São Paulo

“ As almost every one occasionally or regularly drinks coffee, under the name of Java, Mocha, or another, which has been grown in São Paulo, there is an especial interest in learning something of the country. São Paulo is an active flourishing State, not at all in accordance with the general idea of Brazil, chiefly associated with the hot Amazon basin; it is an upland temperate region of 75,000 square miles, a trifle larger than the whole of New England with New Jersey added. ”

“ The city is not only the capital and the seat of State Government, but a notable center of education and industry, and the home of many men of great wealth. It is an ancient city, going back to the middle of the sixteenth century, 1554, its name São Paulo, which had been previously applied to a Jesuit college here, being transferred to the new settlement by the Governor-General of Brazil, Mem de Sá. Though of greater age than any city in our own country, for three centuries it made small progress. ”

“ Around this triangle in the afternoons the ladies walk on their shopping tours; in the evening it is the promenade, and all the people who are down town at night may be seen somewhere on that route. São Paulo is not a typical Brazilian town, for it has outgrown many of those characteristics to be seen in the towns which are more peculiarly Portuguese. There is a large foreign element, and their influence is notable in every part of the city, and even in the life of the Paulistas themselves. ”

“ Gold must be paid to see the famous São Paulo dance. Thus many would-be pleasure-seekers of the less affluent kind turned back disappointed from the row of gilt turnstiles under the blazing archway, compelled to content themselves with the outer promenade.
Breasting the human eddy caused by these, Patrine and her party passed the barrier, climbed a flight of shallow gilt marble stairs carpeted with pink plush and decorated with roses and tree-ferns and reached the elevated promenade. ”

“ Modern and energetic though it is, however, São Paulo swarms with non-producers. At the stations crowds of able-bodied carregadores, paying a high municipal license and waiting most of the day in vain for an errand, try to recoup themselves by demanding a thousand reis or more for carrying the traveler’s bag across the street. The city has so many shops and hawkers and peddlers that one might easily fancy it in a densely populated country, rather than in one where land is everywhere suffering for cultivation. ”

“ The capital city, São Paulo, 310 miles from Rio and 50 from Santos, while lacking the charm of Rio’s scenic beauty, is preferred by many as a place of residence on account of its cooler climate, the greater business activity apparent, and the cosmopolitan society, more than one third of the population being of foreign birth and another one third direct descendants of Europeans. ”

“ São 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. ”

“ SANTOS AND SÃO PAULO The State of São Paulo, called the most progressive, if not the most important in Brazil, has for its chief seaport the city of Santos, to which the majority of tourists will have come by express steamer from Montevideo. Every ship calls at Santos, even coming up to the docks, so that all must see this city. The only question is whether or not to go up to São Paulo, distant two hours by rail. This should be no question. Every one must go if only for the ride and a glimpse of this prosperous and busy capital, returning the same afternoon. ”

“ The growth of the city has really been marvellous. Twenty years ago São Paulo was a comparatively unimportant city of twenty-five thousand people. Now it has grown and broadened out until it covers a wide territory. Real estate values have increased until to-day real estate on Rua São Bento, or Rua Quinze de Novembro (15th of November) , is almost as high as on the principal streets in similar towns of the United States. It has become the distributing and manufacturing centre for this, the most progressive state in the republic. ”

“ There is one specially thriving Russian settlement to be seen in São 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Italians from the coffee plantations of São Paulo, from the mines of Ouro Preto, from Goyaz, and from the far interior, all young and sun-burnt, the flower of those Italian workmen who have built the railways of Brazil, and by whose work the strong foundations of the prosperity of the Republic have been laid, were out, to turn their backs upon the land in which, for the first time, most of them had eaten a full meal. ”

“ Also a day is thus gained to spend either at São Paulo or Rio. On the other hand, some persons who have made the trip by daylight speak of it with enthusiasm. In the early morning one passes on gentle slopes fields of glossy green coffee trees, groves of oranges, jungles of palms and bananas, with enormous clumps of feathery bamboo, and little towns on the hillsides. At the stations are women selling fruit, and negro boys with trays of tiny cups of black coffee, hot and sweetened. After a while an alluring stream is passed, with pleasant towns. Midday is hot and dusty. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ No one has ever 162known them to strike a man with a club, but they are at least awe-inspiring representatives of law and order.
The extraordinary activity of São Paulo is plainly due to its European immigrants,—Portuguese, Spanish, especially Italian. Whether it is because they come from the northern part of the peninsula, where sterner characters grow, or that they feel peculiarly at home in the Brazilian environment, the Italians of São Paulo stand noticeably high in the community. Many of the important business houses, some of the professions, and much of the wealth is in their hands ”

“ A stroll over this cool and comparatively healthy escarpment ended by leaving a card at the Paço do Governo.
Lopes de Lima (vol. iii. part ii.) gives São Paulo in 1846 a total of 5,065 whites, mulattoes, and blacks, distributed into 1,176 hearths; the census of 1850-51 raised the number to 12,000, including 7,000 negroes, of whom 5,000 were serviles; in 1863 the figure was understood to have diminished rather than to have increased. Old authors divided the population into five orders. ”

“ Finding this to be a region filled with coloured people as São Paulo was with white people, and knowing that a thousand miles further west one would come into a region entirely Indian, one began to realize what a vast country Brazil is, big enough to be carved up into sixteen countries each as large as France. ”

“ Cattle and pigs are raised. The city dwellings are for the most part constructed of rough wooden frames covered with mud, called taipa by the natives, and roofed with curved tiles. The São Paulo branch of the Brazilian Central railway passes through the city, by which it is connected with Rio de Janeiro on one side and São Paulo and Santos on the other. ”

“ The more important public buildings are the new government palace, the palaces of agriculture, finance and justice, the executive residence, the immense Polytechnic School, the Normal School, the School of Agriculture, the public hospital called the Isolamento, the charity hospital, the São Paulo railway station with a beautiful stone tower, and the theatre, rivalling some of the best in Europe. Like other Brazilian cities Sao Paulo has a number of old religious buildings. ”

“ The coast of Brazil resembles Broadway,—a main thoroughfare along which, if one travel it long enough, many faces become familiar. There were half a dozen men on the Pará whom even I, accustomed to crawl along the land wherever possible, instead of following the broad sea route of Brazilian travel, had seen before somewhere—along the Avenida of Rio, at some theater in São Paulo, on the streets of Bahia or Pernambuco. ”

“ A few days later I saw a couple of hundred more of the same varied nationalities landed at Santos, and loaded on a special train for São Paulo. I always pity these poor immigrants who come to a new country with no money, few clothes, many children, and nothing else but a big hope of something, or faith in [122] somebody, in their breast. The total number of immigrants reaching all Brazil in the past year, the excess over those leaving, would not exceed eighty thousand.
The government of São Paulo has established a number of colonies in the state, one or two of which I visited. ”

“ The negro element is conspicuously less and seems to be decreasing, so that a century hence, São Paulo will have perhaps no more of the African strain than the Portuguese have now. The average citizen one saw in the business streets, or in the palatial homes of coffee kings and captains of industry—not to mention successful politicians—out along the Avenida Paulista and in other flowery and fashionable suburbs had much less in common with the motley Carioca than with the people of southwestern Europe. ”

“ When slavery was finally abolished, in 1888, there were perhaps seven hundred and fifty thousand slaves in the empire, the most of these being held in the coffee producing states. In São Paulo to-day the negro population is very small, as it is said that the former slaves soon became decimated by the excesses in which they indulged when freedom was gained. In the whole republic perhaps very near to one-half the entire population has at least a trace of negro blood in their veins. The mixture is very marked in the north, and down as far as Rio de Janeiro, and almost to São Paulo. ”

“ São Paulo was not what I had left it ten weeks before. Not only had the drought made it dry and dusty and even more hazy than Rio, but the war had brought its industry almost to a standstill. Swarms of workmen without work competed with hungry boys for the chance to sell a few newspapers. ”

“ But the best lands were taken up long since; production is increasing in other countries, as well as consumption, and there is not now the opportunity of earlier days. São Paulo especially has the rich red soil that the plant loves, the sloping ground, the right climate, and the water supply, over a greater extent of accessible territory, probably, than any other land in the world; though districts in other countries produce coffee of equal excellence. ”

“ It is one of the largest cities south of São Paulo, and is situated at an altitude of 2,500 feet above sea level, thus giving it a pleasant and equable temperature. The city is comparatively modern with the usual public buildings of a capital, plazas filled with shrubbery and flowers, and a Botanical Garden of which the people are very proud.
Paraná is a rich state in natural resources. It was formerly united with São Paulo as one province, and the original inhabitants have many of the same qualities as the Paulistas. ”

“ Farther South, in Sao Paulo, the richest and most progressive State in the country, are Bagby, Deter and Edwards, Misses Carroll, Thomas and Grove. Bagby and wife and the young ladies just mentioned devote their time to the school, leaving only two to man a field which, because of its splendid railroad facilities, has in it scores of inviting locations for successful work. ”

“ There are not so many negroes and mixed breeds among the laboring classes, and their institutions, business methods and social life more nearly resemble our own; and, as a consequence, they have certainly not been behind the rest of Brazil in development. As in Rio, enormous sums have recently been spent for sanitation, public buildings, and improvements.
São Paulo has thus been transformed into one of the most healthful cities in the world, and one of the handsomest. ”