Belém

“ A pilot whom we received on board off the Bugio Fort took us close to the white tower of Belem, and its Gothic church at the western end of Lisbon, and brought us to an anchor among a crowd of other vessels off Blackhorse Square. Lisbon rising on several hills from the waters of the wide-flowing Tagus—here many miles across—is noted as a very picturesque city; its white buildings glittering in the sun, crowned by the dark frowning castle, and surrounded by suburbs intermixed with gardens filled with richly-tinted orange-trees and flowers of many hues. ”

“ In general, the streets are much like those of Belém and Pernambuco: paved with cobblestones and narrow in the shopping and café districts, with long white rows of two and three story houses built closely together, many with balconies above the show windows; and the parks are as beautiful and the residences out along the wide, palm-lined driveways are fully as sumptuous. ”

“ Belem, on the banks of the Amazon, is twenty leagues from the main ocean. The port is called Para, and is of difficult access. The vessels, on entering the harbour, anchor in a muddy bottom, where the water is four, five, or six fathoms deep. This town is situated thirteen feet above the level of the sea; and was founded by Caldeira in 1615: it is defended by a strong fort, named Notre Dame de las Merces, erected at the mouth of the Muja river. The town contains near ten thousand inhabitants, besides the garrison, consisting of about eight hundred men. ”

“ This young architect built with so light a hand that the masons struck work till he encouraged them by sitting beneath his own creation. The same, they say, was done at Belem, Lisbon. The interior is Gothic, unlike all others in the islands; and the piers, lofty and elegant, imitate palm-fronds, a delicate flattery to 'Las Palmas' and a good specimen of local invention. ”

“ PARÁ (officially Belem; sometimes Belem do Pará) , a city and port of Brazil, capital of the state of Pará, and the see of a bishop, on a point of land formed by the entrance of the Guamá river into the Para (86 m. from the Atlantic) , in 1° 28' S., 48° 28' W. Pop. of the city and rural districts of the municipality (1890) , 50,064; (1900, estimate) , 100,000. There is a large Portuguese contingent in the population, and the foreign element, engaged in trade and transportation, is also important. The Indian admixture is strongly apparent in the Amazon valley and is noticeable in Pará. ”

“ This city with the long name is generally known as Pará, although Belem, meaning Bethlehem, is the proper name. It is perhaps the prettiest city in Brazil, except Rio de Janeiro, and has many parks and plazas filled [182] with the luxuriant vegetation and noble palms which grow so luxuriantly here. Statues ornament nearly all of their public squares and parks, and many of them are well done. The public buildings are numerous and tasty, as is most of the architecture of the country. ”

“ The Torre de Belem is of three stories, and its commanding situation affords a splendid view of the beautiful Tagus. Belem now forms a suburb of Lisbon, and the vineyards that formerly adorned the intervening banks of the river have been largely utilized for building purposes, but the tower still forms a striking object in the landscape and dominates the vicinity. The rhapsodies of travellers who visited Lisbon half a century ago are still justified. One of them writes: “From this point, the view up the [154] river, to the East, is grand beyond all conception ”

“ Our amiable commander has also exerted himself, and while I explored the lakes in the neighborhood of Villa Bella, he made a very fine collection in the Amazons, especially of the numerous small species always overlooked by fishermen. On the arrival of the Belem I received your kind letter and a part of the alcohol I had asked from Mr. Bond. ”

“ The two churches in Brazil at all worth seeing are the Candalaria of Rio and the Sé, or cathedral, of Belém. The latter is imposing in structure and situation and has several artistic pictures. Catholicism, however, by no means has everything its own way in the metropolis of the Amazon. For one thing, there are said to be eight Masonic lodges, with a membership of nearly eighty per cent. of the male population. Electricity and gasoline have almost entirely taken the place of the screaming ox-carts so familiar there not many years ago. ”

“ The population of Pará is 192,230 inhabitants. Many spacious and handsome edifices, such as the Government buildings and the professional Institutes, do great credit to the city; while the Peace Theatre is one of the finest in Brazil. Many private mansions are of some architectural beauty, and some of the new avenues and the municipal gardens are handsome. The slaughter-house, the iron market, etc., are quite up to date, and the city even boasts of a crematorium.
My object in coming to Belem (Pará) was merely to see my men safely on board on their return to the Minas Geraes and Goyaz Provinces ”

“ St. Mary of Victory ... yearly revenue (and see next sentence of text) .—This is the locus classicus on the benefactions of the Prince (see Introduction to vol. ii, pp. cvi-cix) .
St. Mary of Belem, "near the sea at Restello," a chapel where the Infant's mariners could pay their devotions the last thing before putting out to sea from Lisbon, or return thanks after a voyage, was superseded by the more sumptuous edifice of Kings Emanuel and John III, known as the Jeronymos, and named "the Lusiads in stone," which, with the exception of Batalha, is the noblest of Portuguese buildings. ”

“ One yarn you told me in those days I can remember still;
It seemed as if I visioned it, so sharp you sketched it in;
Bellona was the name, I think; a coast town in Brazil,
Where nobody did anything but serenade and sin.
I saw it all — the jewelled sea, the golden scythe of sand,
The stately pillars of the palms, the feathery bamboo,
The red-roofed houses and the swart, sun-dominated land,
The people ever children, and the heavens ever blue. ”

“ It was of course midwinter, and one saw little of the boasted fertility of the Lebanon. After the beauties of Brazil the scenery looked to me like a wilderness of rock and sand, treeless and barren; the very mountains were only hills. I could not help contrasting the new world and the old. In Brazil, though rich in luxuriant vegetable and animal life, there is no history—all is new and progressive, but vulgar and parvenu; whereas Syria, in her abomination of desolation, is the old land, and she teems with relics of departed glory. ”

“ Hundreds of villages are seen, here built amid labyrinths of rock, there clinging like swallows’ nests to the sides of cliffs, while convents, no less numerous, are perched on the top of every peak. When viewed from the sea on a morning in early spring, Lebanon presents a picture which once seen is never forgotten; but deeper still is the impression left on the mind, when one looks down over its terraced slopes clothed in their gorgeous foliage, and through the vistas of its magnificent glens, on the broad and bright Mediterranean. ”

“ It is not often that one is privileged to look down so directly, and from so commanding a natural height, on to so vast and busy a city—those who like this kind of comparison have styled it the Belgian Birmingham—lying unrolled so immediately, like a map, beneath our feet. ”

“ Apart from these cherished associations of the spiritual with the temporal world, the native of the Holy p. 3Land is fondly attached to his country, because its climate is congenial to his manners, its soil productive, its inhabitants hospitable, its waters the purest, air the freshest, sun the brightest, fruits the most delicious, and flowers the sweetest and most wildly profuse. All these gifts in the greatest luxuriance are to be found within the Lebanon range—that Lebanon of which the inspired bard, the wisest of men and the best of kings, sings in his beautiful metaphor on Christian love. ”

“ It is the swarming 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 hundred churches. ”

“ As I proceeded on my journey northward, I hoped to find consolation and brighter prospects in the independent province of the Lebanon. Few Americans know just what the Lebanon is. From the repeated allusions in the Bible most people imagine it to be nothing but a mountain. The truth is that a beautiful province of about four thousand square miles bears that name. The population of the Lebanon consists of a Christian sect called Maronites and the Druses, the latter a people with a secret religion the esoteric teachings of which are known only to the initiated, and never divulged to outsiders. ”

“ Not yet wholly extinct in Vivenza, were its aboriginal people, a race of wild Nimrods and hunters, who year by year were driven further and further into remoteness, till as one of their sad warriors said, after continual removes along the log, his race was on the point of being remorselessly pushed off the end.
Now, Bello was a great geographer, and land surveyor, and gauger of the seas. Terraqueous Mardi, he was continually exploring in quest of strange empires. Much he loved to take the altitude of lofty mountains, the depth of deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. ”

“ I like its wide, well-paved, cleanly streets, which are bright with color, for the substantial houses on either side are of many hues. If it chance to be a Sunday or a festa day, every balcony is filled with gayly-dressed girls, while groups of men sit smoking and talking on the sidewalks before the doors. This town has not the stagnant, inanimate look of many Brazilian towns. It tells of movement, life, prosperity. [104] Beyond the city the streets stretch out into the campos, bordered on its inland side by beautiful serras; the Serra Grande and the Serra de Baturité. ”

“ Towering above all was the vast temple of Belus, unequalled for magnificence in the ancient world,—crowned with its gigantic golden statue of the sun-god, rising so high, and flashing so brightly in the upper air, that to the crowds below it seemed invested with the splendours of the deity whom it symbolised. ”

“ Once upon a time, the paddlers of the hump-backed king, meeting upon the broad lagoon certain canoes belonging to the before-mentioned island of Vivenza; these paddlers seized upon several of their occupants; and feeling their pulses, declared them born men of Dominora; and therefore, not free to go whithersoever they would; for, unless they could somehow get themselves born over again, they must forever remain subject to Bello. Shed your hair; nay, your skin, if you will, but shed your allegiance you can not; while you have bones, they are Bello's. ”

“ When you are perfectly satisfied that the Alabama has left the Gulf or the West Indies and gone to some other locality, you will proceed along the coast of [Pg 144] Brazil to Fernando de Noronha and Rio de Janeiro, making enquiry at such places as you may think advisable. From Rio continue your course to the Cape of Good Hope, thence back to St. Helena, Cape Verde, the Canaries, Madeira, Lisbon, Western Islands, and New York. ”

“ The next day, we crossed a pass in the Anti-Lebanon beyond Zebdeni, descended a beautiful valley on the western side, under a ridge which was still dotted with patches of snow, and after travelling for some hours over a wide, barren height, the last of the range, saw below us the plain of Baalbec. The grand ridge of Lebanon opposite, crowned with glittering fields of snow, shone out clearly through the pure air, and the hoary head of Hermon, far in the south, lost something of its grandeur by the comparison. ”

“ Away beyond is Lebanon, stretching its sunny ridges from north to south, and lifting its peaks until they bathe their foreheads in the clouds. On its sides are seen the cottage, and here and there a cluster of human habitations, forming little villages, which delight the eye and give beauty to the prospect. Every thing, to a native of Europe or America, is unique and strange, and has an air of richness and productiveness which surprises while it charms. The birds, the beasts, the insects are, to a lover of natural beauty, sources of study and profit ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 surrounding region is fertile, populous, [239] and highly cultivated; and for an inland, farming village, it is quite as bustling, I suppose, as should be expected; though, during my visit, its streets—which, by-the-by, are of very liberal breadth—maintained a most Sabbath-like aspect.
The route from Lebanon to Belleville is, in fine weather, very excellent. Deep woods on either side of the hard, smooth, winding pathway, throw their boughs over the head, sometimes lengthening away into an arched vista [Pg 254] miles in extent. ”