Bahia

“ These popular ballads of Brazil, especially of Bahia and Pernambuco, mixtures of the moda and fado of Portugal and of the tribal rites of savage Africa, are childish in thought and monotonous of rhythm, weird, languishing, half-wild songs, often improvised by the unlettered troubadours and accompanied by sensual dances and strange African movements of the body into which the whole negro throng gradually merges, discarding all remnants of their second-hand civilization.
With such an electorate it is scarcely to be expected that Bahia should swarm with honest politicians. ”

“ The land we saw was about 20 leagues to the north of Bahia; so I coasted alongshore to the southward. This coast is rather low than high, with sandy bays all along by the sea.
OF THE SEVERAL FORTS, THE ROAD, SITUATION, TOWN, AND BUILDINGS OF BAHIA.
A little within land are many very white spots of sand appearing like snow; and the coast looks very pleasant, being chequered with woods and savannahs. The trees in general are not tall; but they are green and flourishing. There are many small houses by the seaside, whose inhabitants are chiefly fishermen. ”

“ THE TOWN OF BAHIA.
The town of Bahia looks very beautiful from the sea; but on entering you find it dreadfully filthy. The stench of the lower town is horrible. Even the President's palace is a dirty and wretched-looking building: his salary, I understand, is 600 pounds a year. By the last returns the population of the town was 120,000, 100,000 of whom were blacks. All the burdens here are carried by slaves as there are no carts and the breed of horses is small, being perfect ponies. ”

“ Its tiny cars were designed for the use of women rather than men, for the seats, instead of facing the open windows and the world outside, stared into mirrors set in the car walls. We ground away along the water, past Bomfim, topped by its white “miracle” church, past Itapagipe beyond the widening water with its little sailing dugout ferries, crept timidly across the long and aged wooden trestle over this innermost arm of the bay, and at length lost Bahia to view just a month from the moment I had first set eyes upon it. ”

“ Bahia, two days voyage from Pernambuco, is a city to which (like Constantinople) distance very decidedly lends enchantment, and I did not land {157} there. It was raining fast, and the fantastic hilltops were wrapped in clouds, as we entered Rio Bay. I was welcomed by a kind Belgian monk whom I had known at Olinda in 1896, and who drove me up to our fine old Portuguese abbey, standing on its own mount or morro close to the sea, where I had paid my respects to the last of the old Brazilian abbots a dozen years before. A vigorous young community now occupied the long-empty cells ”

“ The wild Indians of this province were, at the close of the century, well-nigh extinct.
The population of Bahia was estimated, at the close of last century, at one hundred thousand souls, two-thirds of whom were mulattoes or negroes. It abounded in convents, nunneries, and other religious establishments; but it likewise possessed public tribunals, and professors of the liberal languages and sciences, as well as a theatre and a mint. It is singular that this city should have been without a single inn ”

“ A favorite recreation of foreign residents and wealthy white natives of Bahia is to visit the principal ships that anchor in the harbor. To many this is the one touch of civilization superior to that at home, as the trains in which the people come to sit for a few minutes are to the inhabitants of interior villages. ”

“ Bahia is not only one of the most picturesque of all the cities of Brazil; it is the sea-gate of a large and fertile province, where the kindly fruits of the earth grow and ripen with tropical rapidity. The palms of the district yield a special form of nut, which is exported to the east. Tobacco is a flourishing crop, and coffee cultivation an industry of prime importance. Cotton is grown over an extensive area, and not all of it is exported, for Bahia has many mills of its own. ”

“ Pernambuco is by no means so picturesque as Bahia or Rio de Janeiro. It has a more modern air than either of these, but looks also more cleanly and more prosperous. Many of the streets are wide, and the river running through the business part of the city, crossed by broad, handsome bridges, is itself suggestive of freshness. The country is more open and flat than farther south. In our afternoon drive some of the views across wide, level meadows, if we could have put elms here and there in the place of palms, would have reminded us of scenery at home. ”

“ The traveller will find in Bahia or San Salvador a city of glamour and enchantment. It was one of the earliest European settlements in Brazil, and it had for a long time a chequered and turbulent history, what with Indian ravages and the desperate conflicts between the Portuguese and the Dutch. But to-day its lines are cast in more peaceful places; its inhabitants have grown to 250,000, who, taking advantage of the lavish way in which Nature yields her treasures in this district, seem quite contented and prosperous. ”

“ There are many churches, of which the Cathedral is the most interesting, and is one of the oldest buildings in the country, having originally been built as a Jesuit college. Clubs, theatres and bathing resorts also add a liveliness to life in this city. Bahia has always been known for its noted names in literature, and many of the brightest men in Brazilian arts and letters were natives of this state. ”

“ One soon comes to know every white face in Bahia, even those with Caucasian ancestry enough to be individually distinguishable, so frequently does one notice them in the business streets, theaters, street-cars, and more pretentious cafés.
More slaves were brought to the province of Bahia than to any other of Brazil, not only because the planting of sugar and tobacco required much labor but because this part of Portuguese America was earliest settled. The original settlers from overseas were too proud to work ”

“ It is at Bahia that the slave-dealers and planters have shewn themselves most violent in favour of the slave-trade; it is from that place that the most extensive traffic is carried on to the coast of Africa. In the province of Bahia there are great estates, possessing two, three, and four hundred slaves; the owners of these are consequently rich, and they possess power over the free population as well as over their own immediate dependents. It is in that quarter that the greatest inclination to resist whatever its people does not relish, has been experienced. ”

“ The growing importance of Brazil was now shown by the elevation of Bahia to the rank of a Metropolitan See, which should comprise the three bishoprics of Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and Maranham. A Franciscan convent was, in the following year, established at Bahia, a movement which did not fail to elicit the disapprobation of the thinking portion of the community; since it is evident that in a new country of such immense extent any institution calculated to diminish the spread of the ruling race was opposed to the first principles of political economy. ”

“ Bahia to Pernambuco—The meeting of the Finance at sea—At Pernambuco—Round Cape St. Roque—A gale—Breakers—The stretch to Barbadoes—Flying-fish alighting on deck—Dismasted—Arrive at Carlysle Bay.
From Bahia to Pernambuco our course lay along that part of the Brazilian coast fanned by constant trade-winds. Nothing unusual occurred to disturb our peace or daily course, and we pressed forward night and day, as was our wont from the first. ”

“ In the meantime cargoes of slaves are almost weekly landed in the neighbourhood of Bahia: the thousand evils of the vile system are each day increasing, and with a rapid but unregarded footstep the fearful hour steals on, when a terrible reckoning of unrestrained revenge will repay all the accumulated wrongs of the past, and write in characters of blood an awful warning for the future!
So far as we could learn, no attempts are made by the masters to introduce the blessings of Christianity among those whom they deprive of temporal freedom. ”

“ Late one evening, after Missionary Ginsburg and I had returned from a trip into the interior of the State of Bahia, we arrived in the city of Nazareth. It is a town of about 10,000 inhabitants. We were to wait here until the following morning for the boat which was to take us to Bahia.
As we went down the street we saw a great throng of people surging about an image which was being carried upon the shoulders of some men. Two priests walked in front to direct the movements of the procession. More than half of the people in the city must have been in the procession. ”

“ The broad reach of the Pará in front of this coast is called the Bahia, or Bay of Marajó. The coast and the interior of the land are peopled by civilised Indians and Mamelucos, with a mixture of free negroes and mulattos. They are poor, for the waters are not abundant in fish, and they are dependent for a livelihood solely on their small plantations, and the scant supply of game found in the woods. The district was originally peopled by various tribes of Indians, of whom the principal were the Tupinambás and Nhengahíbas. ”

“ It is surprising that as one nears the equator in Brazil the proportion of Caucasian blood increases, but it is easily explained. All that part of South America which thrusts itself halfway across the sea to Africa had many slaves, but Bahia not only grew a crop which required more labor, but, its port being then the national capital, it had the advantage of 393fame, as well as its great bay as a safe landing-place. The result is that while Bahia is a negro town, Pernambuco is a city of mulattoes, with a mixture of types that can only be differentiated by the rich color-terminology of Brazil. ”

“ Bahia, the oldest city in Brazil, was the next stop. At this 20 port no basket was used for disembarking, passengers leaving the ship by a side ladder and being taken ashore in launches. An unusual number of men seemed to board the vessel, and later, when the gong sounded for visitors to go ashore, most of them left with their pockets bulging with goods bought aboard. ”

“ The railways radiating from the city to inland points are the Bahia & Alagoinhas which is under construction to Joazeiro, on the São Francisco river, a short line to Santo Amaro, and two lines—the Bahia Central and the Nazareth tramway—extending inland from points on the opposite side of the bay. The port of Bahia, which has one of the best and most accessible harbours on the east coast of South America, has a large coastwise and foreign trade, and is also used as a port of call by most of the steamship lines trading between Europe and that continent. ”

“ The province of Bahia has an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and is represented as containing some of the most fertile land in Brazil, capable of producing immense crops of several important staples. It is especially fertile near the coast, where there are some large and thriving tobacco, sugar, and coffee plantations. The first mentioned article, owing to some favorable peculiarity of the soil in this vicinity, is held to be nearly equal to the average Cuban product, and it is being more and more extensively cultivated each year. ”

“ I had last seen Bahia in August, 1836, on the homeward voyage of the Beagle; and it was then in anything but a satisfactory condition; the white population divided among themselves, and the slaves concerting by one bloody and desperate blow to achieve their freedom. It did not appear to have improved during the intervening period: a revolutionary movement was still contemplated by the more liberal section of the Brazilians, though at the very period they thus judiciously selected for squabbling with one another, they were living in hourly expectation of a rising, en masse, of the blacks. ”

“ On visiting Bahia, one circumstance which forcibly strikes the attention of a stranger, even coming from the other provinces of Brazil, is the appearance of the blacks met with in the streets; they are the finest to be seen in the country, both men and women being tall and well-formed, and generally intelligent, some of them even, as I have elsewhere observed, being tolerable Arabic scholars. ”

“ Antonio is a long low island, called Itaparicá, between which and the port is the channel for large vessels. The scenery near Bahia does not present the striking features that distinguish Rio de Janeiro; it has neither the well-wooded hills nor the lofty precipitous rocks that environ the capital of Brazil. It is, however, very pretty, varied by small hills and acclivities, and ornamented by the tall, graceful cocoa-nut and the usual luxuriant vegetation of Brazil. The Cape, like the coast generally of the province of Bahia, is surrounded by coral rocks ”

“ Bahia Blanca has even a greater importance, and is growing so rapidly that it has not inaptly been called the “Liverpool of the South.” Magnificent graving docks have been built, as well as harbour works, and the Government, recognising the strategical value of its position on the Atlantic, have made it a military and naval depot.{171}
The growth of Rosario and Bahia Blanca is a good thing for the country, for it helps to counteract the tendency towards concentration in the capital, which is about the only real menace to the republic’s continued and increased prosperity. ”

“ Ruben Pinheiro Guimarães was manager of the principal playhouse in Bahia. The ancient “São João,” imperial theater when Portuguese viceroys ruled Brazil, still kept much of its stateliness in spite of being rather unkempt and disreputable after more than a century of constant use. In situation it takes second place to no other in the world, sitting out on the nose of the upper city, where to step off its esplanade would be to fall hundreds of feet down to the business section below, and gazing away across the bay to the utmost limits of the ocean horizon. ”

“ A day’s run brings the traveller to the most important city in Brazil north of Rio de Janeiro. It is situated on a bay which is generally classed as one of the fine harbours of the world. When Americus Vespucius entered this beautiful and commodious harbour with a fleet, he named it Bahia da Todos os Santos, the Bay of All Saints, in honour of the feast day on which it was first seen. ”