Lilian Elwyn Elliott

“ The climate of half the country opposes itself to road permanence with all the force of the tropics. Burned and disintegrated by fierce sun, deluged and beaten by even fiercer rains, choked by the lush growth of a soil so fertile that a tangled green maze springs up almost overnight in any cleared space, a road has poor chance of surviving in many parts of Brazil unless unceasing labour and unending money is spent upon it. In the very regions where roads are most wanted on account of lack of other transportation means, there is usually the least chance of money being raised for their upkeep. ”

“ The São Paulo land chosen for coffee very often lies in long gentle slopes, its deep purple-carmine tint in sharp contrast to the glossy emerald coffee leaves, and down and up over the undulations run the rows, often extending for eight or ten kilometers. The storehouses, pulping machinery, and great cement drying grounds where the coffee is laid in the sun, are frequently in the hollow where the indispensable river runs; rows of neat little houses of labourers, the Italian colonos who plant, cultivate and gather the coffee, stand within sight. ”

“ The rivers of the interior plateau, flowing westward with the tilt of the sertão, themselves offered a great highway of adventure to the early bandeirantes, bringing them into Paraguay and the outskirts of Bolivia and the Argentine, but as they went farther afield the Paraná was left to the east, Goyaz and Matto Grosso were traversed, and the path of the pioneers led up unknown 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. ”

“ The good grass lands of Minas and interior São Paulo are frequently at an elevation of 1,400 feet, on the sloping plateau which is densely wooded near its dips to the rivers, and which is on the wide uplands covered with light matto alternating with sturdy native grass. It is not unlike the high veldt of the Western Transvaal in appearance, with the same exhilarating freshness, light and space, and the same miracle of nature performed immediately after the rains, when every inch of ground is covered with little dancing flowers and every bush is transformed into a nosegay. ”

“ The stones of Brazil have long been appreciated in Europe—I am thinking of a certain shop in the Rue de la Paix in Paris and another at the top of Regent Street in London—and deserve to be better known in North America; the diamonds are beautiful, and their distribution among not only the wealthy but the “middle” classes in Brazil is so usual, the possession of good diamonds is so universally considered the right of every woman, that a gala night at the theatre in São Paulo or Rio is a display of brilliant stones which would put, for choice jewels, many capitals of the world to shame. ”

“ 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 recognized source of revenue, and many charities and other worthy institutions supported by the authorities derive 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. ”

“ Life in the two chief cities of Brazil, Rio and São 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 distinguish them from European cities; the clothes, amusements, 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. ”

“ 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 inspirers 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. ”

“ Evidences of the occupation of Olinda and its sister settlement, Recife, now the capital and a very flourishing 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 cleanliness, good methods in plantation management and excellent organizing power, and the only genuine objection to the rule of the Hollander in Brazil was that the country did not belong to him. All Brazilian historians bear witness to the merit of Dutch methods. ”

“ But to other nations where populations are crowded or conditions no longer offer wide land spaces and large agricultural rewards, the railroads of Brazil open a country of unsurpassed beauty and fertility.
What railway construction is waiting in Brazil for capital, good engineering, and—an urgent necessity in dealing with huge empty spaces—imagination? The great heart of Brazil, which is also the great heart of South America, is only newly entered by little pioneer tracks. What bold projects could open up the interior sertões to the planter? ”

“ But who realizes that Brazil is the native home of the finest oranges in the world? Bahia is the place of origin of the seedless orange; slips of this tree, taken to California, have created a tremendous daughter industry whose products are spread far and wide by steamer and train; there is no export from Brazil, the Bahian orange, which is greatly superior in size and flavour to the Californian, hardly creeping down the coast to the markets of Rio and São Paulo. ”

“ Small wonder that their combined population is only about half a million.
A new influx of bandeirantes is needed. They need the same big imagination of their antecessors, the same grit and indomitable will: they should carry gold in their pockets, surveying instruments in their hands, and behind them they should bring an army of workmen, in lieu of the earlier bandeirante’s sword and slaves. Some day the task will be accomplished: it rests with the capitalist of today to say whether he or his successors will take it up. ”

“ But even the most conservative banker will admit that variations in exchange have been the cause of large earnings on the part of financial houses in Brazil, and it is certain that fluctuation is not only the source of many fortunes, but that it materially lends itself to the promotion of the gambling spirit that helps both to make and to undo a young country; it is a spirit prevalent in many parts of Latin America and perhaps particularly in Brazil where such spectacular turns of Fortune’s wheel have been seen from time to time in different parts of the country. ”

“ In the stony streets the scent of coffee prevails; at every doorway burly negroes are hauling out sacks of the aromatic bean; the cluster of banks down the main business street, some Brazilian and many branches of foreign houses, all live upon coffee. The dealers, commission men, shippers, roasters of coffee represent the commercial existence of the port. ”

“ In Rio, the intellectual centre of Brazil, the influence of the administration 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 Government have been men of such ability and force of character that they have thoroughly earned the confidence of the thinking classes. ”

“ Almost up to the time of the European 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. ”

“ Deep, monotonous, silent, dark and changeless, the forest unconquerable walls in the uncountable rivers 4traversing 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. ”

“ Since Loudon wrote Brazil, as other parts of South and Central America, has been the happy hunting ground of plant explorers, and the gardens of Europe and North America have been beautified to an extent of which that devoted horticulturist never dreamed. The tale of the indebtedness of the gardens of less fortunate climes to South America in general and Brazil in particular for plants and shrubs, both ornamental and of economic value, would occupy a large volume; the extent of the debt is no less great than general ignorance of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The São Paulo-to-Santos line is world famous: it is the channel through which the bulk of the coffee of the whole world is carried, and is for its length one of the notable money earners of the railroad world. The road crosses the coastal swamps following the old Jesuit road as far as Cubatão, and thence climbs the granite wall of the Serra on one of the steepest grades known in railway construction, rising two thousand five hundred feet within a distance of ten kilometers. ”

“ What does matter is that North American manufacturers should continue to be supplied in vast and increasing quantities with South American hides for the use of leather manufactories; with ivory nuts for the button industry; with the coffee that cannot be grown in northern climes; with rubber and fibres and tannin materials; and with the minerals that exist in the sands and rocks of South America in unexampled variety and which can be there produced at half the cost that North America is forced to pay for labour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Education in Brazil for the masses of the people has been 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 São 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. ”

“ Both the Museum in Pará 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. ”

“ 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 João opened Brazilian ports to international commerce, Brazil lay in a trance, bound hand and foot to Portugal, isolated from the world. ”

“ In Peru the natives are still a strong tough mountain people: Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile also have incorporated the Indian into the industrial life of the country; 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 calculations 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Much of the civic building, creation of public utilities, establishment of transportation lines, has been due to foreign capital and technical skill, but Brazil herself has contributed no small share of enterprise during the last fifty years; descendants of Portuguese 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. ”

“ Apart from these propensities the native appears to have been a gentle 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 loggerheads, 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. ”

“ Individuals in Brazil show themselves no less interested than officials: letters bearing upon the situation are constantly printed in the public press, many personal sacrifices have been made of percentages of salaries by legislators, officials and civil servants, and it is clear that the ablest heads in Brazil are trying to find a way in which Brazil can meet her obligations. This sincerity of purpose may not create gold, but it does strengthen public credit and helps in a more or less direct manner in restoring confidence which is certainly not without its effect upon exchange. ”

“ The sensational leaps in prices that have occurred in world markets since rubber became commercialized have brought great quantities of money to the Amazon; many fortunes rocketed to the skies, and there was a period when a golden flood flowed up the river as well as down, when Manáos, the rubber city of the riverine interior, displayed more luxury for its size than Paris, and the best diamond market in the world was in this remote spot. Anything sufficiently extravagant could be sold ”

“ 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 waiting for the farmer and the stock-raiser. ”