister states. The extreme north Is not fitted for white, Anglo-Saxon or Latin, families, and although single men can live health- ily in such latitudes for many years, the life of such tropic exiles is not good for the individual or for society. Coloured or Asiatic colonists have been suggested for the Amazonian valley, but it is at least doubtful whether the Brazilian Government would favour such plans, or whether, in view of the fertility of the native popula- tion, such introductions would be necessary; saving babies by improved sanitation would solve the problem better than any other method of populating.

The question of where white immigration is to come from is a difficult one; after the close of the European

74 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

War there may be a tendency for populations of eco nomically hurt regions to look across the seas, but it is very probable that governments will take means to prevent any exodus; Europe will call her workers to re- build as she has called them home to fight. There are today certainly many tens of thousands less people in the Americas than in the middle of 1914. It is possible that the returned Europeans will not come back in the same numbers. But there may be a considerable shift- ing of population within the Americas, North and South; men with land-hunger will look about them for the country offering most to farmers and stock-raisers. To such men there are few parts of the world which offer as much as does Brazil, with her sincere invitation to foreigners, square dealing, stability, and rewards for enterprise. The lack of development along certain definite lines is Brazil's best recommendation to the enterprising and persistent.

No seeker after dole e far niente should come here. No thought of tropic paradises should obscure the vision of the newcomer. Brazil is a good country for the worker, with wide southern lands where careful culti- vation will bring excellent results; It is a really free coun- try of tolerant views as well as of wide spaces. The foreigner who comes here to work, to develop, will feel himself remarkably soon at home in a friendly atmos- phere, and if he cares to identify himself with progres- sive movements he will be warmly welcomed; a very long list could be made up of high-class foreigners who have attained not only to wealth but to positions which proved the open mind and confidence of the Brazilian authorities. Naturalized foreigners are eligible to the legislative assemblies of Brazil, and whether naturalized

f m.

The Barra Road, Upper City, Bahia,

Resaca along the Avenida Beira Mar, Rio; Morro da Gloria in background.

On the Upper Amazon.

COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL 75

or not foreigners enjoy precisely the same rights and privileges as Brazilians before the law.

For the mining engineer, the stock-raiser, the expert agriculturist, the fruit-grower, there is plenty of room in Brazil; along certain special lines his work is much wanted, and he can look forward to getting a better return for his investment of personality and cash than in most places in a world that has not many great un- touched spaces left. The pioneer, hardy and deter- mined, has still a chance in Brazil.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL CONDITIONS

One afternoon I sat In a street-car of the Copacabana line running to and from the heart of Rio de Janeiro city. As we approached the Avenida and paused at a sharp turn at the regulator's signal, a small hoy poorly clad in cotton clothes got on to the front platform with a dinner pail in his hand. He set it down, removed his cap, and bent his knee as the motorman, with a swift smile at the child, extended his right hand. The boy respectfully kissed it, replaced his cap, and jumped down.

The little incident was typical of the wide spread of gentle manners in Brazil; it is here usual enough to see elderly bankers kiss the hands of their parents, but courtesy is not confined to cultured classes. One may in Brazil depend upon a street cleaner as much as upon a senator for chivalrous politeness. A stranger may address any passer-by in a Brazilian street in the most execrable Portuguese and will almost invariably receive serious and kindly attention: it is said that the Bra- zilian with his agreeably poised attitude to life "laughs at everything except a stranger who is speaking bad Portuguese."

I do not mean that strangers are treated with special courtesy; good manners are habitual. Brazilian men meeting each other in the street half a dozen times in a day, lift their hats to each other: no one, obliged to step past another closely on a street-car, but will raise

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 77

his hat and murmur ^^Com licenga! " A woman walking down the narrow streets of the older cities or older parts of the rejuvenated cities will always find her path cleared by men who step aside into the road with hats in their hands. If she happens to be very pretty looks will follow her and whispers may, but in my opinion the ordinary woman with quiet manners is safer in Brazilian towns than in most centres of population in the world, may break all the small rules with impunity and may always depend upon the grave kindness of the Brazilian. People of less punctilious societies are apt to speak with a degree of contempt of ** surface politeness," and to say that they prefer roughness and a good heart; generally this kind of remark is a clumsy apology for boorishness, and as a matter of fact a good heart is quite as likely to exist under a courteous exterior as under a discourteous one; a habit of consideration for others in speech and small actions is without doubt good training for any variety of heart and head. The Brazilian is in his mental attitude an inheritor not only of Latin tradition in general but of French ideas in particular: Paris is his Mecca, French literature and French science and French art the Insplrers of his youth; more cosmopolitan than the Portuguese born, because he is in close touch with all Europe as well as with the Americas, quite minus the feeling that makes the Spaniard love bull-fights, the Brazilian has grounds for his claim as the brightest spiritual heir of Latinity. His excellent manners are a part of his heritage.

Apparently, the very considerable additions to the Brazilian population by immigration during the last hundred years have made little difference to Brazilian society; it is true that the Englishman with his tennis

78 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

and football and his rowing-clubs has introduced and popularized sport, so that today there are thousands of young Brazilians taking part in these pleasures and it is true that the influx of artistic French in the reigns of the two Emperors affected and stimulated sculpture, painting and writing in Brazil; in each case these were entries into Brazilian society, the new element arriving with a recognized status as members of important firms or with a semi-official position. There has been family mingling, many English and French choosing wives from distinguished Brazilian families, and in this way the influence of European ideas frequently has its effect on the education of the children of such unions. To a less noticeable extent almost every nationality is found in Brazilian society, for this is a country which has always welcomed the stranger of distinction, but no race has impressed itself so firmly upon national charac- teristics as the Franco-Latin. Immigration, properly speaking, the systematic colonization with which Sao Paulo supplied her coffee lands with labour and Rio Grande and Parana settled their open spaces, and Minas tried to supplant negro workers, has affected Brazilian social conditions scarcely at all. Generally isolated in wide areas, often with no communication with the out- side world except by mule-trail or river until the rail- way came a few years ago, the organized colonies of Russians, Poles, Basques, Bessarabian Jews, Japanese, Swiss and Germans lived their own lives, retaining perforce the language and customs of the lands from which they came. The Italians, employed on great fazendaSj were more in contact with Brazilian life than any other race, and even they keep their own speech together with newly-learned Portuguese, eat Italian

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 79

food and read Italian-language newspapers printed in Brazil. Not until the development of industry brings the colonies into closer contact with each other and with Brazilian centres of old standing will the Galician and Arab affect any society but of his own race. No attempt has been made, probably wisely, to force these settlers into the Brazilian national communion; they were needed to fill spaces, to bring land into cultivation and develop the wasted resources of an enormous land: they have done Brazil this service, and Brazil in return respects their feelings and traditions. One reason for this lack of interference with the colonies was that Brazil possessed little machinery which could have brought about a marked change: but deliberate policy also entered into the question. It was realized that a change would come about with the passage of years, when the second or third generations grew and mingled in a common society, Brazilians born and bred, and that meanwhile Brazil was too big to fear the effect of these nucleos with their strong retention of foreign loves and habits. Broadminded enough to sympathize with such feelings, the Brazilian knows that no man worth his salt forgets his native land; his idea was ex- pressed by the genial writer, J. M. de Macedo, when, speaking of the French who made fortunes in Brazil and returned with their savings to France, he said: "If it be a sin to love one's own country better than any other country, then am I a sinner tool" It is in fact because the Brazilian has so keen a devotion to his own beautiful land that he comprehends the home-love of the immigrant.

Class distinction still reigns in Brazil to a certain degree, as may be expected in a land where slavery

8o BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

existed until twenty-eight years ago, and which twenty- seven years ago still had an Emperor and a Court with a retinue of nobles. These nobles retain their titles still, except in cases where formal renunciation was made, but a provision was made at the establishment of the Republic that they should not be inherited. It is an example of the liberal spirit in which the break was made, and the absence of ill-feeling towards the Empire, that Brazil thinks as much of her Commenda- dores, Conselheiros, Baroes, Viscondes and Condes as she does of any newly distinguished hacharel of today. Dom Pedro II gave these titles, very often, in recogni- tion of some special service to Brazilian development, and it is for this reason that, encountering the Conde de Leopoldina, we find him to be an Englishman sur- named Lowndes. When the Princess Isabel (Condessa d'Eu) celebrated her seventieth birthday in the summer of 1916 the Brazilian newspapers printed long notices speaking with appreciation of her regencies over Brazil, and acclaiming her act in freeing the slaves of 1888; a few months previously a monarchical society held meet- ings in the capital, their sayings and doings were re- ported in the public press without any excitement, and the trend of editorial comment was, "Well, with the republic in such a muddle, it is no wonder."

It is needless to say that the restoration of a mon- archy in Brazil is quite unthinkable, and that the society's existence is more interesting than important, but I mention it to show the amused tolerance of the Brazilian towards other people's opinions. He has a detached, sometimes cynical attitude, believes in frank discussion and the airing of ideas, and together with a markedly democratic habit of life retains a European

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 8i

respect for tradition and authority. In Rio, the intel- lectual centre of Brazil, the influence of the administra- tion is very strongly felt, and it is the focus of interest and activity: the Brazilian takes a passionate part in politics, criticizes the Government when and where he thinks fit, but will never do anything to undermine the power and prestige of the administration. With but one notable exception the heads of the Brazilian Govern- ment have been men of such ability and force of char- acter that they have thoroughly earned the confidence of the thinking classes. From the cultivated caste in Brazil is chiefly drawn the political group: there have been exceptions, as in the case of Pinheiro Machado, but as a rule the reins are in the hands of a distinct social element, descendants of white Portuguese families and frequently men of great intellectual strength. The names of the Visconde de Rio Branco, Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves, Joao Alfredo and Afl"onso Penna are but four out of a long list of statesmen of the first rank in Brazil. The ruling classes are almost always great landowners, fazendeiros, and there was a time when sons of such families destined themselves to politics, agriculture or one of the "professions;" today commer- cial careers are sometimes chosen — ^perhaps partly be- cause the planter of coffee or sugar Is often necessarily a mill-owner and shipper as well — as Brazil becomes more industrialized, but although these young men may enter other than the traditional spheres, it is sel- dom that theirs is invaded from the world of Indus- trialists or commerciantes. The latter are, indeed, largely recruited from the foreign element; shop>-keepers as well as commission agents and dealers all down the coast were once largely British and French, but now

82 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

the energetic Portuguese-born trader, with the keen Italian and Spaniard, and the still more insinuating Syrian, has absorbed a marked proportion of the retail business.

Below the commercial element comes that of labour, stratum of entirely different composition; it differs too in varying localities, from that of the south, where slavery tailed off in Sao Paulo, never penetrating the more southerly states, and where white labour of immi- grant origin performs field work, to the central section where the mestizo (mixed blood) of white and Indian or, about Bahia and Pernambuco, white and negro, blood is the worker; in and near Bahia itself thousands of pure-blood negroes or mulattos form the labouring class, to the almost total exclusion of any other. Farther north the negro element fades out and the Indian mix- ture predominates in a wiry strain which furnishes all the labour of the Amazon valley.

Upon this great mass of mixed-blood labourers the educational systems of Brazil make a certain if slow impression. Intelligent and apt, docile if conciliated and stubborn if crossed, the mestizo has some excellent qualities; the indolence of which he is often accused is sometimes want of direction, and sometimes the result of ill-health in certain regions, disappearing when the enervating malaria and ankylostomiasis are conquered, exactly as in the South of the United States where the same troubles are common. With better sanitation in the crowded warm regions, and persistence in good schooling, the hrasileiro of the labouring classes would not need supplanting with introduced immigrants. Between him and the legislator there is a great gulf fixed; its existence might be dangerous were not the

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 83

habit of the Brazilian gentle; it can be bridged only by education. "We have no organization for the expres- sion of popular opinion," declared a Brazilian writer recently. "The statesman, the government official, the legislator, the administrator has to be a kind of powerful Jehovah, capable of creating worlds out of nothing . . . unless the bachelor {bacharel — "doctor") president, the bachelor governor, the bachelor minister or the bachelor deputy should sally forth through Brazil {saiam por esses Brazis afora), over mountains and valleys, to enquire at the window of every farm, at the door of every store, at the entrance of each factory, in each lacemaker's shop and at each blacksmith's forge, what Agriculture, Commerce, Industry and the Proletariat wish for their practical and effective better- ment. ..." At least it can never be said that the faults and lapses of Brazil are not understood and dis- cussed by her own educated classes; there is no country where self-criticism is more hearty. During the early part of 1916 a party of specialists in tropical maladies from the Rockefeller Institute passed through Brazil and made some Investigations; one of the weeklies of Rio famous for Its cartoons and skits on public affairs remarked that the visitors need not have come to Brazil to study malaria — they would find that In a hundred places: they should study the troubles that were really peculiar to Brazil. It gave an Illustrated list: among the Items was the "national long tongue" — we talk too much; another was hacharelismo — everyone In Brazil wants to be a "Doctor" of medicine or law or philos- ophy. It is a disease not altogether limited to Brazil, despite the Malho.

Cartoons in Brazil have a point of interest in addition

84 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

to their wit, in the presentment of a national figure, "Ze (Jose) Povo." Ze Povo is "the people," quite distinct from the dignified figure of the Republica, a lady in draperies crowned with the Phrygian cap. Ze is the man in the street who stands by and makes acid comments; he has no counterpart in North American or English journals, but speaks his mind much as "Liborio' does in the Cuban humorous-political papers. No one can say that the press is not free in Brazil.

Industrial expansion in Brazil will be the great amalgamator of the grades and divisions of the popula- tion; colonists of foreign origin cannot continue to live in separate nests, commercial fortunes will blend so- ciety, and the expansion of agriculture will sooner or later mean the evolution of the sertanejo Into a mod- ernized, trading farmer; as the hills are opened for metals and the forests are entered for hardwoods and dyes and latex, the millions of Indians of the Interior must be brought Into line, or, retreating, eventually die out — the worst solution of his case and probably an unneces- sary one. But at the present day there are many dis- tinct types among Brazilian populations, and of them that of the sertanejo, the farmer of the interior, the sertdo, Is not the least Interesting. Here on the wide uplands of the plateau he lives very much as Isaac lived, his world about him, his home, servants and herds his chief Interests; simple, philosophic. Intensely hospitable although reserved and proud, he makes little money but by his cattle, and wants little. His bodily needs are few, his furnishings of the simplest; his food is mainly the Inevitable /an'wAa de mandioca, milk products, beans (feijao) and eggs and came. He may be the owner of great expanses of land, but he will seldom sell or divide

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 85

it and there is no other life that he will endure and live. In touch with the open sky, the broad horizon before him, the sertanejo is of a class apart; his is a simple and a dignified figure.

Brought to town, through acquisition of money or the wishes of his womenfolk, the farmer of the interior is a peg for many witticisms of the townsman; he is a "caipira," a countryman, a hayseed, and endless amusement is obtained at his expense. One of the Rio weeklies, the Careta, once ran a series of illustrated adventures of such a farmer who is supposed to come to Rio de Janeiro on a visit with his wife and pretty daughter, and who takes In the "sights" of the Capital from the countryman's angle.

A simple camaraderie prevails in the upland interior, where little money passes and barter of goods is the most common form of exchange; it Is frequently im- possible to hire labour, and as a consequence farmers and their sons Invite the help of their neighbours when field work is needed, giving their own time in turn when occasion arises. No distinction between rich and poor occurs In a society of such friendly simplicity.

In the cattle regions there Is a special ceremony every year, for rounding and branding cattle, known as the feira dos bizerros (calf branding) and the aparta^ao do gado — separation of herds, frequently running with those of other fazendeiros over unfenced country. All the neighbours arrive at the farm which is thus counting its stock, families making it an occasion of friendly re- union. During the evenings of the two or three days of festa there is a continual round of coffee-drinking and eating, many a marriage Is arranged and consummated;

86 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

at the close of the work there is frequently a series of competitions of skill in horsemanship, the clever per- formance of the vaquejada or derruhada always exciting a critical audience. Horsemen, mounted on well-trained animals, post themselves at the gate of the corral where bulls have been shut up for a day or two; the bars are let down and when the cattle rush out each of the horsemen tries to seize a bull by its tail and throw it to the ground — success largely depending on the clever- ness of the horse in avoiding the rushes and struggles of the bull. The last night is one of continual dancing and temperate feasting, the flute and violin sounding until dawn. It is a little curious that these instruments, with the guitar, are the favourites of the musical peasantry of Brazil, and that the exquisite marimba of African origin, carried by negroes into Central America and there enthusiastically adopted by the Quiche-Cachiquel natives, should not have also found a home in the southern continent.

Among the other figures of the sertdo, created by the absence of mechanical transportation in a series of great regions, is the tropeiro, the leader and frequently the owner of a troop of mules carrying the products of the interior to market. A good tropeiro is entrusted with the marketing of the cotton crop of a fazenda or even a district, and he will carry cash for long distances, set- tling accounts, making purchases; his mules are trained performers who know their work and make themselves understood if there is anything wrong with one of their number. In the north of the Brazilian promontory — Bahia, Pernambuco, interior Ceara, Maranhao and Rio Grande do Norte as well as the hinterlands of the cen- tral states, the tropeiro undertakes the transportation of

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 87

much of the interior crop of cotton, sugar and to- bacco.

He is doomed to extinction as the steel arms of the rail- roads push out into the interior, but his day is not yet done.

Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the Englishman and baseball to the North Amer- ican. It is a form of excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a great deal, an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. Opinion is not popularly opposed to the system in Brazil, any more than It is in, for instance, Italy, and in like manner it is conducted by the Federal Government, is a recog- nized source of revenue, and many charities and other worthy institutions supported by the authorities de- rive their main Income from it. Few people express any adverse sentiments to these regularized lotteries, but an amusing offshoot from it, Illegal, forbidden, pounced upon now and again by the police, generally denounced by the press, and Indulged in by everyone, is the famous bicho. A bicho is in Brazil any kind of animal or bird or Insect — everything living Is popularly a bicho — and in this underground lottery groups of numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc., something more interesting than a bald set of figures. The bicho was of Independent origin, with twenty-five animals represented, but nowadays depends upon the government results, and Is really a gamble on a gamble, but with the advantage that com- binations and groups can be played on, and very small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on your favourite humming-bird again and again without feeling the loss when the anta persists In coming up instead,

88 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

and there would be little harm done did not servants sent to the market get the bicho habit so badly, together with shoe-shiners and waiters and all the working class, that in its acutest form "playing on the hicho" becomes an obsession equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the hicho can be bought at many newsdealers', in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run it, and some daily papers print pictures of the winning animals: it is well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because while a modest winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no redress as the whole thing is illegal.

Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not yield a public revenue, and that people spend, in the aggregate, more money on the hicho than on public lotteries which are sources of governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occa- sionally prosecuted, the bicheiros continue to exist and to furnish a mild form of excitement and adventure. I do not think that lotteries are more objectionable origina- tors of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is uni- versally abstemious, and the rule is not broken in Brazil.

Rarely does the Brazilian born and bred drink any- thing stronger than coffee, and this he takes, in little cups in the innumerable cafeterias of every city, many times a day. Since the established price of a little cup of hot, very strong black coffee is but a tostdo (two U. S. cents) there is no great extravagance about this. At family meals a little wine, generally imported from Portugal, France or Italy, is on the table: since Rio Grande has been trying her hand at wine-making the

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Monroe Palacio, on the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro. Municipal Theatre, Sao Paulo City.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 89

bottle may contain vinho nacional; in any case it is sparingly used. The younger generation has taken to a limited extent to the whisky introduced by the Britisher, the beer of the German, now very well brewed in the country, and the cocktail of the newcomer of North America, but he appears to drink these exotics more with a desire to be in the fashion or a ''good sport" than because he likes them.

Deliberate drinking is almost confined to the festas beloved of the mestizo and mulatto populations, es- pecially celebrated in agricultural districts, when the Brazilian-made cachaga, a kind of rum made from sugarcane, is liberally consumed. Its festive use seems to be a survival of Indian custom, for the natives of the coasts and forests in pre-Portuguese days made a fer- mented liquor (from milho = maize) for special occasions, and their descendants as well as the negro element, also great lovers of celebrations, regard an occasional period of revelry as a right. The influence of Christian- ity has succeeded in identifying these festal occasions with, and confining them to, saints' days and other Church celebrations, but their root is more primitive.

Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dis- sension or the cause of social upheaval: the original donatarios brought chaplains with them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and members of Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding establishments in the settlements. With re- gard to the natives their task was easy, since there ex- isted no definite religion to be eradicated, and, except when the work of the missionaries interfered with the designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the padres y colonists, and authorities; many

90 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

of them had a hand in political matters, were emissaries between the mother country and Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever established in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the erection of the Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State, probably much to the betterment of conditions, for considerable criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity follow- ing upon security; put upon her mettle as an inde- pendent organization, and faced with the competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman Catholic church In Brazil is said to have performed much needed purifying.

Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity exist undisturbed, and although their temples are very generally attended exclusively by the foreign congregations responsible for their origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is undoubtedly useful. In the southern organized settlements each community practises the form of faith of the home-land, the Russians of the Greek church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and so on; there Is not the slightest interference — religious intolerance is indeed unimaginable In Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that this attitude arises from indifference, that the practice of religious observ- ances is left to women and children and that the grown men of communities are cynical — next-door to what used to be called "agnosticism" by the professional European unbelievers of the past generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; It is common for Brazilian men in conversation

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 91

to affect an airy amusement before the claims of re- ligious bodies: but due allowance must be made for French influence. Almost up to the time of the Euro- pean War there was a parade of emancipation from clerical leading strings by the intellectual French, yet the course of the conflict has witnessed a spiritual awakening, the resurrection of something dormant; the France of today is probably more sincerely religious than she has been for many a century. The cynicism of masculine Brazil may be no more deeply rooted.

As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions comparable to the tendency in the United States which is so curious an indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to conceive Brazilian reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable example of serious adoption of a new faith is found In the extreme South, where the principles of August Comte have taken root, and the riograndense of the educated ruling class Is generally a Comtlst.

In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion of Roman Catholic churches to the population Is remarkably large, particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder sister, Olinda. That they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element, for here as In all other parts of the world where he has been taken the negro is a fervent admirer of almost any kind of religion. It Is the swarm- ing coloured people of Bahia, crowded in the cobble- paved, half-lighted rookeries of the lower town and the tilted streets leading to the upper town, who make It possible to keep open the doors of that city's four hun- dred churches. In these centres all the many saints'

92 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

days are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a simple faith in "white magic" survive; here that the ceremonies of All Hallowe'en are per- formed hy maids of the sertao, and spells invoked. St. John's is one of the popular days, with its legends and traditional celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion as youth of Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves and flowers, go down to the river banks to wash, singing as they go, because as the verse says: "Nessa noite e benta a agua, Para tudo tem virtudes." Fires are lighted out- side each house in homage to St. John, and at these green corn is roasted — the traditional milho assado na fogueira. Over the hot ashes of these fires the faithful walk barefoot without being burnt. . . .

On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart, and girls try to discover their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is not the only aider of candidates for matrimony — there is "Sao Gon9alvo," a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint Is quoted by Pereira da Costa in his Folklore Pernamhucano and begins: "Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm binder, tie him who wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder the steps of Fulano as with a strong cage. . . ."

St. Raymund Is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed prayer of noted efficiency is addressed to him; translated freely it runs:

Miraculous Saint Raymund, You who help everyone to marry, Please tell Saint Anthero

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 93

That I wish to be married soon To a very good-looking young man. In the church of Saint Benedict.

Before the altar of Saint Rosa

I want to give my hand as a wife

To him whom I love so much.

Asking Saint German

And also Saint Henry

That I shall be happily married.

May Saint Odoric permit That the young man be rich, And Saint Augustine grant That he loves me very much And I beg Saint Robert That he may be clever.

Also I pray Saint Vincent That the wedding may be soon. Begging Saint Innocencia Not to let me lose patience, And asking Saint Caetano That it may happen this year.

I have already prayed Saint Inez Not to let this month pass, And Saint Mariana, That it may be this week — And I beg the Virgin Our Lady That it may be this very hour!

From which it will be seen that the saints are expected to be useful, and that festas of the church are agreeable to these young people, leading in the older centres a rather restricted social life.

94 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

Women in Brazil occupy a position out of which they have been forced or have voluntarily emerged in many countries. It is for many reasons a very happy life, for, withdrawn as she is, the Brazilian wife and mother has complete authority over the wide sphere which tradi- tion has so long assigned to her. It is a moot point whether women in other lands would seek emergence from that circle if circumstances did not send them from it; the salary-earning women of Western Europe and North America perhaps do not always realize that theirs is not altogether a choice between home and independence, that they work because they must work. The exigencies of climate, as well as modern education, send women out to the ranks of the workers in lands where there are at least as many women as men.

In Brazil there is no such equality of numbers. The list of men is always much longer than that of women, chiefly because of the stream of male immigrants who arrive in the country without families, and, earning good wages, set about the acquisition of a home. The pre- dominant classes of such immigrants are Portuguese, and these men, speaking the same language and with close affiliations to Brazil, readily seek wives among the Brazilian families to which their status gives them entry. Little social adjustment is needed in such unions, much less than in the case of the marriage of Brazilian girls with foreigners of a totally divergent origin.

The Brazilian girl is said to be precocious, and she is certainly the possessor of tactful manners and distinct aplomb in her early teens. If she is a member of a wealthy family she has generally spent some years in French schools, and it is not unusual to find beautiful

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 95

young women of nineteen or so who have been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland and England, and who speak four or five languages fluently. All educated Brazilians speak and read French, most of them under- stand but will not speak English, and nearly all those from the more southerly parts of Brazil have learned German for commercial reasons or have been partly educated in Germany. Educational affiliations with the United States are new, and apply to young men more than to girls; technical training in engineering or trading is sought increasingly In North America for business reasons as commercial exchange develops, but the closely guarded, often conventual training of the girls has a very different aim. The young Brazilian girl is frequently a good horsewoman, for life on a farm is al- most sure to be included in the tale of her early years; she is often also a good swimmer. Music is an in- variable part of her education on which stress is laid, and I have heard some brilliant executants among Brazilian women. Dressed in the height of Parisian fashions, chic, demure outside her family and full of gay camaraderie with her endless lines of brothers and sisters inside the home, the Brazilian young girl is a very charming creature. She has the loveliest dark eyes in the world, and often possesses a very fine clear pale skin. Married, she seems to resign herself contentedly to a purely domestic life; one enters homes in Brazil whose handsome hostess entertains delightfully, always ex- quisitely dressed, and sparkling with the big diamonds that are considered the simple right of every woman in Brazil — my washerwoman in Rio had a pair of brilliant earrings that cost three contos of reis, representing her life's savings — but this same smiling hostess will never

96 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

be seen outside her spacious home and gardens, except upon the formal occasions when she is obliged to make an appearance in pubHc with her husband. She not infrequently displays a tendency to embonpoint early in life, the result of lack of exertion and the eating of the extraordinary and delicious doces (sweets and candies), the creation of which is a special art of Brazilian women, but she does not mind this at all, fearing a thin figure as the most terrible of disasters in this land where the highest compliment paid to a woman is: "How pretty and fat you are getting!" Gorda and honita are indeed interchangeable terms.

She accepts her destiny as a mother of many children, and generally spoils them badly, at least in their in- fancy; the father is equally indulgent. A harsh parent is a rara avis, and nothing excites popular indignation in Brazil more than any story of hardship in which chil- dren are concerned. Passionately devoted to her babies, the Brazilian mother stays within her home, is the gracious sovereign of her circle, and seems little dis- turbed when it expands notably. This expansion is likely to happen if any relative either on her side or her husband's falls upon evil days; in that case he will come with his family and camp out until fortune smiles again. There is no turning of the cold shoulder upon poor rela- tions in Brazil — they are welcome to a share of the family fare, and to hammock space if beds are lacking in the case of poorer homes, secure in the knowledge that they in turn will repay this good deed with similar ones later on. The city centres have of course their more rigid social laws, but in the less restricted life of smaller towns or fazendas there is often encountered another variation from the harsher rules of some other

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 97

lands : this is the placid acceptance into a home of chil- dren who do not claim the mistress of the house as mother, but who receive from her bed and board and a status little inferior to that of her own babies, regular members of society. Lapses from social law occur all over the world; they are punished to a greater or lesser degree everywhere, but in some countries the innocent suffer more than the guilty; unhappy and unwanted children bear a stigma against which they rebel in vain. Brazilian opinion does not spare offenders, but it does withhold any harsh hand from innocent children. Ac- knowledged and treated with affection, they are given a chance in life together with the more fortunate.

Life in the two chief cities of Brazil, Rio and Sao Paulo, takes its hue from the European capitals with which they are closely in touch, and from which they have derived mental food for many a generation. There is little about either of these fine cities, apart from the hot summers, the brilliant vegetation, their remarkable cleanliness and the Southern Cross overhead, to dis- tinguish them from European cities; the clothes, amuse- ments, buildings, and literature of the population is predominantly European, and there is not much to remind the visitor that he is in tropical South America. Rio is the "intellectual centre" of Brazil, and here are gathered the scores of good writers and poets, the artists and politicians, of the country; there is a profuse and characteristic literature. If the North American writer was correct in saying that "American literature is only a phase of English literature," he would have been equally justified in saying that South American literature is a phase of French literature: yet in Brazil this would have less truth than in most parts of Latin

98 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

America, because this country has so largely developed a series of writers who take native Brazilian life for their theme. There are long lists of Brazilian novels and poems which really reflect Brazil conditions in the very varied sections of the country; I know no other South American country whose literature is so emanci- pated, not from French style so much as from European subject matter. There is for instance the excellent work of the Visconde de Taunay, whose charming Innocencia is a picture of interior conditions, and has been translated into almost every language, not excepting Japanese. The books of Jose de Alencar form another series of provincial pictures; Machado de Assis wrote a number of historical novels of great merit and interest; Coelho Netto, Aluisio de Azevedo, J. M. de Macedo, Xavier Marques, are among a score of names of writers who have left records of Brazilian life. If I were advising the study of a brief list of such novels, this would be a preliminary dozen: — Innocencia: by the Visconde de Taunay. Novel of fazenda life in the interior — a delicate and touching story. Os Sertoes: by Euclydes da Cunha. Powerful and vivid description of a page of national history, with a setting in the interior Brazilian uplands. 0 Sertdo: by Coelho Netto. Scene also laid in the in- terior, with its simple customs. 0 Mulato: Aluisio de Azevedo. Deals with the position of

the negro half-caste in Brazil. 0 Gaucho: Jose de Alencar. Life of the Brazilian cow- boy. Os Praieiros: Xavier Marques. Life of the fisherfolk on islands near Bahia.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 99

0 Paroara: Rodolpho Theophilo. Exodus of the

Cearenses to the rubber forests of the Amazon. Maria Dusd: LIndolpho Rocha. Story of diamond

hunters In the interior of Bahia. Braz Cuhas and Quincas Borha: Machado de Assis.

Historical novels dealing with colonial life. Esphynge: Afranio Peixoto. Social life of Rio and Petropolis, or Dentro da Noite or Vida Vertigi- nosa, by " Joao do Rio," also social life of the Cap- ital. There are also the finely written novels of Brazil's woman writer, Julia Lopez de Almeida, whose Fallencia 18 a very skilful piece of work; and no study of Brazilian life would be complete without Jose Verisslmo's Scenas da Vida Amazonica, preserving tales and legends of the Amazon, and the kindly Memorias da Rua do Ouvidor, of J. M. de Macedo, telling tales of the early days of Rio de Janeiro.

Poets are many. The "Prince of Brazilian poets," acclaimed by public vote, is Olavo Bilac, whose Via Lactea Is a beautiful work: he is one of the most dis- tinguished members of the Academla Brasileira, whose President is the publicist and orator of international fame. Senator Ruy Barbosa.

Olavo Bilac is something more than a poet; he has recently made It his mission to sound a "call to arms," addressed to Brazilian young men, with the object of bringing about physical and moral improvement through military service. His addresses In the capitals in 191 5 made a great stir: he later, In the middle of 1916, began a tour of Brazil, penetrating into interior regions as well as visiting coast towns, to repeat his appeal. A most admired and beloved poet, Bilac has

100 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

prestige which few other people could bring to such a self-appointed task.

After Bilac comes Alberto de Oliveira, and a long list of other dexterous versifiers; many produce charm- ing poems, and he who wishes to have an acquaintance with classical Brazilian verse must read the output of Gongalves Dias, who took the life of the Indians for his theme, as well as that of the lyric writer Gonzaga and the graceful Claudio da Costa.

Brazil also has a national stage. I know of no play of first-class importance, but there is an active supply of native Brazilian actors and actresses, and if their work is generally that of playing in the home-made revistas, and if these revistas are not very high art, at least they are genuinely Brazilian, and often extremely amusing. I suppose that on the stage, as in the pages of the Brazilian press, there is a limit beyond which the libel law would become active, but I cannot ima- gine where it is drawn; the audience rocks with laughter when well-known political personages are caricatured upon the stage — as they are lampooned in the press — and no notice appears to be taken of whatever alludes to matters of intimate family concern. Nobody in the public eye is exempt, and the result is that Brazil possesses a lively, home-made stage which is at least a beginning in dramatic craft.

Brazil has an exuberant press. There is a large num- ber of dailies and weeklies in proportion to the popula- tion, many of the smaller journals existing to serve the purposes of some special movement, colony, or party, and there are many technical periodicals of varying merit. Grace, pungency and a frequently merciless

SOCIAL CONDITIONS loi

frankness are the chief characteristics of the free-lance sections of the Brazilian press, although there are cer- tain staid and conservative journals whose dignity never deserts them. The first of all Brazilian news- papers was a little sheet started in Rio, soon after the arrival of Dom Joao, by Frey TIburcio; it was prac- tically a Court Journal. Two of its notable antagonists later on were the Tamoyo and the Sentinella. All of these early periodicals died a natural death, the news- paper of longest continual publication in Brazil being the Diario de Pernambuco.

The premier newspaper in Brazil, which is also per- haps the best in South America, although It has a formidable rival in the Argentine, is "o velho," the famous Jornal do Commercio, the semi-official, powerful, wealthy, and most excellent daily of Rio, with a cir- culation all over Brazil and reaching out as well to most parts of the educated world. It is a great paper In all senses of the word, is finely printed — this great sheet, often with thirty-two and sometimes eighty big pages, eight columns wide, printed in a language requiring the "til," "cedilla," acute and circumflex accents, con- stantly employed, comes out day after day almost without any typographical errors. Its reviews of com- mercial affairs are made with authority; It is remark- able for having no editorials, anything that needs to be said editorially appearing in the ^^ Farias Noticias;" months may pass without this column containing more than chronicles of official acts and movements, but when the Jornal Is moved to speak its voice comes In no uncertain tone. Its denunciations and pronounce- ments are discussed like a Papal Edict in the Middle Ages.

102 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

Anyone who reads the Jornal day by day, with its pages of European telegrams, its excellent letters from world capitals, its fine literary and political essays, its Publicagoes a pedido where every kind of public or private matter is thrashed out, often to the great enter- tainment of the reader, knows everything that is going on in Brazil, is well up in European news, but will hear only faint echoes coming from North America and these as a rule only when some distinguished Bra- zilian happens to be travelling there, and cables are sent south dealing with his sayings and doings. When I have enquired the reason for this lack of news from North America the reply has generally been that the news services are responsible: that the arrangements made with certain European agencies cannot be dupli- cated. It seems as If this is a matter needing thoughtful attention, for it is obvious that the Brazilian cannot be so deeply interested in a country about which he hears practically nothing as about others which present even trivial domestic news to him in long cables every day. The same lack occurs, of course. In the United States in regard to Brazil; if accurate, frequent infor- mation were disseminated we should not read that "In the states of Parana and Santa Catarina, in Brazil, the entire population subsists on bananas as food and are famous for their strength and endurance," or that (an item of early October, 1916) "the Brazilian coffee crop is estimated at 11,000,000 bags, the greatest ever har- vested and three million bags bigger than last year's crop," nor should we see the "Girl from Brazil" repre- sented upon a New York stage dressed, and comport- ing herself, much like a Carmen, and speaking Spanish; or read tales repeated in the press of the "little republic

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 103

of Coanani" near the Guiana boundary in Brazil which has "sent its army to fight on the side of the Allies." With the United States as Brazil's best customer, and, at least for the present, Brazil's greatest supplier, there should be better channels of interchange not only of information but ideas; there should be room for a Brazilian journal in New York — there is one in Paris — and for a Bureau of Information with exhibits, some- thing on the lines of the existing Bureau in the French capital, where Brazilian hardwoods, cotton, precious stones, fibres, ores, etc., are on view. The Pan-Amer- ican Union, as well as other organizations and publica- tions with the Pan-American object in view, do sincere and arduous work which has borne much industrial and social fruit, but their labours are necessarily spread over a great field : nor can Consuls do everything, how- ever energetic. Brazilian interchange with North America Is quite important and promising enough to merit a special news service.

Other strong Brazilian newspapers published in Rio are 0 Paiz, 0 Imparcialj 0 Correio da Manha issued in the morning, with a host, Including A Pla- tea, A Tarde, 0 Noite and the afternoon edition of the Jornal do Commercio, issued any time after mid-day: the latter has had a wonderful war-review series of articles running since 1914. Very many papers of the Brazilian press, like the major part of the non- German Brazilian people, are strongly pro-Ally, and particularly pro-French, and have no hesitation in de- claring their feelings, as witness the "LIga Brasileira pelos Alliados" formed by some of the foremost men of the country, but in the case of the war articles of the afternoon Jornal there was a serious attempt at

I04 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

impartiality. It was possible thus to read first a criticism of the war-telegrams of the day showing that a distinct advantage had accrued to the Allies, while printed just below would be another analysis by a second contributor, demonstrating that the news was distinctly favourable to the Teutonic forces.

Also published in Rio are many technical papers, medical and engineering periodicals, etc., and some of the gay illustrated weeklies of very free speech, as 0 Malho, A Careta, Fon-Fon; also the Revista da Semana, a society paper. There are French, Italian and German papers, but the great home of a polyglot press is Sao Paulo, with its groups of immi- grants. Here the oldest Brazilian paper is the Correio Paulistano, sixty years established, a dally morning paper; another in the same class and perhaps the most widely read is the Estado de Sao Paulo, while the Commercio de Sao Paulo ^ also has a high reputation. The Estado runs an afternoon edition, and there are many other evening papers — the Diario Popular, Naqao, Gazeta, etc. For the Italian population there is the daily morning Fanfulla, the afternoon Giornale degli Italiani and the weekly Italiano. Germans have the morning Diario Alemdo and the weekly Germania. Two French weeklies seem to do well, the Messager de S. Paul, and the Courrier Frangais. There is a Spanish Diario Espanol, two Turkish papers, and in the colonies outside the city there are said to be Russian and Japanese sheets published. The city of S. Paulo counts eighty journals, the State counting over two hundred dailies and weeklies.

* Bought by the Rio Jornal do Commercio company at end of 1916 and now published as the Jornal do Commercio de Sao Paulo.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 105

Rio and S. Paulo are the two chief literary centres, but every town of any size in Brazil has its newspaper. Of these perhaps the most important are the Per- nambuco papers; the Diario de Pernambuco, already mentioned, bears the proud inscription of its age in conspicuous lettering on the front of its building in a square in Recife; it is a very good paper, and so is the Jornal do Recife^ among several other daily sheets. Bahia has the Diario de Bahia and Diario de Noticias, amongst others, and the State Press here also pub- lishes daily an excellent Diario Official.

Para has quite a variety of papers, the Estado de Pard and the Folha do Norte probably the two most powerful. Manaos also supports several newspapers, of which the Jornal do Commercio and 0 Tempo appear to be most widely read.

Many imported foreign periodicals have a ready sale in Brazil, as the French V Illustration, many Portuguese publications, and the Blanco y Negro of Madrid; nearly all the English serious reviews and illustrated weeklies are sold, and there is an increasing demand for illus- trated North American periodicals of good class. Al- together Brazil has a remarkably cosmopolitan class of readers and therefore a cosmopolitan press.

Almost all the Brazilian authors of note have, at one time or another, contributed to the great Jornal do Commercio; this is really the cradle of much fine writing. Founded in 1827, it is today housed in a splendid building on the corner of the famous Rua do Ouvidor and the Avenida Rio Branco, the building and press equipment costing over half a million dollars.

Linked with the life of the Jornal for the last twenty-

io6 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

five years is that of Jose Carlos Rodrigues, Director from 1890 until his retirement in 1915 ; a great student and great organizer, possessed of international prestige, Jose Carlos was the moving spirit of the newspaper for a generation. He is one of the eminent figures in modern Brazilian life. At seventy-two years of age he is com- pleting his Vida de Jesus, fruit of long years of research.

Jose Carlos Rodrigues is one of the constructive Bra- zilians. There have been many others, as the great Andrada brothers, Campos Salles, the Visconde de Rio Branco and his son, the Barao; Varnhagen (Vis- conde de Porto Seguro), politician and historian; Joa- quim Nabuco, writer, ambassador, and instigator of slavery abolition — as were also several fine men still alive, as Rodrigues Alves, the great Paulista.

Of modern Brazilians to whom the country owes a debt there are none with more claim to gratitude than Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who banished yellow fever from coast towns once notorious for their unhealthiness, and Colonel Rondon, who has devoted his life to the opening up of the Brazilian interior, and besides mapping, charting, and creating telegraphic communication throughout the hinterlands of Matto Grosso, has brought whole tribes of wild Indians into civilized ways of living.

Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social conditions, that of the Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy Barbosa said the other day, "Americans are descendants not of Apaches, but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins." The Indian admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical hardihood. The extreme south of Brazil, as we have already seen, has had during the

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 107

last century an enormous Influx of European white blood other than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Ger- manic, while all the large coast cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In the interior of the northern promontory a noticeable feature is the blonde average of the population, partly an inheritance from the days of Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the groups of unhappy retirantes from the drought districts, encountered in the streets of Para and Manaos, waiting for shelter and work, there are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue eyes who might have come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany.

On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there is another very strong admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but occasionally the cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says frankly that the European was not, in early colonial days, "strong enough to repel the native savage and cultivate the soil, and so resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa . . . the ally of the white men." He calls the negro "a robust civilizing element," and says that from the close association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood descendants, who constitute today "the mass of our population and the chief beauty of our race."

"Still today," he declares, "the most beautiful fem- inine types are these agile, strong, brown-skinned girls with black eyes and hair. In whose veins run, although well diluted, many drops of African blood. . . . The coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our states- men, and he spoke truth; the negro has influenced all

io8 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

our intimate life and many of our customs are trans- mitted from him. It is sufficient to remember that the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the cozinha bahiana, is entirely African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature of ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this energetic race should have suffered the brand of slavery; we should make a vow to revindicate its place in our his- tory. There are means of utilizing the negro without degrading him."

Sylvio Romero adds that "all the first-class people of Brazil have white blood, either pure or mingled with that of another race," but that the white element should do justice to the degree to which the black has been a mental, political, economic and social factor. He traces. In a little book of which I found a stray copy on a bookstall in Manaos market, the negro element in the folklore of Brazil {Contos Populates^ Rio de Janeiro) as well as that of the native Indian, and makes the point that both Indian and negro are "inarticulate" in Bra- zilian society, except through the medium of a language foreign to their ideas, Portuguese, which has undoubtedly coloured their mental expression. These Folk-tales of Sylvio Romero's collection, as well as those preserved by Couto de Magalhaes in his Selvagem, are delightful tales, many hinging upon the adventures of various wild animals, and frequently displaying a decided streak of humour not unlike that of the "Uncle Remus" negro tales of North America.

At least one negro poet of Brazil has a claim to fame — Cruz e Souza; the sculptor Pinheiro was also chiefly of African blood ; Jose de Patrocinio, who worked hard for the abolition of slavery and stood by the chair of

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 109

Princess Isabel when she signed the decree of freedom, was an able and eloquent negro writer. Altogether, the debt of Brazil to the strong African races appears to be quite as important, if not much more so, than that owed to the Tupi-Guarani and other "Indian" tribes of native Brazil. Fleeing from before the hard hand of the white man, the Indian as a separate social element has disappeared from those parts of Brazil brought into touch with modern life.

This native Brazilian, the "Indian" of the coasts, inland plains, and forest-bordered rivers who lived in the country before Portuguese possession, has left no traces of civilization comparable with that of the Incas or pre-Incas of the north-west of South America, or with the culture of the Maya of Central America and their pupils and conquerors, the Aztecs. Only in the north, along the Amazonian river highway connecting with Peru are there remains of ceramic art, and survivals of weaving skill, which denote marked attainments by a people with settled homes and defined social habits.

The Museo Goldi at Para is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and much dug from burial grounds on the great island of Mara jo at the mouth of the Amazon; Marajo has a lake which in turn shelters an island which has proved a mine for the archaeologist — and none too respectfully treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been more occupied In acquiring loot than In making historical records. This island in the lake appears to have served for a burial ground of tribes with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good artistic design; there is a very noticeable resemblance between

no BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

certain of these Marajo pottery specimens, especially the smaller jars and domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central America.

To the present day the Amazon Indians have pre- served their skill in weaving native fibres; hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with elaborate feather de- vices worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices reaching several hundred milreis. Both the Museum in Para and that in Rio de Janeiro, begun by Dom Pedro and housed in his one-time palace, contain beautiful specimens of Indian feather work, the exquisite pinks, blues and greens of Brazilian birds lending themselves to the gay effect. Allied In race, apparently, to handsome, stocky natives of British Guiana, the Amazon Indian often has a skin of a cinnamon tint, is physically strong so long as he is not called upon for regular and confined labour. Is a good waterman and archer, and is not inimical while he is allowed to remain undisturbed in his forests. If it were not necessary to enlist his help or enter his re- treats, his effect upon Brazilian modern social condi- tions would be nil; there was a time when Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that period is past, although the effect of the former survives in the fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that resulted was able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably could not have done.

Farther south the Indian seems to have been of a different origin, whose cradle is assigned by some scientists to Paraguay, and who are Identified with the fierce Carlbs, invaders of the West Indian islands and

Igapo near the Rio Negro, Amazonas. Caripuna Indians, on the Madeira River.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS iii

destroyers of the gentle aborigines of those shores be- fore the Spanish came. No pottery remains are found in the south as In the north; these tribes seem to have been nomadic In tendency, cultivators of no arts that have left traces, builders of but light and temporary dwellings, living upon few foods and those obtained chiefly by hunting. The chief articles cultivated were mandloca and maize, the forests yielding wild fruits and nuts. There seems to be no doubt that the majority, If not all, of these natives were given to cannibal feasts, but In some cases the act was ceremonial and in others was confined to enemies of the tribe. Apart from these propensities the native appears to have been a gen- tle and even timid creature, endowed with simple good sense, and quite a man of his word. With the Portuguese settler he was almost always at logger- heads, but the French knew well how to make a valuable and faithful ally of him, loyal supplier of food and shelter In the darkest day of the French attempt at colonization both north and south; the Jesuit priests, too, who followed the Indians into the wilderness were able to make quiet converts out of them, and to train them to domesticity. Since the Jesuits' work was de- stroyed and the missionaries themselves expelled from the country the Indian has been practically let alone; withdrawn socially, his part In Brazilian life has been a silent one. He has been still living In the Stone Age. He never knew and has not adopted the use of metal, erected no stone or other permanent buildings of any kind, and set up no temples to his gods. Idea of a deity was to many tribes represented by Tupan, a being somewhat resembling the North American's "Great Spirit;" medicine men, called pagis, performed and still

112 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

perform, wonders and enchantments to cure the sick. When Prince Adalbert of Prussia went up the Amazon in 1843 he was able to see one of these wizards at work upon a sick man, and himself complained of a pain in his arm, asking the page to cure it; the spot was rubbed with unguents, covered with leaves, exorcisms were made, and at last the page blowing upon the arm freed a butterfly and declared that this was the disappearing pain; the European onlookers said that it was a marvel that the wizard had been able to go through such a per- formance with the butterfly concealed in his mouth: evidently these are quite good conjurers. It is not un- known for the position of page to be offered to a dis- tinguished foreigner: I heard on the Amazon of a German doctor, whose cures had won the confidence of a remote tribe, receiving this curious honour.

The only man of modern times who has had con- tinued success with the native of the interior is that great Brazilian, Colonel Candido Rondon: in his work of constructing telegraphs and roads and mapping and surveying in the vast sertoes of Matto Grosso, Rondon has laboured for twenty-five years to win over the timid and hostile Indians. He has so far succeeded that not only do they now refrain from destroying his lines and stations, but have been trained to the service of the Commission which Rondon heads, guarding the posts and cultivating fields in their neighbourhood for the supply of the engineers. In 191 5 a series of moving picture films were shown in Brazilian cities, made on the route of the Commission's work, and showing in- teresting pictures of Parecis, Nhambiquaras, and other Indian tribes friendly to the invaders of their interior regions; they are frequently fine-looking, well-

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 113

developed, sturdy people, very well worth saving among the world's races.

All over the Americas the question of the fate of the native is a painful one. In North America, both in Canada and the United States, he has diminished with extraordinary rapidity even when wars have ceased; contact with the white man seems to be fatal to him. It is only of late, since he ceased to be a physical danger, that conscience has been aroused on his behalf and efforts made to retain the survivals. Farther south the Aztec is still holding his own, a hardy race living its own life yet and able to preserve customs and wide land spaces. In Central America the only marked group of pure race is the gentle Guatemalan Maya, almost en- slaved but still living the life of the sixteenth century in the uplands : when taken to work in the lowlands, he dies.

In Peru the natives are still a strong tough mountain people: Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile also have incor- porated the Indian into the industrial life of the coun- try; from the Argentine he has practically disappeared, the face of the land occupied by restless, industrial strangers, while he has no place in statistics or in cal- culations affecting the progress of the country. He is no more a factor than the North American Indian is a factor in the United States.

Is he to suffer a similar fate in Brazil.? Not yet, for his numbers are large and he still occupies great tracts of the vast hinterlands. There is, too, a lively public sentiment on the subject of the Indian in Brazil, states- men and writers frequently calling attention to the problem. Spaces in Brazil are so enormous that it will be many a generation before any question arises of

114 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

intrusion upon Indian retreats, and perhaps by that time an extension of the methods of Rondon will have divested him of fear of civilization.

It cannot, however, be imagined that the native of Brazil will supply the labour needed to develop great interior regions; he is not willing to work at given tasks at appointed times and to maintain such work day by day. He is probably not physically fitted for such tasks. When, seduced by agents during rubber booms, he has been bribed into working at the systematic gathering of goma, he has failed and died in too many instances; only when his blood is mingled with that of another race, and the cahoclo produced, is the child of the selvagem able to take his place in the industrial world.

With the suggestion that the Indian should be strengthened by admixtures of introduced Asiatics, on the score that the Oriental and the native of Brazil are already akin, I have scant patience. A tilt of the eyelids seen in some Central and South American na- tives has been the chief basis of a number of fantastic theories generally pre-supposing the passage of large numbers of Chinese immigrants by way of the Behring Strait; difiiculties are brushed away with an easy hand by enthusiasts of this idea, but to ignore them is, as T. A. Joyce says, to ignore the value of scientific evidence. It is just as reasonable to suppose that China or Japan or both were colonized from South America as to insist on the reverse movement, but as a matter of fact the division is so extreme on the very points where resemblances should exist — In language roots, social customs, arts and food, and religion — that discussion of the question appears futile. It may be

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 115

taken for granted that oriental immigration and mixing will not be accepted by Brazilians as the solution to the Indian problem; like many another Brazilian problem, it will be solved from within.

Education in Brazil for the masses of the people has Dcen the subject of serious consideration and effort for the last fifty years. Government schools in the care of the separate States differ widely in varying latitudes, both in quantity and quality, and problems depend largely upon the origin of the population. The Italian immigrants of Sao Paulo are obviously not in the same class as pupils as the negroes of Bahia State or the three- quarter Indians of Amazonas, nor can States with few exports and small revenues spend a corresponding amount on education with rich and expanding regions.

Sao Paulo is in the matter of public schools, as in commerce, the leader State; she is a wealthy State, and she has not hesitated to spend enormous sums on all kinds of public works, whether roads, water-supply, railways, drainage — or school buildings and service. The Director of Public Instruction, Dr. Joao Chrisos- tomo, in speeches and writings shows that he has a very clear idea of the object of modern schooling, to train a healthy mind in a healthy body. Medical and dental attendance upon the children is regularly carried out in the Paulista schools, teachers are trained In an ex- cellently equipped and managed Normal School, and buildings have been multiplied until there Is today a school for every fourteen hundred of the inhab- itants of Sao Paulo state. The task of educating the children of the working population is a more dif- ficult one in the agricultural districts, but every good coffee fazenda has its school. Sao Paulo has made

ii6 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

special efforts to bring new immigrants into touch with Brazilian conditions by establishing a series of night schools where Portuguese is taught, together with Brazilian history and geography; the writer once visited a school of this kind and saw Italians, Syrians, Greeks and a Japanese, all adults, learning earnestly in the same room.

Not all of the Brazilian States have as much money to spare as Sao Paulo, but the framework, and much of the real building and equipment, of a satisfactory public school system exists in every section of the country. Feminine professional education has made a certain start, and the writer has rarely seen a more promising, and handsome, group of young women than the students of a normal school in Para. Many Bra- zilian cities take pride in their professional and tech- nical colleges, some of very old foundation, as that of the School of Law of Pernambuco, the School of Medi- cine of Bahia, the Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro, and the School of Law of Sao Paulo.

Religious scholastic institutions are many, several of the great Orders, such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, and of course the Jesuits, maintaining splendid, large, and wealthy colleges. Convents for girls are also of first-class importance in the Brazilian educational field, the Sacred Heart institutions taking thousands of girls, and apparently giving them a good training. In Sao Paulo there are several schools of Italian origin; there is a popular French Lycee in Rio; the American Macken- zie College in Sao Paulo, founded by Dr. Horace Lane, is a fine institution doing good work — possessing a kindergarten branch for young children as well as upper grade classes and technical courses; and there is a series

Agricultural School at Piracicaba, S. I'

il, ^i

Maintained by the State Government; teaches scientific agriculture, conducts chemical experiments and maintains a splendid demonstration farm. Director, Dr. Emilio Castello.

The Butantan Institute, S. Paulo City.

The Institute Serumtherapico do Estado de Sao Paulo is maintained by the State Government. Several thousand poisonous snakes are kept here in the Ser- pentario and from them venom is extracted and injected into horses; the resulting serum is prepared as an antidote for snakebite, and is distributed all over Brazil. The Director is Dr. Vital Brasil.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS 117

of excellent and popular schools known as the Gym- nasio Anglo-Brazlleiro. The first of these was started in 1899 by an Englishman, Mr. Charles W. Armstrong, in Sao Paulo, for boys; subsequently a beautiful property was acquired among the woods on the lower slopes of the Dois Irmaos mountain just outside Rio, and a sec- ond school opened there, followed in 191 3 by the foundation of a school for girls on the slopes of the Gavea. Sixty-two per cent of the pupils are Brazilians, who seem to take to the healthy open-air games of the Anglo-Saxon with a great deal of appreciation.

The more southerly colonies have their own schools, generally taught in their own languages; the only criticism of this retention of the immigrants' tongue and ideas that I have ever heard in Brazil made itself known at the time when rumours were freely repeated of plots in the German settlements of Rio Grande do Sul, soon after the outbreak of war in Europe, and which were strengthened by von Tannenberg's book on Ger- man expansion, which discussed the annexation of South Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Brazilian newspapers ran stories dealing with the possibility of German naval victories being followed by the occupation of Rio Grande and the use of the Lagoa dos Patos as a base for vessels, and while the defeat of Admiral von Spee off the Falkland Islands disposed of such a plan if it ever existed, the suggestion drew the attention of many formerly indifferent people to the self-centred life of some of the German colonies. It was complained that nothing but the German language was taught in the schools, that public notices and records were issued in German, and the German ideal held before the people to the exclusion of any other. The matter was very

Ii8 BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

warmly argued, the colonists scouting, and