Ceará

“ The judicial organization consists of the tribunal da Relaçãó at the state capital and subordinate courts in the comarcas and termos. The judges of the higher courts are appointed for life. The capital of the state is Fortaleza, sometimes called Ceará, which is also the principal commercial centre and shipping port. The principal towns are Aracaty, Baturité, Acarahú, Crato, Maranguape and Sobral.
The territory of Ceará includes three of the capitanias originally granted by the Portuguese crown in 1534. ”

“ Premiums have been offered for the digging of these wells, and the construction of dams or reservoirs. One of the chief industries outside of agriculture is the production of salt, of which thousands of tons are made each year from the rich saline deposits along the northern shore. Natal is the capital and chief seaport. Although this city is not large to-day, it is very old, having been founded in 1597.
Ceará is a progressive state despite famines which have come about every eleven years, and at times have greatly reduced the population, for fevers have generally followed the famines. ”

“ It is a great luxury in this warm climate, and many persons bathe several times a day. The bathhouse is usually in the garden, at a convenient distance from the house, but not immediately adjoining it. The bath was followed by an excellent breakfast, after which we drove through the city. Ceará is a wonderfully progressive town for Brazil. ”

“ Ceara is a very sandy district, but with a good back country where many cattle are bred, but which suffers much from occasional drought. Ceara exports a fair quantity of hides, some cotton, and fustic. The town of Aracati is situated on a picturesque river, but with a very bad bar entrance, on which several vessels have been lost; they, therefore, now generally load outside, some miles higher up the coast, where an indent admits of shelter, and to which the cotton is taken in jangadas (native craft.) ”

“ More American windmills than in any town of similar size in the United States rise above the monotonous level of Ceará. It is almost entirely of one story, for its people know the terrors of earthquakes and have little faith in their loose, sandy soil. The private buildings of two stories could probably be counted on the fingers, 412though several churches in the old Portuguese style of architecture and some rather pretentious government edifices bulk above the general mass. ”

“ Education has made no impression upon such people, and is confined almost exclusively to the upper classes, from which some of the most prominent men in Brazilian politics and literature have come. The state of Ceará has formed a bishopric of the Roman Catholic Church since 1853, the bishop having his residence at Fortaleza. The state is represented in the national congress by three senators and ten deputies. Its local government is vested in a president and legislative assembly of one chamber elected for a period of four years. ”

“ In the province of Ceará, where the coffee is of a superior quality, it is not planted on the plains, or in the low grounds, or in the shadow of the forest, as in the valley of the Amazons, but on the slopes of the hills and on the mountain heights, to an elevation of from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet and more above the level of the sea, in the Serras of Aratanha and Baturité and in the Serra Grande. The channels opened to these products should augment their importance, and should give rise to numerous establishments in the valley of the Amazons. ”

“ The interior districts of Ceará, Pernambuco and Bahia have suffered severely from these sêccas. The sun temperature is high on these barren tablelands, but the nights are cool and refreshing. The prevailing winds are the south-east trades, which have lost some of their moisture in rising from the coastal plain. ”

“ How the natives endure these under a cloudless tropical sun is beyond northern conception, but the Cearense countryman considers them the only adequate protection. Whole suits of leather are also worn in this region, tight trousers for riding, a short coat, and a sort of apron from neck to crotch in lieu of waistcoat, the whole ordinarily costing less than ten dollars. Whether or not the wearer overtaken by rain, followed by another space of the blazing sun, is removed from this garb by a taxidermist is another of the unsolved mysteries of the picturesque state of Ceará. ”

“ It took us four hours to get all our outfit from the ship to the theater. Vinhães, however, had everything prepared for an immediate estrea under conditions that promised excellent results. By manipulating certain political filaments he had obtained the “Theatro José d’Alencar,” named for Brazil’s greatest novelist and the most famous “son” of Ceará. It is government owned and the most important one in northeastern Brazil, generally closed except when some second-rate Caruso or a European dramatic company comes to give Fortaleza the sensation of being the center of the universe. ”

“ It is a saying in the province of Ceará, that where the Carnauba palm abounds a man has all he needs for himself and his horse. The stem is tall, and the leaves so arranged around the summit as to form a close spherical crown, entirely unlike that of any other palm. ”

“ There was nothing worth recording in our voyage down the coast, except that at Pernambuco we found the country even more overflowed by the recent rains than it had been at Ceará. Going to breakfast with our friends, Mr. and Mrs. R——, only four or five miles from the city, we passed through portions of the road where the water was nearly level with the floor of the carriage; and temporary ferries were established by negroes, who were plying rafts and canoes between the shores for the benefit of foot-passengers. ”

“ I also made it my endeavour to ascertain which was the best route for the journey I had in view. Those who had visited the interior strongly recommended me to proceed by sea to Aracaty, a town in the province of Ceará, about two and a half degrees to the North of Pernambuco, and to start inland from that port, the roads being rather better than those leading from other parts of the coast, and horses cheaper. ”

“ In the Amazonian wilderness they may die of fevers or other dread ailments, but at home they are sure to die of drought, so in years of extreme dryness the risk is worth taking. If they live through all the dangers of the wilderness along the “Sea-River” and escape the onslaughts of the swarms of touts and harlots of all colors and nationalities who prey upon descending rubber-gatherers at Manaos and Pará, their return to Ceará is much like that of an Italian immigrant from America to his native village. ”

“ Labourers were demanded on every hand. The first immigrants, who settled about Manaos, were Indians from Bolivia and Peru; but their numbers were wholly insufficient.
"It was the influx of the inhabitants of Ceará, during the draught of 1877-79, that made the development of the rubber trade possible. From that date the colonization of the forest proceeded [106] rapidly. The seekers of rubber dispersed themselves throughout Amazonia; but the region most regularly exploited was the basin of the Rio Purus and that of the Rio Jurua. ”

“ By this time we were already on our way to Pará, for ten-day steamers and theatrical engagements wait for no man. When three men have lived more closely together than brothers for more than half a year the loss of one of them is an astonishingly heavy subtraction, one which we felt all the way from the longer time it took the two of us to tear down the show and send it on board the Ceará, to all those little daily reminders of the loss of a familiar companion. Of course, when we came to think it over, natives do die of yellow fever ”

“ They have been observed along its southern limits, on its western outskirts along the Andes, in Venezuela along the shore-line of mountains, and also in certain localities near its eastern edge. I well remember that one of the first things which awakened my interest in the geology of the Amazonian Valley was the sight of some cretaceous fossil fishes from the province of Ceara. These fossil fishes were collected by Mr. George Gardner, to whom science is indebted for the most extensive information yet obtained respecting the geology of that part of Brazil. ”

“ Though the heat in this province is excessive in summer, the climate is nevertheless healthy. Its population is somewhat about 200,000; and gold, as well as copper, iron, and salt, is among its yet very imperfectly ascertained mineral resources. The town of Ceara is quite on the coast, and has no harbour, or protection, beyond a reef of rocks that forms a kind of breakwater, within which vessels can ride at anchor. It is a curious thing that the reef, of which this constitutes a part, extends along nearly the whole coast of Brazil, from Cape St. ”

“ Owing to the aridity of the climate the vegetation is less luxuriant than in most Brazilian cities. The temperature is usually high, but it is modified by the strong sea winds. Fortaleza has suffered much from epidemics of yellow-fever, small-pox and beri-beri, but the climate is considered to be healthy. A small branch of the Ceará river, called the Pajehú, traverses the city and divides it into two parts, that on its right bank being locally known as Outeiro. ”

“ The high plains of the interior, which shed their waters both north and south, have never been of economic importance; the valley of the Amazon has been developed only of late years, and its population is as yet small. It is therefore the [117] tableland of the Atlantic seaboard, from Uruguay to Ceará, that constitutes the soil of historic Brazil. ”

“ The São Francisco River is regularly navigated 175 miles to the Paulo Affonso Falls, around which there is a railway 52 miles long to navigation above.
The capital, Maceió, is a modern city; its suburb, the port, Jaraguá, with a tonnage of 600,000. The State is the most thickly populated next to Rio de Janeiro.
Pernambuco, the twelfth State in size, with area equal to that of New York, extends well into the interior, though with a coast line of 112 miles only. Ceará and Parahyba are on the north, Alagôas and Bahia on the south, and Piauhy on the west. ”

“ Part of the state on the Atlantic coast and along the lower Parnahyba is low, swampy and malarial. South of this the country rises gradually to a high plateau with open campos. This plateau region is watered by numerous tributaries of the Parnahyba, chief of which are the Urussuhy, the Canindé and its tributary the Piauhy, the Gurgueia and its tributary the Parahim, which drains the large inland lake of Parnaguá, the Longa, and the Poty, which has its source in the state of Ceará. The Parnahyba is navigable for boats of 3 ft. ”

“ The coast of Brazil straggles along for over 5000 miles and is provided with numerous natural harbors, where the earlier settlers established cities which have grown and prospered, 18the principal ones from the north to the south being Belem, or Para, San Luiz, Parnahyba, Fortaleza or Ceara, Natal, Parahyba, Recife or Pernambuco, Maceio, Aracaju, São Salvador or Bahia, Victoria, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Paranagua, São Francisco, Rio Grande do Sul and Porto Allegre. ”

“ On the low lands and along some of the river valleys agriculture is the chief occupation of the people; cotton and sugar are largely produced and some tobacco is grown. The exports include hides, skins, cotton, sugar and tobacco. Rubber of the Ceará type is also found and forms an item among the smaOer exports. The eastern extremity of the state is served by a railway originally called the Conde d'Eu railway but now forming part of the Great Western of Brazil system, which runs westward and northward from Parahyba to Independencia (72 m.) ”

“ To the north of Bahia are the capitanias of Pernambuco, Seará, and Maranham, the interior of which is very little known, though some parts of the [402] coast are tolerably populous. Pernambuco, though situated nearly in the latitude of eight degrees, is considered healthy. The town is built on a rising ground, much exposed, and constantly refreshed by the sea-breeze. It has many excellent edifices, and is supposed to contain more opulent merchants, in proportion to population, than any other place in Brazil. It produces vanilla, cocoa, and a considerable quantity of sugar ”

“ The sierra and montaña regions of the two countries are quite similar, the high valleys of the sierra district enjoying a healthful and delightful climate. The natural resources resemble those of Peru, although the chief exports are dissimilar. Ecuador’s cocoa plantations are her largest source of wealth and supply her principal export. ”

“ Politics is always a seething pot, and the bickerings of parties ever on the verge of bursting forth in violence. The Cearense is easily recognizable elsewhere in Brazil by his speech, the peculiar accent of the region, especially in the country districts, consisting of raising the tone of the last unaccented syllable in each phrase, giving a sort of singsong rhythm and an upturned ending to each sentence, like the flip of the tail of a playful fish. ”

“ It is well known to your Highness how the dwellers in this our town, from the time that Ceuta was taken even unto this present, have always rendered service, and do still render service, with their bodies and ships, in the war against the Moors, for the service of God and of the King our lord. And so in the time of the other kings, when the coast of this kingdom was harassed by the Moors, our ships were the first to arm against them, as it is found in writings and remembered in the memories of men of great age. ”