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Title: Brazil today and tomorrow

Author: Lilian Elwyn Elliott

Release date: June 17, 2024 [eBook #73851]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The MacMillan Company, 1917

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRAZIL TODAY AND

TOMORROW ***
BRAZIL
TODAY AND TOMORROW

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
Botafogo Bay, Rio de Janeiro.

In the background are the Dois Irmãos Mountains, the flat-topped Gavea, and the curved granite
peak of Corcovado.

BRAZIL
TODAY AND TOMORROW
BY
L. E. ELLIOTT, F. R. G. S., F. R. A. I., Etc.
AUTHOR OF “BLACK GOLD,” “CHILE, TODAY AND TOMORROW,” etc. LITERARY
EDITOR, PAN AMERICAN MAGAZINE
ILLUSTRATED

“The time will come when the Ocean will no longer limit the known lands, when a new world
shall be opened up to the followers of the sea, and Thule will be no longer the Ultima Thule of
the earth.”

Seneca, “Medea.”
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1917,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1917.
Revised Edition October, 1922.
Printed in the United States of America
TO
M. L. E.
vii

CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 1
Brazil’s Great Extent—Virgin Interior—Development during Last Hundred Years
—Variety of Soil and Climate—Amazon Basin, Central Plateau, Coast—Diversified
Industries and Populations—Divergent Interests—Brazil Over-Praised and Over-
Blamed—South American Standpoint—North and South Americans—Ties with
Europe.

CHAPTER I

History of Brazil 10
Discovery—Henry the Navigator—Search for Cathay—Captain Cabral—Duarte
Coelho—The Capitanias—Ramalho and Caramarú—São Paulo, Bahia and
Pernambuco—The Jesuits—Mamelucos—First Entradas—The Sertão—The
Bandeirantes—Raposo—Fernão Dias—Gold and Diamonds—Destruction of the
Missions—Brazil under Spain—Corsairs—The Dutch in North Brazil—Portugal
regains Independence—Evacuation by Dutch—The French in Rio—Interior Mines
and Settlement—The Marquis de Pombal—Expulsion of Jesuits—Dom João in
 Brazil—Dom Pedro I—Independent Monarchy—Dom Pedro II—Abolition of
Slavery—Republic.

CHAPTER II

Colonization 56
Group Immigration Planned—Swiss in Nova Friburgo—First Germans in Rio
Grande—Petropolis and Blumenau—Joinville—German Emigration Forbidden—
Portuguese Colonies—Parceria System—French and Alsatians—North Americans
viii —Santa Barbara and the Consul—New Italian Stream—Colonos and the Patronato
Agricola—Poles and Russians—Conditions of Settlement in São Paulo—Present
Status of Colonies—Japanese at Iguape—Numbers of Immigrants entering Brazil—
Future Immigration—Best Points of Settlement—Class needed.

CHAPTER III

Social Conditions 76
Brazilian Courtesy—European Influence—Titles—Dominating Class—Fazendeiros
and Commerciantes—Mixed Blood and the Labouring Classes—Bacharelismo—
The Sertanejo—Life in the Interior—Festas—The Tropeiro—Lotteries—The Bicho
—Coffee Drinking—Religion—Saints’ Days—Ceremonies—Position of Women—
The Brazilian Girl and Wife—City Life—Literature—Novels—Poets—The Stage—
The Press—Influence of Blood, European and African—Negro Cooking and
Folklore—The Native Brazilian—Pottery and Weaving—Ideas and Ability—Work
of Rondon—Fate of the Indian—Education—Brazil not Revolutionary—The A. B.
C. Treaty.

CHAPTER IV

Transportation. I. River and Road 123

Early Water Communication—Waterways Penetrating Interior—Great rivers—
Early roads—New Automobile highways
II. Rail 129
First Railroad Planning—First Construction—Coffee Railways—Climbing the
Mountain Barrier—Work in Empire and Republic—Borrowing—Linking Centres—
Radiating Lines—Roads Serving States, South to North—Brazil Railway Company
—The Central Line—Leopoldina—Bahia Roads—Great Western—Northern Lines
—Roads Passing Falls—Financial Conditions—Status of Ownership—Future Lines.
III. Shipping 161
Steamship River Service—Sea Communication—Nationality of Lines—Brazilian
Mercantile Marine.
ix

CHAPTER V

Industries 167
The Coffee Industry of Brazil—The Rubber Industry of the Amazon—The Meat
Industry: Cattle Raising and Packing-Houses—Cotton Growing and Weaving—
Herva Matte—Sugar—Tobacco—Wheat—Fibres—Cacao—Mining—Brazilian
Manufactures: Artificial Industries; Industrial Centres; Capital; National Industries
Competing with Importations; Imposts; Factories of São Paulo; Textiles; Locality of
Mills in Brazil; Labour and Consumption of Material; National Dyes; Water power.

CHAPTER VI

Finance. I. Currency 276

Value of the milreis—Fluctuations—Caixa de Conversão—Convertible and
Inconvertible Paper—Emergency Issues—Treasury Bills—Paper Currency, at
Different Dates—Metal Coinage—Effects of Fallen Exchange.
II. Investments 285
Blood, Brains and Money—British Investments—Railways—Public Utilities and
Industrials—External Loans—French Investments—German Work—North
American Interests—Banks in Brazil.
State Debts—Municipal Debts—Federal Debts—Funding Loans—Resumption of
III. 297
Specie Payments—Sources of State and Federal Revenue.

CHAPTER VII

The World’s Horticultural and Medicinal Debt to Brazil 306

Brazilian Origin of Well-known Flowers—First Botanists—Piso and Marcgrav—
Loudon’s Hortus—Gardner—Orchids—Cattley—Flowers and Shrubs—Fruits—
Medicines—Ipecacuanha—Copaiba—Jaborandi—Guaraná—Native Remedies—
Mineral Waters.
x

CHAPTER VIII

Brazil’s Exterior Commerce 316

Dominant Districts and Industries—Figures of Ten-year Periods of Commerce—
The Nine Principal Articles—São Paulo’s Share—United States Purchases—
Imports—Their Origin—Balance of Trade.
 List of Brazilian States, Area and Population 324
Glossary of Brazilian terms 325
xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Botafogo Bay, Rio de
Frontispiece,
Janeiro
Opposite page
Entrance of Rio de Janeiro Harbour, 4
Ponte Santa Isabel, Recife; Praça Mauá; Water-front at Bahia, 20
Falls of Iguassú, 32
Old and New Brazil, 38
Two views of S. Paulo City, 46
Two views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio, 50
Agriculture in S. Paulo, 66
Barra Road, Bahia; Resaca, Rio; Upper Amazon, 74
Monroe Palacio, Rio; Municipal Theatre, S. Paulo, 88
Igapó near Rio Negro; Caripuna Indians, Madeira River, 110
Agricultural School, Piracicaba; Butantan Institute, 116
The São Paulo Railway, 132
Rua Barão da Victoria, Pernambuco; Avenida 7 de Setembro, Bahia, 150
Porto Velho, Madeira-Mamoré; Igarapé S. Vicente, Manáos, 154
Water-front of S. Salvador (Bahia); Floating docks at Manáos, 162
The São Paulo Coffee Industry, 176
Rubber on the Amazon, 200
The Cattle Industry, 212
Carioca Cotton Mill, Rio; Catende Sugar Mill, Pernambuco, 244
Coffee-loading equipment, Santos; Sugar lands in Pernambuco, 264
Ministry of War, Rio; Avenida Nazareth, Belem, 284
Fishing Boats; Rocks at Guarujá; Bertioga; Cantareira Water
302
Supply,
On the Madeira River, Amazonas; Victoria Regia lilies, near
310
Manáos,

Map showing factories, employees, etc, 274

Map showing agricultural production, 324
Coloured map of Brazil, showing railways, rivers, mountains, chief
328
towns,
1

BRAZIL: TODAY AND TOMORROW

The greatest of all American countries is comparatively the least developed. 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.

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. Her erection into a separate
monarchy found her without capital, without education, for she had neither adequate primary nor
technical schools, without a press, and without any knowledge of her own resources except that
gathered by the interior raids, wanderings and settlements of her own hardy people.

2Everything that has been done to bring Brazil into the race of nations is the work of the last
hundred years; the most intense period of rapid building since the establishment of the republic
has lasted less than thirty years, for in that time has taken place the great acquisition of private
fortunes in the industrial regions of Brazil. 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. In Brazil much
progress, much creation, has come from within, and will come to an even larger degree in the
future with improvement in technical education; but the country is enormous, the centres of
population have always lain on or near the sea-border, and interior Brazil, the virgin heart of
South America, remains practically untouched.

The two great interior states of Matto Grosso and Goyaz cover an area of more than two million
square kilometres; they make up one-fourth of the whole Brazilian territory, and Brazil covers
half of South America: but this huge heart-shaped wedge in the centre of the continent has no
more than half a million population. This is not because the country is tropical or worthless, but
because it is unopened and unknown.

Within her wide area Brazil encloses a great variety of soils and climates: she has no snow line,
because she has no great mountain heights; a peak less than three 3thousand metres high,
Itatiaya, in the Mantiqueiras, is the point of greatest altitude. But she has almost every other
climatic gift that can be included within the fifth degree of North and thirty-third of South
Latitude; between the eighth degree East and thirtieth West Longitude of the meridian of Rio de
Janeiro. Brazil is a vast plateau with a steep descent to the sea along half her coast, and a flat hot
sea margin of varying widths; this plateau, scored by great rivers, sweeps away in undulating
prairies, sloping in two principal directions—inland, in the centre and south, to the great Paraná
valley; and in the upper regions, northward to the immense Amazon basin. This is not a basin so
much as a wide plate, for not only is the course of the huge rio-mar almost flat for the last
thousand miles of its journey to the sea (Manáos is only 85 feet above sea-level) but this
practically level ground extends northward all the way to the confines of Venezuela and the three
Guianas, and southward until the Cordilheiras of Matto Grosso are encountered. Great expanses
of this plate are filled with the sweltering forests of tropical tradition, forests containing a
thousand kinds of strange orchids, immense and curious trees, insects, reptiles and animals; from
Orellana and Lopez de Aguirre to Humboldt, Bates, Wallace and Agassiz, from the Lord de la
Ravardière to Nicolas Hortsman the practical Dutchman who announced that El Dorado did not
exist, to Charles Marie de la Condamine, Martius, Spix, Admiral Smith, Lister Maw,
Schomburgk and Wickham, every traveller upon the Amazon has tried to describe the
indescribable Amazonian forest. 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.

There is a remarkable contrast between this humid forestal area of the north and the cool high
cattle lands of the centre, the pine and matte woods and wheat lands of the south and the hot
coastal belt of the great promontory with its deep fringe of coconuts, its sugar country, tobacco
fields and cacao plantations; between the coffee country of São Paulo and the regions of the
carnauba palm and the babassú. No physical contrast could be more acute than that of the flat
tropic swamps of Pará and the austere, fantastic and beautiful granite peaks of the Serra do Mar
near Rio—the slender Finger of God in the Orgão Mountains, the curved up-rearing of the
Corcovado, the cloud-wreathed head of Tijuca.

Nor is there less contrast in the different industries resulting from the different products of the
widely diversified regions, and the population inhabiting them. The extreme north exists largely
upon the rubber business, where independent individuals extract gum from wild trees in regions
that are sometimes scarcely charted; in the south an imported Italian population performs routine
tasks on the highly organized coffee plantations.
Entrance of Rio de Janeiro Harbour (Bahia de Guanabara).

Showing the farther shore, the forts, the Pão d’Assucar, and the loop of Botafogo Bay.

5In between these two sharply marked divisions there are many industries and many grades of
labour, from the caboclo half-Indian of the north to the negro of the centre and the Japanese,
Syrian and Pole of the southerly colonies, as well as the descendant of the Portuguese. There is
in some parts of Brazil such a mixture of races and tongues that it seems as if the Jesuits were
needed again to invent a new lingua geral. Contrasts in personality, as well as in soil and climate
in Brazil, and the difference in accessibility between an open seaboard and a deep and roadless
interior, have all aided to bring about the marked diversity of interests which have more than
once proved the salvation of the country. Publicists in Brazil sometimes sound a note of warning
against the decentralization that has grown more emphatic since the erection of the Republican
system gave autonomous powers to the States; there have been suggestions of separation of north
from south on account of their distinct interests; but it is impossible to doubt that a country with
a score of industries and of products to offer to world markets is in a better economic position
than lands depending upon two or three main sources of income.

In the Argentine the city of Buenos Aires is the centre and fount of business; every great house
has its headquarters there, its railway links and commercial arms reach out into all productive
parts of the country. To Buenos Aires everything comes to be marketed whether from the interior
or from abroad: it is the city, the head and heart of the Argentine. It is not possible to point to any
one city in Brazil and to say the same. Not even lovely and splendid Rio, federal capital and gay
vortex as she is, can claim to represent the commercial interest of the country; she is the
spending-place of much of Brazil’s income, but she is not the greatest earner. This honour falls
to São Paulo, with Santos as the biggest exporter of values; no one denies the commercial palm
to the Paulistas, but it is not heresy to say that the elimination of the coffee industry would not
destroy the life of Brazil as, for 6example, the disappearance of the cereal or cattle industry
would threaten the Argentine. She would still retain her herva matte, her cattle, her mines; her
rubber, wax, fruit, cotton, sugar, and tobacco; her hardwoods and forestal drugs and dyes, her
cacao and fibres and nuts.

A whole world of interests divides São Paulo from Bahia, Bahia from Pará, Pará from
Pernambuco, Maranhão from Victoria, Maceió from Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro from Manáos,
Ilhéos from Paranaguá, Mossoró from São Francisco, Fortaleza from Florianopolis; some of
these ports are great economically, alive with shipping, while others are little developing points
which have not yet achieved international fame; but each has its distinct raison d’être and has a
divergent social and economic impulse from that of many of her sisters. It is true that certain
states seem to produce almost everything tropical or sub-tropical as well as being endowed with
minerals, as Minas Geraes, growing coffee, cotton, raising cattle, mining precious stones, gold
and iron ore, weaving her cotton and running a great dairy business with interstate shipments of
her famous cheese and butter; or Pernambuco and the other states of the great promontory, with a
host of different products; or São Paulo, where an energetic Brazilian fazendeiro, to show what
his state can grow besides coffee, cotton, rice and sugar, has gardens containing “every known
fruit” of temperate and tropical zones. But the distinct local industries of the widely varying
Brazilian soil and climate are the most striking and promising elements of her economic life.

Many parts of South America have suffered from over-praise as much as from unmerited blame.
None 7have suffered more than Brazil, shut off from the non-Latin world rather more than is
Spanish America because of her Portuguese idiom. There is little enough thorough study of
Spanish on the part of Anglo-Saxons, but it is mighty compared to the study of Portuguese, a
beautiful language and probably rather more readily acquired than the formal and clear-cut idiom
of Castile. Non-comprehension of Portuguese and Spanish has been a bar to understanding of the
soul of Latin America; nearly every person who wishes to learn something about any part of the
Southern Continent runs to the libraries for a book of travels, generally written by a foreigner,
himself sparsely acquainted with the language of the country about which he is writing, and
frequently entirely from an outside viewpoint. There is a remarkable absence of study of South
America from the South American’s viewpoint, and it is for this reason that I have tried in this
book to quote from Brazilian books and newspapers rather than from the ideas of foreigners,
however distinguished. It is a loss to the Anglo-Saxon that so much fine and acute comment and
description of South America by South Americans falls on deaf ears because of the language
difficulty; perhaps the next few years may see the new interest in things South American
stimulated by translations from many more of the writings of South American authors.

Only by understanding the South American better can the Anglo-Saxon see the relation that
mutually exists, and realize the depth of the gulf between them at the same time. Especially since
the outbreak of the European War we have seen an astounding number of agreeable but visionary
articles written on the subject of the strong logical tie, geographical, political and 8mental,
between North and South America. The truth is however that the two continents have little
geographical connection—Panama was once a strait—and perhaps even less racial, religious, and
mental leanings. Both sections of the Americas have drawn their blood, language, religion and
political ideals from Europe, but from two strongly marked sections—one, the Protestant Anglo-
Saxon, commercial, mechanically inventive: the other, the Roman Catholic Latin section, artistic
and mentally brilliant but not usually a born commerciante.

It is just as well to realize this difference clearly, to know that, at least in the past, the Americas
have been more closely bound to Europe than to each other; the ties are especially strong in
Brazil, more tender than in many parts of the New World, because separation in a political sense
was obtained without violence. It is only through understanding of the mental and social attitude
and conditions of the Brazilian that the newcomer can avoid pitfalls.

Mistakenly advised, and often lured by too golden promises, the stranger has often rushed to one
or another part of South America, has found bitter disappointment, and gone home with
denunciation of all things South American upon his tongue; but in many instances the fault lay
within himself, in his want of knowledge of circumstances, physical and mental, and of his
improper equipment for the task that lay to his hand. There are many such tasks, but they must be
approached with equipment and spirit equally prepared; no fortune is to be attained by a mere
rub of the magic lamp.

9This book is offered chiefly with the hope of helping to stimulate interest in Brazil, to induce a
more thorough study than these pages can offer in the only place where Brazil can be studied—in
her own fair confines. If it supplements what has already been written, brings up to date for the
time being the story of Brazil’s development, if it awakens in more of the energetic and able
people of the world a wish to take part in the opening-up of the great Brazilian resources, this
book will have served its modest purpose. It is the fruit of seven years’ travel in and study of
Latin America, and two years’ special work on and in Brazil, where seventeen out of the twenty
States were visited.

A debt is owing to many Brazilian publications, sources of much statistical matter as well as
illumination of Brazilian thought, as the Jornal do Commercio of Rio, Brasil Ferro Carril, very
many local journals of different States, Wileman’s Brazilian Review, the Diario Official issued
by various authorities; the invaluable Mensagens, with their financial and industrial surveys,
issued by State Presidents; to many kind and helpful friends in Brazil, England and America; to
the South American Journal; and especially to Mr. W. Roberts of the London Times, to whom I
am indebted for most of the subject matter in “The World’s Horticultural and Medicinal Debt to
Brazil.”

10

CHAPTER I
THE HISTORY OF BRAZIL
Brazil and the Brazilians cannot be understood without knowledge of their history, for here as in
no other part of Latin America the past has led up to the present without any violent upheaval.
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.

Thanks to Napoleon Buonaparte, no furious chasm, difficult for even thoughts to bridge, was
opened between Brazil and the Mother Country; it was never necessary for young Brazilians to
be taught that Europe was an oppressor who must be bitterly fought. Brazil gained in the arts of
peace and in the retention of pleasant relations between herself and the lusitanos, while, in
contrast, Spanish American feeling is still so strongly anti-Spanish that in times of unrest it is the
immigrant of Iberian blood who is singled out for special ill-will. These republics are without
memorials to their Spanish discoverers or rulers; Mexico, for example, has no statue or tablet to
the memory of Hernan Cortés, great figure as he was. Admiration for the conquistadores is
generally forgotten in bitterness against 11Spanish rule, all history before revolutionary times is
coloured with this deliberately fostered feeling, and only occasionally does there arise a speaker
or writer broad-minded enough to take up the cudgels for Spain and the rich inheritance she left
to her children.

Brazil was more fortunate. From the time of the first Portuguese settlement down to the present
day she has never suffered any great internal conflagration: there were persistent Indian troubles
in the first centuries until the survivors of these unlucky natives moved back to the interior
forests, but among the population that grew up in Brazil, hardy and prolific, there has been little
strife with the insignificant exception of the feuds of the Emboabas, the Mascates and the
Balaios.

Brazil was discovered twice. First came a Spaniard, Vicente Pinzon, an old companion of
Columbus: he found and reconnoitred the mouth of the Amazon, and sailed south to a point
which he named Santa Maria de la Consolación, but which is now known as Cape St. Augustine.
On his return to Spain his report roused no interest at a Court where new discoveries of land only
added to the embarras de richesses, and the attention of the adventurous was already taken up
with the West Indies; the second discovery (if we ignore the tale of the sight of Brazilian shores
by Diogo de Lepe, whose wanderings were, in any case, unfruitful) was a pure accident, but,
occurring to a Portuguese, was immediately seized upon as a basis of claim to part of the new
lands in the West. This was on May 3, 1500, three months after the voyage of Pinzon to the
Amazon. Spain, to whom the all-powerful Pope Alexander VI had allotted in the famous bull of
1495 all the new 12lands discovered or to be discovered in the West, while Portugal was given
rights to discoveries in the East, might have contested this claim but for two reasons: the first
was that the Treaty of Tordesillas had shifted the Pope’s dividing line westward to a point 370
leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands so that Portugal could retain her Atlantic island
discoveries; the second was that either by accident or design the early cartographers drew
Brazil’s easterly outline about twenty-two degrees more to the east than it should have been, so
that the whole of the enormous tract of what is Brazil today fell within the legitimate claims of
Portugal. It was but a matter of equity that Portugal should have a share in the lands of the West,
for to the work of that Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, the initiative for sea adventure
was due. Henry, inheritor of sea traditions on both sides of his parentage, for his mother was an
English princess, daughter of John of Gaunt, spent his life in a long sea dream translated into
deeds; for forty years he lived on the lonely promontory of Sagres, his observatory full of charts,
the haunt of shipmasters and geographers, with his shipyards below the windows ever busy with
the building of stout caravels: from 1420 until his death in 1460 the Navigator urged and bullied
his captains to go southward down the coast of Africa, where no sailor had penetrated within
Christian times, whatever they had done in the days of the bold Phoenicians.

Thus were the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira rediscovered and settled, the pilots venturing
with terror into that “Green Sea of Darkness” where sea monsters threatened their passage, and at
last daring to sail farther into the southern waters where not only the 13water but the land boiled
with the terrible heat, they said. Rounding Cape Bojador they found a coast populated with
sturdy blacks, began the slave trade that demoralized half the world; in 1486 Bartholomeo Diaz
rounded the “Cape of Storms” and proved that there was indeed as Henry, dead for a quarter of a
century, had dreamed, a southern gateway to the Spice Isles of the East—the goal of adventurers
ever since Marco Polo’s tale was spread abroad.

By this discovery the whole imagination of seafaring Europe was awakened: small wonder that
Columbus in the end got a hearing when he talked of a sea-path to the East by way of the West,
or that, on his return with a story of rich lands, Spain should have been satisfied to believe the
theory that the shores of Cathay had been found. Columbus, who became half demented towards
the close of his life, never knew that he had found anything but lands on the edge of Cathay; he
once forced his men to take an oath to this effect under the penalty of hanging them to the yards
of his ship.

To his obsession was chiefly due the lack of any clear conception in Europe of the existence of a
great new continent until the Portuguese captain stumbled upon Brazil in 1500, although three
years before Alonzo de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci had coasted the Caribbean, charting the
north coast of Venezuela and Colombia as well as the east of Central America. That year of 1497
was the great year of discoveries, in sea adventure, for then began the series of voyages of the
Cabot family, Labrador being discovered in that first scouring of the north seas by Europeans;
from that year also dates that strange chapter of oriental history, Portuguese 14rule in India,
when Vasco da Gama sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and reached Calicut.
Early in 1500 Captain Pedro Alvares Cabral was despatched with a fleet of thirteen ships to
follow up the conquests of da Gama; warned of the calms off the African coast which later
became notorious among sailors as the “doldrums,” he stood far out to sea, was caught in strong
currents, and found himself to his astonishment off an unknown coast.

Sailing south until a safe landing place was reached (Porto Seguro, some twelve miles north of
the little town on the Bahian coast that today bears the name) he landed on Good Friday
morning, was received in a friendly manner by the South American natives to whom Europe was
thus discovered, took possession of the territory in the name of the Portuguese King, sent a ship
back to Lisbon under André Gonçalves to report the discovery, and sailed on again to India.

Dom Manoel was sufficiently interested by the tale of Gonçalves to make farther investigation,
equipped three vessels and sent them under the command of the Sevillian pilot Amerigo
Vespucci to examine the new Terra da Vera Cruz. On the way they met Cabral’s fleet returning
from India, and this explorer put his helm about and with them re-found eastern South America,
sailing along and charting most of the coast of Brazil. It is the precision and not the inaccuracies
of these sixteenth century maps that form their most remarkable feature.

On this journey much hostility was shown by coast-dwelling natives, and a couple of landing
parties met with disaster; the cannibal taste of the “Indians” was plainly demonstrated. No
settlement was made. A 15year later, in 1503, Duarte Coelho came with another fleet, seeking
the waterway to India that was one of the dreams of adventurous Europe: another, allied to the
first, was the quest of Prester John. Anyone who could find a quick sea-path to India and at the
same time find and form an alliance with the mysterious Christian Priest-King, would wield
power beyond rivalry.

Duarte Coelho was unlucky. His flagship and three other vessels were cast away on Fernando
Noronha island, the other two reaching the shelter of what is today Bahia. Here the natives were
kindly disposed, a little colony of twenty-four men elected to stay behind near Caravellas, and
after a stay of five months the rest of the explorers went back to Portugal. They took with them
logs cut from the coastal forests which proved to yield a dye equal to that known in Europe as
“brasil,” a much prized deep red colour: they also carried back Brazilian monkeys and some of
the parrots and macaws still common in the north. Many of the old maps of Brazil are marked
“Terra dos Papagaios” (Land of Parrots) instead of the official “Terra da Vera (or Santa) Cruz,”
but it was not long before the new country became generally known as the Land of Brazil-wood,
and finally as Brazil.

From 1503 onwards no attempt at settlement or conquest of the land was made for thirty years;
captains on their way to India called at the coast for fresh water, and on the return sailed into
some northern wooded bay and cut brazil-wood. The real attention of Portugal was taken up with
the splendid spoil that fell so readily to her hands in India; she loaded her caravels with the silks
and spices and precious stones 16of the East, just as Spain a little later loaded her stout ships
with the treasures of the Aztecs and the Incas. Territory offering nothing more and nothing less
than fertile soil and genial climate was little considered in the midst of those visions of gold:
since then the whole world has been plunged in blood for the sake of such wide spaces of land.
Land in great areas only became highly valorized, both in the Americas and Africa, when the
virile races of Europe needed space for their teeming, dominating children.

Brazil benefited from her lack of wealthy cities offering loot. As a consequence of that lack she
was not flooded, as were Mexico and Peru, with gold-seeking, brutal adventurers, but was
instead slowly colonized by genuine settlers. Some of them did not come willingly, for Portugal
used certain tracts spasmodically as penal settlements, but in the Middle Ages severe punishment
was frequently dealt out for offences that would today be considered light, and many of the
convicts thrust across the Atlantic turned out to be good citizens: good or bad, they were the stuff
of which bold pioneers are made, and to their extraordinary hardihood and that of their tireless
descendants of mixed blood the conquest of interior Brazil was due.

Portugal delayed occupation of Brazil until other European countries began to establish
themselves along different parts of the neglected shore. In 1515 the mouth of the Rio de la Plata
had been discovered by Juan de Solis, and Spanish settlements were set up south of the
Portuguese claims—still indefinite. In 1540 the Spanish captain Orellana made his wonderful
journey from Peru over the Andes and down the Amazon, and roused 17the interest of Europe,
but long before then the Dutch were trying to establish outposts on northerly Amazonian
tributaries, and the French had settled a little colony at Pernambuco.

Of these the Portuguese made short shrift, a fleet being sent from Lisbon specially for their
expulsion, but the settlement made by royal orders on the same spot met with no better fate, for
in 1527 French raiders sacked the infant colony, to be followed a few months later by an English
raiding party under Hawkins. The Portuguese Government, forced to take measures, determined
on a plan which had already given good results on the island of Madeira. Instead of assuming the
burden of colonization on the account of the government, large grants of land were made to
Portuguese of high standing or wealth; on them fell the burden of settlement, but on the other
hand to them would accrue the chief rewards of tropical adventure and industry. The Crown
attained several objects at one stroke—the colonizing of a difficult country, the rewarding of
many noblemen whose claims were apt to be troublesome, while at the same time an outlet was
provided for the adventurous and turbulent. The waning of her power in India left Portugal with
a surging class of stout-hearted folk upon her hands: she sent them to Brazil, and suffered as
Brazil benefited.

The allotment of Brazil into separate capitanias (captaincies) was made in 1530; the average
coastal strip presented to the holders was fifty leagues, and as to the depth of the land
commanded was a matter for the individual captain: he could have as much as he could conquer.
No one had any idea of what the hinterlands contained, for, with the exception of the riverine
explorations 18of the Spanish on the Orinoco and the Plata, Europeans had not visited the South
American interior east of the Andes.

Martim Affonso de Souza came out in 1531 as Admiral of the Coast, empowered to mark out the
capitanias and to keep one for himself; he found French vessels hovering about Pernambuco,
seized them, and went on to Bahia (Bahia de Todos os Santos) named thirty years before and
frequently visited, where he found a Portuguese sailor, survivor of a shipwreck, married to the
daughter of an Indian ruler and living like a patriarch with a large family already grown up about
him. This Caramarú, “big fish caught among rocks,” was of great help to the Portuguese when
the colony was founded, and his half-breed family, possessing Indian knowledge and Portuguese
leanings, formed the nucleus of the true hardy Brazilian of the north coast. Sailing south on his
delimitation errand, Affonso de Souza entered Rio harbour, but passed on to mark out his own
capitania on the hot sands of the São Paulo coast, near the present Santos, under the name of São
Vicente. By a freak of fate, here the story of old Caramarú was duplicated. On the uplands
beyond the Serra do Mar another Portuguese sailor was living, one João Ramalho married to the
daughter of the native chief Tibiriça, and also surrounded by an extraordinary number of
descendants: these children and grandchildren of Ramalho were the first mamelucos, that bold
tribe who were thorns in the flesh of the Jesuits, but who were instrumental in giving Matto
Grosso, Goyaz and Minas Geraes to Brazil.

Martim Affonso de Souza marked out twelve capitanias, but of the accepted applicants few
besides himself 19made serious and systematic efforts to settle and hold their great lands; the
rights offered them were very large, including almost every authority of the king himself except
that of coining money: possession was perpetual and hereditary.[1] “If these hereditary captaincies
had continued to exist,” says the Brazilian historian, Luis de Queiros, “we should have today so
many republics, corresponding to the number of territorial divisions, and not a homogenous
whole which a nation so full of life and hope as Brazil constitutes. By good luck, however,
almost all of the recipients of the grants were unsuccessful in their attempts at colonization, and
some of them did not make any real beginning....”

In the far north nothing was done by the donatario to colonize Ceará, and it was not until the
French had for years established themselves on that coast and inside the mouth of the Amazon
that, in 1616, a Portuguese military expedition from Maranhão turned out these rivals and
founded Pará. Genuine colonization work was done at three outstanding points—Pernambuco,
Bahia, and São Vicente, or rather, São Paulo, which became active nuclei of agricultural
production, of a sturdy population born on the soil, dowered with a clannish fighting spirit that,
local as it was, did much that was of extreme value in the evolution of Brazil. The strength of
two of these centres, S. Paulo and Bahia, was largely 20derived from the two old Portuguese
castaways, the battered heroes Ramalho and Correia; that of the third markedly successful
colony, Pernambuco, was due to the powerful personality and real ability of the Captain, Duarte
Coelho; he was aided by the fertility of the soil of the north-eastern promontory, Pernambuco
showing itself so prolific a producer of sugar that it began to feed the mother country from very
early colonial days, no less than forty-five ships a year calling to fetch sugar and brazil-wood.
Settled with good immigrants by Duarte Coelho, who protested successfully against the dumping
of convicts upon his capitania and ruled his people like a feudal lord, Pernambuco was the only
territory that escaped control by the Captain-General sent out by the Crown in 1549 to try the
effect of centralized power upon the languishing capitanias. Hardy and jealous of their
independence, the Pernambucanos remained a little kingdom apart, ruled over by Duarte Coelho
and his wife’s relatives after him, until the Dutch appeared in strength off the north Brazilian
coast and from 1630 onwards for over twenty years held possession of Pernambuco and a long
strip of the coast above it. The Pernambucanos have always been a factor to be reckoned with in
Brazilian affairs: the territory they hold is richly productive and has never looked back in
commercial importance. They do not forget that great tracts of land were in early days won by
their ancestors by hard fighting from the Indians, nor that they have sent many an able son to
high places in the governing of Brazil. It was the productivity of the Pernambuco (“Nova
Lusitania”) and Bahia colonies that made colonial Brazil valuable and attracted hardy settlers to
her shores.
Ponte Santa Isabel, Recife (Pernambuco).

Praça Mauá—one of Rio’s wharves.

Water-front at Bahia, Lower City.

21Bahia was the queen city of Brazil from 1549, when Thomé de Souza was sent out as Captain-
General and made this the administrative and political head of the country, until 1762, when Rio
de Janeiro became the Vice-regal Capital; she also was a fighting city, seized and sacked now
and again but successful in getting rid of her foes in the end, and she was the centre of tobacco
cultivation from early days. When gold and diamonds were discovered in the interior valleys and
serras the Bahianos played a plucky part in exploration and opening, as well as charting, regions
of forest and sertão hitherto unseen by white men. To the men of Bahia, as well as to the
courageous legions of Pernambucanos led by the Albuquerque family, Brazil owes much: but the
great pioneers, the unsurpassed confronters of hardship, the men who made Brazil the huge
country that she is instead of the strip upon the Atlantic seaboard that she might have remained,
were the bandeirantes of São Paulo.

When the gallant Martim Affonso de Souza, sailing first to Cananea, eventually built his modest
mud and palm leaf town at S. Vicente, he was saved from the hostility of the Tamoyo Indians by
the friendliness of Ramalho, father of many children by a daughter of Chief Tibiriça. The
Tamoyos as a rule gave a great deal of trouble to the Portuguese, although the French in their
numerous attempts at settlement along the Brazilian littoral always managed to make fast friends
of this tribe. To anyone who knows the São Vicente of today, it is difficult to imagine on what
the first settlers lived; the shore is hot, sandy, backed by mangrove swamps, producing beans,
maize, mandioca and sugar. 22Small wonder that an early chronicler said that to live in these
colonies it was necessary to forget all European habits of life, to begin a new existence upon new
food, with all old ideas of comfort and even necessity thrown aside.

When a company of Jesuit priests, headed by José de Anchieta, came to S. Vicente, they found
their ministrations thrown away on a disorderly and undisciplined band of settlers. Conceiving
their duty to be here, as the Padre de las Casas and many of his cloth conceived it in Mexico and
Central America, the Christianizing of the natives, Anchieta decided to leave the coast (where
Braz Cubas had now built his little chapel and hospital on the island where Santos stands today)
and seek converts in the uplands. The mountain barrier was climbed, and on January 25, 1554, an
altar was set up on the green and well-watered plains of the interior, and mass was said on a site
named São Paulo de Piritininga, in honour of the saint whose day it was. The habit of early
missionaries and discoverers of naming new places with the Roman calendar in their hands has
helped the historian to fix many a doubtful date.

A few miles away from the mission was the town of João Ramalho, who had been tactfully
confirmed in his possession of lands, the “Borda do Campo,” by Portugal, while his settlement
was formally named a township with the title of Santo André in 1533. Its site was near the
present São Bernardo, an open sunny region of prairie with woods on the horizon.
With this tribe of Ramalho’s making the Jesuits sought no connection; they could not convert
those half-breeds any more than they could make the hardy 23impenitents on the coast give up
stealing Indians. Better and more pliable material was to hand in the pure Indian tribes; two
groups, one under Tibiriça and the other under chief Cai-Uby, built their cabins in new S. Paulo,
Tibiriça’s people forming a line which is now the Rua São Bento, while the other converts
guarded the road that led over the hills to S. Vicente.[2] It was not long before trouble came. João
Ramalho’s children plagued the priests: the priests retaliated by getting an order from the then
Captain-General, Mem de Sá, by which Santo André was razed to the ground and its inhabitants
forcibly incorporated in São Paulo. The latter soon changed its character as a peaceful mission
settlement, the Indians suffered from aggressions by the whites who now came up from S.
Vicente or their own half-white kin, and in the end a concerted attack was made by the natives
upon the town, only old Tibiriça remaining loyal. The Indians were beaten, but the Jesuits saw
that the mission could not be restored; they determined to carry the cross farther afield. With
indomitable energy and indifference to suffering the band of priests made their way across the
interior plains and woodlands, until they founded a new city (Ciudad Real) at the junction of the
Paraná and Piquery, and began to gather the Indians together in new settlements.

For a time they were undisturbed. But the life of the new Portuguese colonies depended upon
agriculture; the white men were neither many enough nor sufficiently acclimated to till the fields
themselves, and they seized the unfortunate natives and forced them to field labour. It was
unsatisfactory work, as a rule: 24the native of the eastern coasts of South America was not a
cultivator of the soil by habit, but rather a hunter and fisher, as he is still in his interior retreats.
They were too on the whole a gentle as well as an idle race, and they died like flies under the
whip.

It was not long before the coast plantations of the Portuguese were denuded of workers: to get
more slaves it was necessary to follow the Indian across the sertões. It was about 1562 that the
first slave-hunting expeditions, the “entradas,” began; they were headed by the mamelucos, the
descendants of Ramalho, who had no hesitation about betraying their native kinsfolk to the white
man. Violence was avoided: the preferred plan was to coax any tribe approached “com muito
geito e enganos” and only when blandishment failed was force resorted to. Tamed natives
accompanied the “entries” and when the children of the woods heard tales of waiting pleasures
told in their own tongue, whole clans often followed willingly to the coast, never to return. When
they retreated more deeply and became more wary, and it was found that the Jesuits were
advising them, a grimmer system was planned; it was decided to conduct open warfare against
the missions.

By this time, in the first part of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits had attained remarkable
success with their converts; they were not content with teaching them the Christian faith, but
insisted upon the girls learning spinning and weaving while the men planted and reaped. Results
were much the same as those desired by the coast settlers, but methods differed. About Ciudad
Real, in the Guayará region, fourteen great missions flourished when the Paulistas began to
disturb them: by the middle of the sixteen 25hundreds they were all broken up, the fields waste,
the priests fled, and the Indian converts prisoners in S. Paulo or hiding in the forests.
To accomplish this, more careful expeditions were arranged than the earlier “entradas,” although
the mamelucos had made some wonderful journeys, across the river Paraguay, over the Chaco
and into Bolivia, now and again having a brush with the Spanish settlers of the South, who, later
on, were expelled from tentative settlements in Rio Grande do Sul: no land was too wide for the
Paulistas to hold. But the “bandeiras” were now organized like an army, men enlisted in them
regularly and accepted rigorous discipline. Beginning with the deliberate object of uprooting
Jesuit control of the Indians, explorations continued in this form for over eighty years with other
aims added—conquest of the interior, discovery for its own sake, and search for mines of gold
and precious stones, as well as the repression of Spanish entries from the south and from Peru.

At the time when these extraordinary expeditions began the interior of South America was still
unknown. The high sertão and the forests were still full of mystery, although the coast had been
stripped of such marvels as the giants who frightened Pinzon’s sailors, the men fourteen feet high
seen by Magalhães, and the alligators with two tails which Vespucci reported. In the interior
magic still reigned, with its trees yielding soap and glass, Lake Doirada with shining cities about
its margin, and the marvellous kingdom of Paititi, lure of many disastrous expeditions, where
some of the natives were dwarfs, others fifteen feet tall, some had their feet turned backwards
and others had legs like birds. The 26bandeirante opened the sertão and dispelled these wonders.

In his book, O Sertão antes da Conquista, Sampaio says that the Paulista “was compelled by his
habitat to be a bandeirante: the conquest of the interior was written in his destiny.” If that is true,
at least these labours were taken up with a kind of fierce joy. There was scarcely an able-bodied
man of the time who did not join one or more of the bandeiras, and there is on record the case of
Manoel de Campos who made twenty-four of these journeys. Many bandeirantes never returned,
remaining in the sertão to found towns in Minas, Matto Grosso or Goyaz; some, returning after
years of absence, found their wives married to other men, while “many heroes brought back from
the sertão children whom they had not taken in,” says Rocha Pombo.

The bandeira went always under the supreme command of a leader to whom implicit obedience
was due; before setting out the bandeira in a body heard mass, the leader confessed and made his
will, invariably including the phrase ... “setting out to war and being mortal and not knowing
what God our Lord will do with me.”... A priest accompanied each bandeira, not only to shrive
the dying and bury the dead, but by way of easing the conscience of the band regarding their
mission and “reconciling it with the Divine Mercy.” The outfit for every man was made at his
own cost, and if it is possible to judge by the baggage of Braz Gonçalves, who died on an
expedition in 1636, and whose goods were scrupulously recorded and sold at auction, it was
simple. His greatest possessions were three negro slaves, but he had also an awl, a bit and a
hammer, a pair of worn slippers; some lead and gunpowder, 27one tin plate, a chisel, a mould for
casting shot, a ball of thread, an old cape.

It was only possible to face what lay beyond the outposts of settlement when equipped and ready
for war; the bandeirantes knew that there was constant risk of attack by Indians and that nature
opposed them with as fierce a menace. The country through which they passed was likely to be
foodless, and they were prepared to sow seeds of grain in green valleys, camp, and wait until the
crop was harvested before going on their way.
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. Nothing checked these
explorers; had not the discovery of the General Mines turned their minds to gold-hunting, they
might have followed Antonio Raposo across the Andes and disputed Peru with the Spaniards.
Wherever they penetrated they established outposts and forts counting a collision with the
Spanish as the best reason for creating a stronghold: it was the work of these untiring sertanistas
that led the way to the present magnitude of Brazil.

The bandeira was the original creation of the Paulista, without parallel in history; not even the
white pioneer of North America had the same functions: he neither wandered so far nor
performed such deeds. João Ribeiro 28remarks that “as in the case of the caravans of the desert,
the first virtue of the bandeirante was a resignation almost fatalistic, and abstinence carried to an
extreme; those who set out did not know if they would ever return, never expected to see their
homes again—and this often happened.” The bandeira in its greatest phase was a travelling city,
a commune linked by mutual interests, that surged forward over the silent country; nothing
deterred them, whether mountain passes, precipices, hunger, weariness, or constant fighting. If
they had a path it was that of the crosses on the graves of the men who had gone before them.
They went always on foot.

There is a long list of great sertanistas. It includes many names well known in Brazil today—
Martins, Soares, de Souza, Barreto, Tourinho, Sá, Leme, Paes, Almeida, Dias, Ribeiro, Carvalho,
Rodrigues, and a host of others; few men escaped the lure of the sertão, and some leave stories
which are the Iliads of Brazil, putting these among the great adventures of all time. There is for
instance Antonio Raposo, who headed a bandeira which left S. Paulo in 1628, and which was
“the biggest and most devastating known.” Three thousand people composed the expedition, and
its main object was the destruction of the Jesuit missions on the Paraná river, near Ciudad Real.
One by one the missions, which had grown into thriving industrial communities, were attacked,
besieged, and smashed; as they fell, escaping brothers or converts carried the warning to other
convents, stiff fights were made, and in some cases long resistance was maintained. But in the
end the Jesuits were broken and dispersed, and the bandeirantes went back to S. Paulo with
thousands of 29Indian slaves. The courageous Jesuits went deeper into the interior, collected
such remnants as they could of their property and their protégés, and began the work again.

Raposo, years afterwards, made another journey which brought him into fame as a legendary
hero; he crossed the Paulista sertão by Tibagy, thence traversed the heart of Brazil from south-
east to north-west, entered Peru, scaling the Andes, crossed to the Pacific and waded into those
waters sword in hand; returning, he discovered the headwaters of the Amazon, sailed down it,
and when at last after years of travel he came back to São Paulo no one recognized him.

A magnificent figure among indomitable bandeirantes is that of Fernão Dias de Paes Leme. Well
may the wild sertão be haunted by the shade of such a man as this, or of his lieutenant, Borba
Gato, or that father and son who were known among the Indians of Govaz as Old Devil the First
and Old Devil the Second.

Fernão Dias, the “Hercules of the Sertão,” was the discoverer of the emerald mines of
Sumidouro, after ten years spent in search. He was a famous slave-chaser of the sixteen
hundreds, an extremely religious man whose zeal was only assuaged by much building of
chapels and convents with the money earned in long raids; practical, astute, suave, he won his
ends by tact rather than violence, among his exploits being that of leading the whole of the allied
Goyana tribes to São Paulo. Approaching their territory Dias made no threats, but camped
nearby, cultivated fields of cereals and vegetables, and so ingratiated himself into the confidence
of Tombu the chief that one day the old Indian collected his people and agreed to go to the
30pleasant lands of which the Paulista spoke. Five thousand natives thus marched voluntarily
into captivity; Tombu remained the worshipper of Fernão Dias until his death, but with the
exception of runaways none of the Goyanas ever saw the sertão again.

This was in 1661. Three years later the Portuguese court, greatly desiring the discovery and
development of mining regions which should yield tribute to Lisbon, offered special rewards to
discoverers of mines, appointed an Administrator of Mines in Espirito Santo, where some
coloured stones had been found, and Affonso VI wrote to Fernão Dias asking him to search the
interior that he knew so well for the source of the “emeralds” whose beauty raised hopes of
finding mines equal in value to those of the Spaniards in New Granada (Colombia), still today
the cradle of the finest emeralds. As a matter of fact the green stones found in Brazil are the
beautiful but semi-precious tourmalines.

Consenting, the famous bandeirante made some preliminary excursions and in 1676, when he
was over eighty years old, led out a great comitiva; the first winter’s camp was made in a valley
beyond the Rio Grande, the second at Bomfim, the third at Sumidouro. At last in the Serro Frio
some showings of gold were located, and on the way back Dias died by the Rio das Velhas, in
the far interior across Minas Geraes. The bandeira had gone through great suffering, and scores
of men were buried by the way: at one time the remnants of the expedition had appealed to Dias
to give up the hunt and return, and on his refusal made a plan to kill him. The conspiracy was
headed by a young man who was the son of Dias by an Indian girl, and 31dearly loved by the old
sertanista, but when convinced of his boy’s guilt Dias hanged him, pardoning the other plotters
but driving them from the camp.

To Fernão Dias was due the exploration of what is now the State of Minas Geraes, the whole of
it falling practically under his sway as the founder of at least a dozen towns in that hilly interior,
the majority surviving to this day. His search had a curious sequel: his son-in-law and faithful
aide, Borba Gato, who had found gold mines in Sabará and registered them in 1700, was
returning to S. Paulo after the death of his leader when he met with a party headed by the official
Administrator General of Mines. Borba Gato’s charts and proofs were demanded, refused, a
quarrel broke out, and the servants of the pioneer set upon the Administrator and killed him. Not
daring to face S. Paulo with this tale, Borba Gato fled to the interior where a tribe of Indians
friendly to him dwelt by the Rio Doce, and there lived hidden out of the reach of the law for
twenty years. At the end of that time, attempts to find the Sabará mines having failed, he was
offered a pardon in exchange for the secret; he accepted the offer, returned to civilization, and
presently retiring to a farm with his family died peacefully in his bed at the age of ninety.

A direct result of the murder of the Administrator was the stocking of the sertão of Minas with
cattle: the entourage of the dead man, as much horrified by the deed as was Borba Gato, instead
of returning to the capital took to the bush with the seeds, stores and livestock without which no
expedition set out, and formed nuclei of fazendas in a score of different places.

32One of the earliest discoveries of gold in Brazil was made by Bartholomeu Bueno da Silva in
the Serra Doirada, in Goyaz, about 1682. He it was who found the Indians wearing scraps of gold
as ornament, and tricked them into showing the place of its origin; displaying a bowl of agua-
ardente (aguardente—spirit made from sugarcane) he set light to it, telling the Indians that it was
water and that he would in like manner set fire to all their springs and rivers if they did not reveal
the source of their gold. Southey calls Bartholomeu Bueno “the most renowned adventurer of his
age,” and to him is due the opening-up of Goyaz, until then only entered by passing slave-
hunters: but his discoveries were not followed up and it remained for his son, nicknamed by the
Indians Anhangoera the Second his father having been known to them as Old Devil the First on
account of the incident referred to above, to re-find the mines and extend the gold-mining fever
to Goyaz. It was in 1722 that this son, then a man of over fifty years, succeeded in obtaining
government help for exploration: by this time Minas was overrun with gold seekers from every
part of Brazil and the authorities were ready to give active help to new mining expeditions. This
bandeira set out with great éclat, crossed the Rio Grande and wandered for three years, the leader
seeking landmarks dimly remembered from his boyhood. Persistent, patient, conciliating his
weary followers, he founded the town of Barra, at last located the gold mines, returned to São
Paulo and got together a new band of men, led the way back and settled them at what is now the
City of Goyaz, and so closed with a remarkable colonizing feat the last of the great expeditions
into the high sertão.
The Falls of Iguassú.

On the boundary of Argentina with Brazil; this series of lovely cascades is said to have
altogether four times as much force as Niagara.

33A little later gold-miners penetrating to Matto Grosso began operating at Cuyabá,[3] and almost
immediately the discovery of diamonds at Diamantina brought a new rush of people into this far
interior region. The day of the explorer, the true bandeirante, was over, and the age of mining
was by this time in its epoch of greatest excitement.

Few writers on Brazil have refrained from scourging the bandeirantes for their cruelty to the
wretched natives and for their destruction of the Jesuit missions. It is true that they were brutal,
but theirs was a brutal age, and in explanation, not extenuation, of their deeds it should be
remembered that they, the white civilian colonists, were fighting for their own preservation
against hostile Indians whose hand, quite naturally, was against the invader, and secondly against
their economic ruin by the line of action taken by the Society of Jesus. Not only did the patient
Jesuits coax and catechise the Indian, but they put him to work in the fields and sold abroad the
product of his hands: when later on conflict raged in North Brazil between colonists and Jesuits
the chief grievance was that the Society, for whose support the civilian community was taxed
heavily, used the Indian labour denied by Royal decree to the settlers, and also maintained great
stores (armazens) where every kind of European merchandise was kept.

It was for this reason, and not because they were bad Christians, that the colonists of Maranhão
once stood on the shore with guns in their hands and refused to 34allow a shipload of Jesuits to
land until they had given a solemn promise to do nothing with the Indians except to convert
them; they regarded the members of this religious body as business rivals. Nor were the Jesuits
tactful in their dealings with colonists or colonial government authorities; secure in the support
given them not only by the Pope but, especially perhaps in the period of Spanish rule in Brazil
under Philip II, by the King, they made no concessions, defied the civilians, and apparently
courted trials of strength: right or wrong, they were able to count upon judgment in their favour
in any quarrel referred to Europe.

When the bandeirantes began their unmerciful raids upon the Jesuit communities in the south
Brazilian sertão the number of missions had increased from thirteen in 1610 to twenty-one in
1628, and to them had been largely drawn the natives who once, as Thomé de Souza said in
writing to Portugal, had been so thick that “even if they were killed for market there would be no
end of them.” Attacked, the padres might well have counted upon help from the Governor
General of Brazil, but for the fact that about this time the whole military attention of the
authorities was taken up with the determined aggressions of the Dutch upon the northern
capitanias; the affairs of São Paulo were left in the hands of the Paulistas. The great matter of
regret is that in the case of the Jesuits much excellent constructive work was wasted, just as the
fine colonizing work of the French in Rio and in Pará and Maranhão was destroyed, and that of
the Dutch on the Amazon and in Pernambuco; the spirit and the interests of the times forbade the
Portuguese to allow settlers of other races a foothold in Brazil, but nevertheless it was
unfortunate 35that so much good blood and good work was thrown away in a huge land that so
badly needed both.
While the Paulistas were exploring and adding great tracts to the colony in the south, a law unto
themselves, undisturbed by invasion except an occasional attempt by the Spaniards from the
Plate and attacks on S. Vicente by English and French corsairs, the history of the north was one
of constant aggression and desperate defence. Until the year 1578 no concerted attempts were
made by England, France and Holland against the colonies of Portugal, a country towards which
feeling was not unfriendly but in that year King Sebastião of Portugal, with the flower of his
nobility was killed in North Africa in the terrible battle of Alcazar el Kebir, and Philip II of
Spain, the “Demon of the Middle Ages,” seized Portugal and all that was Portuguese two years
later. The South American colonies automatically came under his sway, and at once fell heir to
the feud between Spain and her European neighbours. Brazil was fair game, and during the sixty
years that elapsed before Portugal was able to re-assert her independence the easily approached
northern capitanias were threatened, sacked and occupied by one or another of the three chief
enemies of Spain. Sackings of coast towns made no great difference to the development of
Brazil; when the ransom was paid the raiders sailed away and the business of life was resumed
without any vital change; no towns were ever ruined by such predatory visits. Occupation of
districts was another matter, and, with the exception of loss of lives every one of which was
precious in young colonies, the effect was good rather than harmful; the period of Dutch rule on
36the northern coast of Brazil was a lasting beneficial stimulus. Nor was Spanish control of any
direct hurt to the Portuguese colonies: their internal management was little interfered with,
Portuguese officials continued to be appointed to Brazilian posts, and if Spain did not adequately
defend them because her hands were already desperately full she at least did Brazil the kindness
to leave it alone. The one serious administrative measure she took was the formation in Lisbon of
a Junta to care for Brazilian commerce, similar to the Council of the Indies sitting in Madrid, and
this was undoubtedly useful: the narrow monopolistic trading policy pursued was simply in line
with the ideas and practice of the times. It was protection carried to an extreme, was useful at the
time of its initiation, and, if it outlived its usefulness in its most irksome manifestations, the
principle has so far survived that today, in the third lustre of the twentieth century, it may be said
that only one great commercial nation has ever definitely thrown it aside.

The group of capitanias extending from Espirito Santo northwards to Ceará were when Brazil
came under Spanish rule the most productive of all; it was but eighty years from the date of
Cabral’s discovery, and only fifty from the time of colonization, but flourishing populations were
settled along the seaboard, growing sugar, tobacco and cotton and cutting stacks of dyewoods to
fill the fifty ships a year that called at the main ports. Bahia, seat of the Captain-General’s
administration, was also a bishopric, and the chief religious orders had settled in each
considerable town and founded churches, schools and convents. In 1570 a Royal Decree forbade
the compulsory use of Indians as 37labourers, and to fill the ranks of field workers Africans were
brought in: to this idea the Portuguese were inured, for the West Coast of Africa had been a
source of labour supply for them since 1440; it was the discovery that negroes could be
transplanted to the Americas and would there work with docility, thrive and multiply, that made
possible the cultivation of thousands of square miles of land, both in North and South America,
and warmly as we may reject the principle of slave labour now, it was the only one which could
have opened American lands to the extent which they attained in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The white man could not have performed this physical labour.
Indian labour was abolished at the instance of the priests; it was remarkable that to the
enslavement of Africans under circumstances equally brutal no objection was made. Negroes
were brought to Brazil from 1574 onwards until the abolition of the slave trade, though not of
slavery, in 1854. The debt of Brazil to the African negro is a very heavy one.

Soon after the junction of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns there began the series of purely
plundering attacks delivered by European enemies of Spain which lasted until the establishment
of the Dutch at Pernambuco, but which were of so little political importance that in the meantime
the Portuguese authorities were able to destroy entirely the French settlements at Maranhão and
Pará which lasted from 1594 to 1615. The work of replacing French with Brazilian settlements
was carried out by Jeronymo Albuquerque, son of a dominating Pernambuco family, and not
only were well-started French colonies ruined but the exploration 38of the Amazon, commenced
by the famous Daniel de la Touche (Seigneur de la Ravardière) was abruptly ended.

In 1621 the Dutch Company of the West Indies was founded, companion organization to the rich
East Indies Company; with the approval of the Dutch Government the Company was equipped
for settlement and conquest, and could call upon the home authorities for the help of ships and
armed men if war occurred in the course of operations. A fleet of thirty-six vessels under
Admiral Jacob Willekens sailed for Brazil early in 1624, made directly for Bahia, and took the
city without much trouble. Holding it was a different matter, the population taking to arms, and a
year later a combined Spanish and Portuguese fleet arrived and forced the Dutch to capitulate.
Another impermanent attack was made in 1627, and in 1630 a different point of aggression was
chosen by a great fleet of seventy vessels: the Pernambucan city of Olinda was besieged and
taken, the Dutch secured themselves in power and remained masters of this and three other
capitanias afterwards seized; they were governed by the West India Company for nearly twenty-
five years.

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.
Old and New Brazil.

A Remnant of Colonial days; street in Olinda, Modern residences near the Gloria Gardens,
old capital of Pernambuco. facing the bay, Rio de Janeiro.

39The West India Company was able to induce an admirable Governor to take charge of the new
possession, Prince John Maurice of Nassau; he reached Recife in 1637, and inaugurated a
conciliatory policy towards such Pernambucanos as would accept Dutch rule: those who would
not were pursued into the interior forests where they retreated under one of the Albuquerques,
and were forced to flee from Alagôas into Bahia. When such resisters were caught they were
shipped to Dutch settlements in the East Indies.

Religious freedom was promulgated by the Protestant rulers, more systematic administration of
settlements and estates inaugurated, better sugar milling methods introduced as well as farming
implements, and the scientific exploration of the interior was made. Prince Maurice brought with
him map-makers, geologists, botanists and expert mineralogists, and sent them to the valleys and
hills of the Bahian hinterlands. Elias Herkmann took an expedition of one hundred men from
Recife in 1641, to make scientific investigations, and although he did not find mines of
importance he studied native relics and language, subsequently publishing a book on the Tapuyo
race.

George Marcgraf and Wilhelm Piso are also Dutch names of note in connection with Brazil; the
former studied Brazilian topography and water systems and wrote a treatise on the subject as
well as the Historia Rerum Naturalium Brazilium; the latter was the first classifier of Brazilian
flora and fauna. “We owe to him,” says Dr. Egas Moniz of Bahia, “the discovery of the emetic-
cathartic properties of ipecacuanha and copaiba” as well as the therapeutic virtues of jaborandi
and red mangue and several other drugs obtained 40from the Brazilian matto. The first scientific
charting of the sertão behind Pernambuco, Alagôas and north Bahia was done during this time;
herds of cattle already wandered over interior pastures, and settlers led by the independent spirit
which renders the Brazilian indifferent to solitude had formed fazendas along river borders;
explorers had wandered by these water paths looking for mines, but systematic maps and charts
were lacking.

In 1640 Portugal revolted from Spain, regained her independence, and offered the crown to a
member of the House of Braganza, a line which retained its inheritance until a few years ago.
The effect upon the Americas was again notable; the Pernambucanos, still carrying on guerilla
warfare from the forests, were heartened, obtained help from an enthusiastic Bahia, and
redoubled their efforts; the Dutch came to an agreement with Portugal that all possessions
conquered by them during the Spanish régime should be held, and tried to extend their holdings
farther north—an effort which was vain in itself, costly in life and money, and hardened the
determination of the colonists to do for themselves what the mother country would not do on
their behalf. In 1643 Prince Maurice returned to Holland: he had the interests of the colony as
such at heart too much to please the West India Company. A liberal minded man, he wished to
see the colonial ports opened to free commerce, succeeded in getting the Company to forego all
monopolies except that of taking dyewoods away from Brazil and sending in slaves and
munitions of war, any Dutch captain being free to visit ports controlled by his compatriots; these
were not agreeable pills for a monopolistic organization to swallow. On 41the other hand in
recalling Maurice of Nassau the Company lost prestige, henceforward carried on a losing
struggle with the virile Brazilians, and were forced out of section after section until by 1648 only
the forts of Parahyba, Rio Grande do Norte, the island of Itamaracá and the city of Recife were in
Dutch hands. A certain embarrassment was created in Europe by this situation, and the
Portuguese Government, taken to task by Holland, sent emissaries to the insurgent
Pernambucanos to order suspension of hostilities: the leaders replied that they “would go to
receive punishment for their disobedience after they had turned the invaders out of Pernambuco,”
and went on with the war. Holland herself, now at loggerheads with England or rather with
Cromwell on account of her support given to the Stuarts, could not help her Brazilian colony; a
severe defeat was inflicted by the Pernambucans in 1649, at the battle of Guararapes, and the
Dutch, never recovering from this blow, were finally obliged to capitulate to Francisco Barretto
in January, 1654. The Pernambucan attackers were nerved to this final effort, the storming of
Recife, by the news of the disaster inflicted on van Tromp’s fleet in the English Channel at the
hands of Blake.

Three months later the Dutch commander with all his troops left Brazil, and the only fragments
remaining to the States General after a tremendous outlay of money and blood were a few islands
in the West Indies and a piece of the Guiana country: small return for great effort. Portugal paid
eight million florins to the Dutch in settlement of Brazilian differences and agreed to allow
Holland free trade with the American colonies in all articles except the precious brazil-wood.

42The chief results of Dutch occupation of the four capitanias of the north-eastern promontory
for twenty-four years were, first, stimulation of world interest in this part of the vast Americas,
for the sea-captains who carried Brazilian products for the first time into other parts of Europe
than Portugal acted as advance agents of Brazilian commerce: second, scientific investigation
into natural products and demonstration of the value of drugs peculiar to this part of South
America: third, introduction of better town management systems: fourth, creation of a healthy
national spirit in the northern provinces, with lasting effect upon character: and the quickening of
colonization in the extreme north. It was not until the Dutch and French settled in Ceará and
Maranhão and on the Amazon that serious efforts were made to develop these tropical territories
under the equator; the year 1620 witnessed the first arrival of settlers of Portuguese nationality in
Maranhão when two hundred families came from the Azores.

Another interesting and direct result of the Dutch intervention was the creation of the Companhia
do Commercio do Brasil (Commercial Company of Brazil) by the Governor General, intended as
a set-off to the Dutch West India Company. It was established in 1650, received monopolies and
concessions of a valuable character, and in return was obliged to provide a powerful armed fleet
to convoy merchant vessels through enemy-infested seas. The Commercial Company did as a
fact render great services to the Brazilians fighting against the Dutch, blockading northern ports
while insurgent armies attacked by land.

While the north was struggling with the Dutch and French and incidentally becoming solidified
by the 43tussle until a genuine national feeling came into existence, Bahia, beating off attacks
and remaining the administrative residence of a Captain-General, was the centre of the wealthiest
part of the colony; all the slaves brought from Africa were sold here, and although they were
partly distributed, this was the chief slave-owning region and is still the place where more pure
negroes are to be seen than anywhere else in Brazil. Farther south Espirito Santo, one of the
oldest of Brazilian colonies, was growing cane and raising cattle, but suffered from raiding
foreigners, as also did Ilhéos; Rio de Janeiro became the seat of a second Captaincy-General in
1608, for a time, with command over S. Vicente and Espirito Santo but had no importance until
the discovery of mines made her the chief gateway to the golden regions. Out of the path of the
Dutch, whose object was wide agricultural lands, Rio neither suffered nor gained as did the
North; at this part of the Brazilian coast the mountain barrier comes right down to the sea’s edge,
the granite wall shouldering into the waters of the deeply indented bay: there is very little land
suitable for plantations except in narrow valleys until the Serra do Mar is climbed. It was this
lack of sugar land that kept Rio uncolonized, lovely as she is, for half a century after the colonies
on either side of her were started; settlement by the Portuguese might have been put off still
longer if the French under Admiral Villegaignon had not taken possession of the bay in 1555,
made friends with the Tamoyo Indians as the Portuguese were never able to do, fortified a rocky
island, and established a Huguenot colony here—the ill-fated “France Antarctique.” The
energetic Mem de Sá, Captain-General after Thomé de Souza, brought a 44fleet from Bahia,
drove the French into hiding on the mainland, sent his nephew, Estacio de Sá, to Portugal to get
help, and this gallant young man returned with a strong force in 1565. In two years’ time, with
troops from Bahia and São Paulo assisting, the unfortunate Huguenots were utterly defeated, the
remnants of the exiles retiring into the woods with their Indian allies and disappearing from
history. The body of Estacio de Sá, killed in the last decisive fighting, was buried in the shade of
the Pão d’Assucar near the first Portuguese town founded in the bay and named São Sebastião.
Another member of the same family, Correia de Sá, was sent to head the new Portuguese
settlement, and eventually died there at the age of 113.

Division of Brazil into two captaincies-general in 1608, to be united again soon afterwards and
again subsequently divided, was part of the experiments made by the European home
governments, apparently with the sincere wish to develop the country; it was supposed that a
region so vast could not be governed by one man, but as a matter of fact the occupied territory
was along the seaboard on the whole, and communication by sea was fairly speedy; from 1549
onwards, when the first Captain-General was appointed, the mother country bought up when
convenient the strips of land belonging to the heirs of the donatarios; some new captaincies were
also added from time to time, as that of Grão Pará in 1616, Minas Geraes, Matto Grosso and
Goyaz after the discovery of gold and diamonds, and an independent State of Maranhão,
governed separately from the rest of Brazil was also created in 1621, thus adding to the
governmental confusion in spite of good intentions. Decentralization was increased by the 45lack
of commercial exchange between the different regions, and no successful effort improved this
fault until the notable Marquis de Pombal took matters in hand in a statesmanlike manner in the
latter half of the eighteenth century, buying the capitanias which were yet in private hands,
creating Brazil a viceroyalty and Rio the viceregal capital.

But before that date much water had flowed under Brazilian bridges. It is not the purpose of this
book to give in detail the history of Brazil, but to show the chief events and their effect upon
development. Following the creation of the capitania system and its series of coastal settlements
came the penetration of the southern interior by the Jesuits in their “reductions,” and the
scattering of these centres of Indian population at the hands of the bandeirantes; the next
happening of extreme importance for Brazil was the seizure of different parts of the coast by the
Dutch and French, with their stimulating effect upon Portuguese colonization; it was after this
that the gold rush to the interior of Minas, Goyaz and Matto Grosso populated and opened up the
sertão in tiny patches, but at the same time half denuded the coast of its settlers and injured the
agricultural production of the country, the prosperity of which was almost entirely owing to the
introduction of negro slaves, another great factor in Brazilian progress.

Today the mining industry of Brazil accounts for a very small item on her exports lists, chiefly
because the diamonds which go out are mostly contraband, the gold is produced by only two
principal mines, and while there is a promising export of manganese it is insignificant compared
to the big business of the country or to 46the possibilities contained in Brazil’s mineral seamed
mountains. In the early eighteenth century Brazil was a famous gold country, and it is reckoned
that over five hundred million dollars’ worth of this metal has been taken out. Nearly all this gold
was found in placers easily washed out by hand in the crudest manner; when the rich alluvial
deposits along river valleys were exhausted Brazil ceased to be a gold producer on a spectacular
scale. In Minas Geraes rich sands were found near the present Ouro Preto, the first mining city
that was founded bearing the name of Villa Rica; all about it the whole country is still in heaps,
turned over by the miners who came a couple of hundred years ago. In that day people flocked
into Minas, coming by road from S. Paulo, by the S. Francisco river from Bahia, and by a shorter
cut over the mountain passes from Rio. The bones of many folk remained by the way: it is said
that of one band of 300 Paulistas setting out in 1725 only five persons, two white men and three
negroes, reached their objective, the far interior mines of Cuyabá. It became necessary for the
authorities to forbid the taking of negroes to the mines, so general was the abandonment of
plantations, but the protest of the Crown was only half-hearted; it was eminently satisfactory that
a stream of gold and diamonds should flow across the Atlantic to Lisbon, and it was of as little
use for governors to point out the bad economy of coastal depopulation in the seventeen
hundreds as it had been for Governor Diogo de Menezes to write to the King in 1608: “Your
Majesty may believe me that the true mines of Brazil are sugar and brazil-wood, whence your
Majesty draws so much advantage without costing the Royal Treasury a single penny.”
Two Views of São Paulo City.

São Paulo, premier city of the leader State of the Brazilian Union, stands on the breezy uplands
of the southern plateau; it is a busy, prosperous centre with the first modern civic equipment.
Population 550,000.

47Quarrels at the mines led to the “Guerra dos Emboabas,” a factional disturbance between the
Paulista discoverers and stranger gold-diggers; in the end the Paulistas were driven back, retired
to their own uplands, and Minas Geraes was politically separated. Indomitably energetic, the
men of S. Paulo turned their attention southward, where the Spaniards had entered and settled,
drove the intruders out of Rio Grande do Sul and thus secured another, and one of the finest,
regions for Brazil.

In 1750 King John V of Portugal died. The death of Portuguese monarchs did not as a rule make
more than a perfunctory difference to the Colonies, but in this case the succession of José I was
important because, with infinite faith in his brilliant Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e
Mello, afterwards Marquis de Pombal, he left the chief affairs of the kingdom to these able
hands. Pombal has been bitterly attacked: he was without doubt a man of iron; but he was a man
of unusual foresight and intelligence who thoroughly realized the great value of Brazil, and did
much to improve economic conditions in that huge possession. He seems to have had what
Brazilians call a palpite concerning the destiny of Brazil and Portugal.

Almost the first act of this statesman was the curtailing of the powers of the Inquisition: he
abolished autos da fé, which must have given relief to Brazil if the historian Porto Seguro is
correct in saying that no less than 500 Brazilians had been burnt alive in Lisbon by the Holy
Office. With a special eye to Portuguese America he reduced taxes on tobacco and sugar, had the
diamond traffic strictly supervised, created commercial 48companies to trade with Pará,
Maranhão, Pernambuco and Parahyba; specially encouraged the plantation of rice and cotton in
the North; legislated most of the commerce which was in the hands of the enterprising English
into Portuguese channels; inaugurated good ship-building yards in Brazilian ports; settled
boundary disputes with the Spanish on Brazilian borders; brought all capitanias still in private
control under the Portuguese Crown—Cametá, Caeté, Ilha de Joannes, Itamaracá, Reconcavo de
Bahia, Ilhéos, Porto Seguro, São Vicente and Campos dos Goytacazes; and as his most powerful
and bitterly assailed effort he laid hands on the Jesuits. The Society, overwhelmed in the South,
was strongly entrenched in the North since the opening of Pará and Maranhão; they had done
wonderful and self-sacrificing work there; but they hostilized the colonists and made the mistake
of arming their protégés the Indians against the settlers. They constituted themselves in Brazil as
Bartolomé de las Casas did in Mexico and Guatemala, the Defenders of the Indians; they were
extraordinarily successful with them, and it is not impossible that if some working arrangement
could have been found between the colonists and Jesuits a great problem might have been solved
—that of obtaining some control over the natives and teaching them industries without
undermining their peculiar physical constitution. With the best intentions in the world, more
modern efforts made to hold the Indian tribes in civic life have ended in their speedy dwindling
and extinction; no one except Colonel Rondon seems able to teach the Indian and keep him alive.
To break up the Jesuit missions, Pombal in 1755 decreed 49the “emancipation of the Indians of
Pará and Maranhão,” a curious corollary to the laws that the Society had themselves obtained
earlier forbidding the Portuguese settlers to enslave Indians. A little later occurred in Portugal an
attempt against the life of the King: the Jesuits were, quite unjustly, accused of being concerned
in it, and on this pretext they were ordered expelled in a body from Portugal and from all
Portuguese possessions. This was in 1759, expulsion from Brazil taking place during 1760; not
content with this, the abolition of the Society of Jesus was obtained from Pope Clement XIV in
1773. This severe measure was rescinded in 1814, and the Jesuits came back to Brazil as to other
world dominions, doing excellent educational work at the present time; their colleges are
magnificent institutions, and it is commonly said in Brazil that the very best education for men is
obtained in the Jesuit college at Itú, in the interior of São Paulo State.

José I died in 1777, and Pombal promptly descended from power; but his work in the stimulation
of Brazilian industries, the creation of a genuine Brazilian entity through strong centralization,
and the erection of Rio into a viceroyalty, paved the way for the next great change.

Early in the nineteenth century, when the North American colonies of Great Britain had
successfully revolted, and the French Revolution was an accomplished fact, ideas of republican
independence began to agitate many heads in South America. Brazil had only one uprising, the
famous Conspiracy of Minas, which got no farther than plans; it was headed by one of the
influential Freire de Andrade family, and all the 50plotters were eventually pardoned except one
scapegoat, who was executed publicly in Rio in 1792, and thus achieved immortality: his
nickname of Tiradentes is preserved in the name of a square in Rio and a public holiday on the
anniversary of his death.

A few years later Napoleon was overrunning Europe. Portugal, friendly to his enemy England,
incurred the Napoleonic wrath, tried to make terms too late, and was being actually invaded by
the French when an English naval squadron appeared in the Tagus commanded by Sir Sidney
Smith; the Portuguese royal family and a host of courtiers went aboard Portuguese vessels and
were convoyed across the Atlantic, out of Napoleon’s reach, to Brazil. It would not at all have
suited England for the Braganzas to fall into hands which already held too many royal prisoners.
It was one of the most remarkable transferences of a crown in history, this emigration of Dom
João to his American colonies; it was a useful and a dignified refuge for him and at the same
time was of great value to Brazil, probably saving her from years of disorder and bloodshed.
Two Views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.

The beautiful Avenida, over a mile long, was driven through the city from the docks to the
Avenida Beira Mar as part of the extensive city improvements costing over £20,000,000 begun
in March, 1904; the avenue was completed in November, 1905. Rio has 1,250,000 population.

51The royal party arrived first at Bahia, where the town turned out in enthusiastic welcome and
invited Dom João to make this city his seat of government; but his destination was Rio, and he
sailed on, first giving out a proclamation which ensured him a good reception in the Capital—the
Abertura dos Portos, or opening of the ports of Brazil freely to the ships of all the world
“friendly to Portugal.” Public printing presses were now permitted, a newspaper was started,
chiefly engaged in training the minds of the nascidos no Brasil (Brazilian born) to appreciation
of the monarchical presence, but still the commencement of Brazilian journalism; foreign capital
began to come, and active Europeans, attracted by the advertisement that the transference of the
monarchy gave Brazil, entered and established businesses; the Banco do Brasil was inaugurated;
fine buildings were erected in Rio; the Regent’s collection of pictures and books, brought with
him, formed the nucleus of the excellent museum and library of modern Rio; the harbour was
improved, a School of Art and Naval College founded. By the time that Portugal was free from
the Napoleonic shadow, and, in 1821, called Dom João home again, he left behind a Brazil to
which a tremendous impetus had been given, and which had been raised to the dignity of a
kingdom equal in importance with Portugal and Algarves six years earlier. 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. It
was lucky that Dom João was a man of shrewd good sense. Dom Pedro, son of Dom João,
remained in Brazil as Regent, and the country was still linked to Portugal; it was soon apparent
that this condition could not endure. The jealous legislature in Lisbon wished to reduce Brazil
again to the level of a colony under tutelage, despite the efforts of Dom João; the news came to
Rio together with a peremptory order for the return of the prince, and he, a good diplomat,
elected to throw his lot in 52with Brazil, and declared the Independence on the historic hillside
of Ypiranga, in 1822.[4]

Proclaimed Emperor soon afterwards, Pedro ruled for nine years and then abdicated in favour of
his five-year-old child, Dom Pedro segundo. To this rather stormy period of control is due the
commencement of deliberate colonization of Europeans into Brazil; it was a policy widely
continued later on by Pedro II, and afterwards adopted both by the Federal Government and by
separate States of the Union. A regency lasted until Pedro was fourteen years old, the most
remarkable hand on the reins of power meanwhile being that of the astute priest, Father Diogo
Feijó.

Pedro II endeared himself to Brazil by his kindly and tactful spirit, his genial broadmindedness;
he was a scholar by instinct, and did his best to advance Brazil by the encouragement of railroad
building, invitation to foreign capital, and the throwing open of wide spaces of southern land to
good class immigrants. It was during his reign that the English, who had established themselves
firmly during the first monarchical periods, sending ships regularly and opening markets for
Brazilian products, were followed by the commercial French and later by the German merchant.
The industrial and educational advance of Brazil is largely owing to the personal initiative of
Dom Pedro II. His reign was one of the longest in history, from 1831 to 1889, and the
development within this period includes inauguration of city tramways as well as railroads; the
discovery that coffee would grow in Brazil and its systematic cultivation; 53discovery of the
properties of rubber; the introduction of factories; use of hydraulic power.

Following the world agitation against slavery, Brazil in 1854 forbade the introduction of negroes;
there were however still large numbers of these people in bondage as well as a much larger
number free.

Public feeling was much excited about the question in the eighties, and at last in 1888, when
Dom Pedro during a period of illness had made his daughter, the Princess Isabel, Regent, the
powerful influence of many highminded Brazilians was brought to bear, and the decree of
abolition was signed.

Slave holders were not so pleased as statesmen, when their farm workers immediately forsook
the field and flocked into the cities; agriculture undoubtedly suffered, and to the discontent of the
planters is credited the agitation that now gathered head against the continuation of the
monarchical system. The truth seems rather to be that the Empire had outlived its usefulness, and
surrounded by republics could not survive. There was also a general fear lest Isabel, said to be
priest-dominated, should be permanently appointed Regent, and this idea hastened the day that
would otherwise have been postponed, in all probability, until the death of the good and highly
revered Dom Pedro. A growing band of republicans, some of the foremost men in Brazilian
affairs today, found themselves strong enough to proclaim the end of the Empire; Dom Pedro
was informed and asked to leave the country within twenty-four hours, and did so; the Republic
in Brazil dates from November 15, 1889.

The first years of the new régime were darkened by disorders, the worst being the revolt, long-
drawn-out, 54in Rio Grande do Sul. Two military presidents were succeeded by four civilians,
and these in turn by a third militarist, and notably extravagant, presidency from 1910 to 1914.
The present President, a lawyer, Dr. Wencesláo Braz Pereira Gomez, is making heroic efforts to
redeem the financial condition of the country, and is fortunate in being aided by a group of
exceedingly able men. The country became deeply involved during the last twenty-five years; if
she were an old land the burden would be severe: her strength lies in her youth, internal vigour,
and unsurpassed abundance of untapped resources.

The tremendous money spending of Republican times has been sharply censured since the
outbreak of war in Europe suddenly pulled up the country to a realization of her debts; it is
probably fortunate that she was just too late to arrange yet another, for which negotiations were
opened in 1914. But while it is true that literally tons of money were borrowed and spent after
1889, it is also from that date that the great leap forward of the country is reckoned; her
extravagance was a wide advertisement—the attention of the world was called to this spoilt child
of the nations as no modest jogging along the beaten track would have done. Bankers,
commercial firms, writers, settlers came to Brazil; there was a feverish expansion in railroad
building, and from this period dates the inauguration of good modern port works in Rio, Bahia,
Pará, Pernambuco, Santos, Victoria, and many other points of call for ocean-going vessels;
waterworks and town drainage, the better paving of a score of cities, extinction of yellow fever
and other tropical pests, were all accomplished with money borrowed in the hey-day of Brazil.

55The check in facile borrowing of very large sums on easy terms has undoubtedly acted as a
cold shower upon South America in general, somewhat accustomed to financial sunshine; the
result has been salutary in awakening the people all over the continent to the need for
unprecedented personal effort. It has, too, brought about a new sense of North American
relations, created and needed, with South America. The European War has turned the United
States from the position of a debtor to that of a creditor country, and while up to the end of 1922
her loans to the whole of South America have not exceeded two hundred million dollars, chiefly
short-time State borrowings, caution is mutually beneficial. There is, however, much work to be
done which calls urgently for gold supplies, and it is but logical that the country accumulating
money rapidly should be willing to take up a due share of the development work waiting;
European interests need not and should not be ousted, but can be readily and happily
supplemented.

The United States of Brazil today contain over 24,000,000 people, still largely concentrated upon
the sea coast, in a score of thriving cities. She is at peace with her neighbours, with no shadow
upon her political horizon; her only great problem is the industrial, financial one, and this, with
the concentrated effort of Brazilians and the right kind of external help, can be solved. The entry
of Brazil into the War upon the side of the Allies, after the torpedoing of the Brazilian vessels
and the declaration of war by the United States against Germany, brought about a new
international comradeship, and has awakened the world to a better understanding of the spirit and
power of the country.

56

CHAPTER II
COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL
The story of colonization in Brazil is unique in the annals of the human movement across the
world that has been going on ever since man began to multiply and to seek elbow-room; it is one
of the phenomena of exodus.

Arrival upon the shores of Brazil of an extraordinary variety of races was not a voluntary
immigration in most instances. It was the result of a studied policy, inaugurated by the Emperors
of Brazil, and carried on to the present day by the Federal Government and certain of the
separate States; experiments in various kinds of people were made on a concerted plan, the
colonies were grouped, in many cases isolated, retained their language and customs, still produce
the food to which they were accustomed in the home land, and only become assimilated as their
populations leave them or touch in time the fringe of others. The official mothering which they
received tended rather to keep them grouped than to spread them in the earlier years.
The first official, deliberate importation of colonists of blood foreign to Brazil or Portugal began
in 1817, when Dom João brought in Swiss settlers. Agents of the Brazilian Government recruited
no less than five thousand in Bern, although owing to delays and accidents only about two
thousand sailed from Amsterdam and Rotterdam: landing on a hot coastal belt after a trying
voyage, fever took the mountaineers, and but a sparse 57seventeen hundred reached the foot of
the Serra do Mar. Climbing to the pretty nook where the town of their founding, Nova Friburgo,
stands today in a shelter of green mountains, sickness still followed them, and only the hardiest
or most resistant clung to the colony, survived and left their name to another generation. Many
dispersed to other localities. Nova Friburgo, now reached by the Leopoldina railway, and a
thriving city, fresh, flowery, producer of cereals and peaches, owns few Swiss inhabitants today.
A second batch of immigrants, three hundred and forty-two Germans, filled some gaps in the
ranks: their readiness for labour may have been heightened by memories of the difficulties of
transit to Europe, for the journey had taken one hundred and eighty days in a sailing-ship.
Germany at this period had not begun the industrial expansion which later kept all her people at
home; economic conditions were severe on the ambitious worker, laws and social customs were
irksome, and enterprising men looked across the seas for free lands. Germany became for about
twenty-five years the very best recruiting ground for Brazil.

The second official colony was founded in Rio Grande do Sul, and consisted entirely of Germans
—one hundred and twenty-six persons originally—who came in 1825. The colony was named
São Leopoldo, used the water highway of the Rio dos Sinos until a railway line was built
connecting it with Porto Alegre and with new colonies to the north, and has developed into one
of the chief towns of the state, with forty thousand inhabitants. Its establishment was followed
rapidly by that of Tres Forquilhas and S. Pedro de Alcantara, both in Rio Grande and both
German, 1826; by another S. 58Pedro de Alcantara, also German, in Santa Catharina, 1826; Rio
Negro, in Paraná, 1828, formed by disbanded German soldiers. Petropolis, the model city in the
hills above Rio, owed its inception to Dom Pedro and was founded with Germans and Swiss, but
not until 1848, for more than ten years of civil war down south in Rio Grande, when the
“República de Piritinim” was proclaimed, checked colonizing projects in the Empire. With the
suppression of trouble German colonizing was resumed in the south, Santa Catharina creating the
Santa Isabel colony in 1845, while Rio Grande started five new centres between 1849 and 1850.
The latter year is also memorable for the foundation of Blumenau, in Santa Catharina, by the
good Herr Blumenau of Brunswick. At the same point on the lovely river Itajahy a little nucleus
had existed precariously since 1827, added to by a group of one hundred and twenty-two
Belgians in 1844; Herr Blumenau brought in Germans gradually at his own expense, supervising
the colony in the rôle of a kind of paternal burgomaster, and in 1864 was able to count two
thousand five hundred people; his efforts had, however, cost him about twelve thousand dollars.
The Brazilian Government repaid him his outlay and made him official Director. Today
Blumenau, once a small self-contained nucleo, is a bustling city with fifty thousand people, a
lively exporting business and a railroad line. In 1850 the Dona Thereza colony in Paraná was
started, while the famous Joinville, first called Dona Francesca, began in 1851 in Santa
Catharina; it owed its existence to the fact that an Orleans scion, the Prince de Joinville, married
a Brazilian princess who inherited large estates chiefly consisting of matto in Santa Catharina.
The 59family ceded twelve square leagues of this land to the “Colonizing Union” of Hamburg,
whence settlers were promptly sent, both the Prince and the Brazilian Government making a
protégé of the nucleo. The large sums of money spent resulted in a fine town, now numbering
some twenty-five thousand people, served by the Brazil Railways. A little later (1852) the Minas
Geraes colony of Mucury was founded, but by this time German colonizing in arranged
shipments had come to an end; any additional German colonists came singly. The German
Government, both alarmed at the losses in blood—for emigration to North America and other
parts of South America was also proceeding, although along different lines—and by reports sent
home as the result of investigation which gave a poor account of the condition of the isolated
nucleos, passed a law to forbid emigration to Brazil. Dom Pedro had to turn his attention to other
countries.

Before the coming of the Germans, South Brazil was almost totally neglected; demand for
tropical produce such as sugar and tobacco had kept the attention of Portuguese and their mixed-
blood descendants for over three centuries to North Brazil, where negro slaves multiplied on the
warm coast; the grassy uplands of the south attracted few Brazilians, and these chiefly
bandeirantes whose main business was to keep out Spaniards from the Plate, and whose wild
cattle strayed and bred on the natural pastures. So wild and untenanted was the country that up to
the middle of the nineteenth century the German colonists had trouble with Indian raiders. But it
was the right climate for the north-born Europeans, a wise choice that proved a success while
other settlements dwindled out. During 60the same period there were several attempts to
colonize Espirito Santo, notably at Santa Isabel, and Cachoeiras and Transylvania, six or seven
starting between 1847 and 1856. The energy of the settlers was discounted by the hot climate,
and many moved south, where the great increase in settlers’ populations is a fair criterion of their
success. The official figures of German entries into Brazil from 1820 to the end of 1915 are one
hundred and twenty-two thousand eight hundred and thirty, but the people of German blood in
Brazil are now reckoned at about 250,000. The southerly towns under their influence are clean,
well-kept, live centres, with constantly expanding industries. Rio Grande today is quite one of
the best sections of Brazil: the influx of Italians brings them more than equal in numbers to the
German element, taking the state as a whole.

With organized German settlement checked, Brazil during the eighteen fifties turned her
attention to the mother country, and brought in Portuguese; they were settled in the warmer
latitudes. In 1853, such a colony was begun in Maranhão, at Santa Isabel, followed by five more
in the same northern and sultry state in 1855; in the same year three Portuguese colonies were
established in Pará, at Nossa Senhora d’O, at Peçanha and at Silva, while Rio de Janeiro was
planted with another five. A little later Bahia was given Portuguese colonies at Sinimbú,
Engenho Novo and Rio Pardo. These and others were not strikingly successful until or unless
joined by other colonists, for the Portuguese, who are artisans rather than agriculturists, melted
from the lonely settlements and found jobs in the coast cities.

61By this time coffee culture was coming into favour, the slave business was doomed, although
the actual abolition of slavery did not occur until 1888, and planters invited immigrants to their
developing estates. The work of obtaining immigrants was undertaken by individuals, as the
Vergueiro family by Theophilo Ottoni and the Visconde de Baependy, with varying success, as
well as by the International Society of Immigration of Rio, with headquarters in Antwerp.
Colonists sent to coffee estates worked on the métayer or parceria system, inherently vicious.
The colonist had the satisfaction of considering himself an independent worker, but as he started
with a large debt, never owned land and earned no wages, his lot was a poor one if crops failed
or the fazendeiro chanced to be unfair. He arrived owing for the passage of himself and family,
and was given a house and a quantity of food—of the country; he cultivated a certain number of
coffee trees, or allotment of sugarcane, took the harvest to the owner’s mill and received half the
result after milling. It is said by J. L. Moré, in his book Le Brésil en 1852, that the hardworking
Bavarians and Holsteiners who worked on this system in São Paulo often paid off their debts in
four years and then had money in hand; but other investigators spoke adversely on the subject,
finding colonists of ten and twelve years’ standing still indebted and living hopelessly. In the end
the parceria gave way before a general wages system. The métayer plan still exists in some parts
of Minas, Espirito Santo, São Paulo and other coffee regions, and can be found in the sugar
districts and in the cacao region of Bahia, but large ownership of great scientifically-run estates
has driven it from general employment. Investigations made by 62J. von Tschudi, sent by the
Swiss Government in 1857, and by the German Consul Haupt ten years later, proved the failure
of the share system; colonists could be seized and imprisoned if they tried to leave the estate on
which they worked, and, unable to support life on the produce of their allotments, would have
been even worse off had it not been for the “many acts of benevolence for which the emigrants
had to thank the kindness natural to so many Brazilians,” says the author of Brazilian
Colonization, a little brochure published under a pseudonym in London in the year 1873.

The same writer, giving a list of nationalities comprising the immigration into Brazilian states up
to that time, nearly thirty-five years ago, before the great entry of the Italians had begun, or that
of the Poles and Russians with their gift of hardy persistence, names a French colony taken to the
banks of the Ivahy river in Paraná about 1850, which expired for want of transportation and
therefore of markets; this, with the influx of Algerian French in 1868–1869 to a spot near
Curityba, also in Paraná, is the most important attempt of the Gallic race to found settlements in
Brazil; the disturbances of the latter, the first vine-growers of the state, gave the authorities as
much trouble as the subsequent adventures of the Russians ten years later in the same region.

“Jacaré Assu” also mentions a few Alsatians in Nova Petropolis (Rio Grande); the Dutch
families in Joinville, Rio Novo, Petropolis, and Leopoldina (Espirito Santo); the Tyrolian
wanderers; the Danes of Estrella; the Mongolians—five hundred and sixty-six of them, who
came by contract in 1856; and the colony of Icelanders 63who went to Joinville, and were “said
to be doing very well.” He also speaks of the “colonies of Brazilians” in Brazil, who were settled
in Estrella, at Sinimbú, Iguape and Itajahy; and the North American influx of 1867. This later
item was the result neither of population overflow nor invitation, but was the result of the
struggle between the North and South of the United States, the disappointed slave-owning
southerners seeking a land where their losses could be forgotten. The exodus, of course, was in
several directions: groups went into Mexico, some to Canada, to different parts of South
America; I have seen an excellent colony of these migrants and their descendants at Toledo in
the south of British Honduras, growing sugarcane and prospering. Those who came to Brazil
were brought from the port of New York by the “United States and Brazil Mail Ships,” since
defunct, the first batch of two hundred leaving in December, 1866. They were followed by some
thousands, but today it is difficult to trace them, the groups into which they were originally
assembled having long since broken up.

Seeking these settlements, I visited Villa Americana in São Paulo state but found it long since
turned into a villa Italiana, with only one family of American origin which seemed to have
thriven; forty miles or so across country, at Piracicaba, however, I found an American school,
admirably conducted by a little old lady who told me that she had come with the original settlers
of Santa Barbara, founded in the parish of Piracicaba, but now a shadow. Her school was a
delightful one, with the stocky girl pupils going through gymnastic exercises in unwonted
rational clothes, but they were all Brazilians; the Americans had melted, the ones 64who
remained not being able to keep up in the struggle.

There seem to have been at least four definite attempts at settlement besides individual selection
of dwelling places: these were at Santarem, on the Amazon’s junction with the Tapajoz river;
Cannavieiras, on the coast of southern Bahia; Juquiá, or Cananea, below Iguape in southern São
Paulo; and the Santa Barbara-Villa Americana group in central São Paulo. Some of the
immigrants had money, but in many cases the war had swallowed it; former owners of slaves,
they were often less fitted to make a living from the soil than the negroes they had left behind.
The one crop that they understood thoroughly was cotton, and it seems to have been tried at each
of the four spots named, but in at least two regions success was nullified by climate. In São
Paulo’s interior lands a fair measure of reward was obtained and an impulse to cotton growing
dates from this time. The Cananea colony, where some English were introduced about the same
time, was a notable scene of discontent; both groups of colonists hurried back to Rio and made
so many complaints that the consuls went through sieges. The fact was that the site for the
settlement was unsuited to Anglo-Saxon modes of life and that insufficient preparation had been
made: a few years ago a colony of Japanese was given land a few miles from the ill-fated spot, at
Iguape, and, settling down to grow rice, have made a striking success. But the points of view of
the two nationalities, as well as colonization methods pursued by the organizers in the different
cases, had nothing in common. At Cannavieiras there is today a thriving series of cacao
plantations and a Brazilian population: these people keep in 65order, carefully weeded, a grave.
There is a fence of hard Brazilian massaranduba about it, perennial flowers blossom above;
under the soil lie the three little children of the leader of the American colony, and of it there is
no other trace.

Of the Santa Barbara colony there is a story told which is comedy instead of tragedy. The
colonists grew, besides cotton, watermelons: one year just as the crop ripened, cholera broke out
in S. Paulo, the sale of melons was forbidden, and the growers faced ruin. At this time President
Cleveland had come into office in the United States, and had just appointed a new consul at
Santos: he must, then, be a good Democrat. The settlers, who on landing in Brazil had
ceremonially torn up the Constitution of the United States and offered thanks to heaven for
having permitted them to reach a land where the sacred Biblical institution of slavery was still in
force, remembered that they were American citizens. They wrote to the consul a letter of
congratulation on his arrival and at the same time detailed their grievances with regard to
watermelon sales. The consul replied cordially, suggested that he should visit them, and received
post haste a warm welcome. The afternoon of his arrival at the colony found the entire
population drawn up on the platform, a southern Colonel at the head of the deputation. The train
rolls up, a first-class compartment door opens, a gentleman steps out with a suitcase, and walks
up to the Colonel with outstretched hand. It was the consul—but a consul as black as the ace of
spades.
It is said that the Colonel, rising nobly to the occasion, gasped once, shook the hand of the
consul, and that he and the other southerners gave the official the 66time of his life; but when he
departed they vowed that never, never again would they trust a Democratic administration....

There are a few descendants of this group who have attained true distinction in Brazil and
genuinely work for the land of their adoption.

It was after the dwindling of the flow of German incomers about 1860 that a steady stream of
Italians was directed towards Brazil. Their wooing was in a great measure due to the
systematized efforts of the coffee-growers of S. Paulo state, and, after the establishment of the
republic in 1889, of the state authorities. Workers from North Italy were found to be those who
best suited the needs of conditions of the coffee industry, and to this part of Europe were directed
the attentions of recruiting agents. Laborious, serious, economical, bent upon acquiring a little
fortune, the Italians came with their wives and families, accepted their position as colonos upon
the great estates, never very ardently attached to one particular piece of soil, and ready to pick up
and move on wherever advantageous conditions beckoned.
Agriculture in S. Paulo State.

Cutting sugar cane.

Rice cultivation.
Coffee gathering.

67From the year 1820 to the end of 1919, a total of one million, three hundred and seventy-eight
thousand, eight hundred and seventy-six Italians have officially entered Brazil as immigrants.
With their children born in Brazil they total well over two millions today, greatly out-numbering
any other entering race. Their colonization has been a marked success, due not only to their
personal characteristics, but to the just treatment given them by the authorities. There was a time,
soon after the abolition of slavery, when the colonos brought in to fill labour gaps complained of
the relations between themselves and the fazendeiros; realizing that the existence of friction and
subsequent scandals would defeat their object, the São Paulo Government put machinery into
working order, known as the Patronato Agricola which adjusted differences, looked into social
conditions, and took in hand the work of giving medical care and schooling to immigrants. The
Italian has remained upon coffee fazendas, acquired land and coffee trees of his own or taken up
commercial work in the towns, rather than remained in nucleos; he has identified himself with
the modern progress of South Brazil, taken up manufacturing, built himself some of the most
splendid and extravagant houses in São Paulo city, famed as it is for luxurious dwellings; the
Avenida Paulista, pride of São Paulo, was “built on coffee,” and much of the wealth displayed
there is Italian wealth, created during the last twenty-five years. The year of greatest immigration
in Brazil is said to have been that of 1891 when out of a total of nearly two hundred and seventy-
six thousand, about one hundred and sixteen thousand were Italians; their influence upon
prosperity in São Paulo may be estimated by the fact that more than one million out of the State’s
three million population are of Italian blood. No other state has so systematized immigration,
perhaps because none had the pressing need and the immediate rewards to offer, as has São
Paulo; she no longer pays passages on steamships, but she maintains free hotels in Santos and
São Paulo city, where five meals a day are given, good airy rooms, baths, etc., and where
immigrants are lodged for a week or until work is found.

Preponderant as are the numbers of Italians, they are by no means the only southern settlers of
the last 68fifty years; Poles and Russians came in notable quantities in the late 1870’s and early
1880’s, settling in the Paraná uplands as well as in nucleos in São Paulo. At the end of the
century there were two thousand Russo-Germans from the Volga, farming land on methods of
their own in the neighbourhood of Curityba; an obstinate folk, they insisted upon tilling prairies
like their own steppes instead of choosing forestal land, shared all goods on the Russian
communistic plan, and gave the Brazilian authorities so much trouble that there must have been
sighs of relief when bodies of them deserted the nucleos and demanded to be sent back to Russia.
From those who stayed has grown up the tribe of Russian carters who do the road-transportation
work of the high Paraná plateau; there are groups of farmers, too, both Russians and Poles, who
share land in common and are raisers of wheat, their favourite rye, and other cereals; some have
taken up the business of gathering and curing matte, the “tea” which South Brazil grows and
exports to the Argentine.
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.

The system under which land is made over to colonists demands more explanation than space
permits; São Paulo, briefly, only sanctions the establishment of nucleos near a railway line or
navigable river, with an eye to marketing, and has inserted colonization clauses 69in more than
one railroad concession to help develop these settlements along the route; lots are never,
originally, of more than fifty hectares, and may be half this size if quite close to rail or river;
“urban” lots are granted to settlers with money in hand to start a business, and “rural” lots to
intending agriculturists; nobody can obtain a lot unless he has a wife and family, but sons
twenty-one years old can also obtain grants while bachelors; payments are made on easy terms,
generally at the end of each harvest for five successive years, prices varying according to locality
from a few milreis to a couple of hundred per hectare—roughly speaking; I have never heard of
unfeeling treatment in cases where settlers are unable to keep up payments in bad years, but
encountered many stories of help given by the authorities. When the male head of a family dies
before payments are complete, the widow and family are handed clear titles if three-quarters of
the debt has been liquidated, and if ability to continue work is demonstrated; if not, the family is
sent back to Europe at State expense. Rebates of ten per cent are given to settlers able to pay on
taking up land.

Following this plan, it happens that for several years after the foundation of a new centre the
colony is in debt, becoming emancipado as the obligations are paid off; São Paulo state is dotted
with pleasant examples of these “emancipated” colonies, today flourishing agricultural regions
well-farmed by the industrious and ambitious Europeans, adding enormously to the productivity
of the State. At the end of 1915 the State was acting as god-mother to half a score of nucleos, of
which the most promising are Campos Salles, Jorge Tibirçia, Nova Europa, Nova Veneza,
Gavião Peixoto, 70and the Martinho Prado group. In the same year, the President’s message
states, two hundred and ninety-three colonists completed payments on their lots and received
definite titles in place of the provisionary ones first issued: over one hundred and eighty-five
contos was paid on lots. “The total population still under State administration is 13,793 persons,
who occupy an area of 54,666 hectares; of these over 14,000 are in cultivation, yielding produce
worth 1800 contos of reis last year,” said Dr. Altino Arantes (July, 1916). Twenty thousand
people came into the state in 1915, of whom six thousand were Portuguese, four thousand
Spanish and four thousand Italian; this is but twenty per cent of pre-war average immigration to
S. Paulo.

In the course of years very many colonies have developed into regular towns, long since
“emancipated;” São Bernardo, Sabaúna and Bom Successo are notable instances, while the
capital city itself has reached out and absorbed nucleo hangers-on to her spreading petticoats.

One of the interesting recent experiments of São Paulo was the cession of some twelve million
acres of coastal land to a Japanese company with the object of creating an agricultural colony
with Oriental brains and labour. The organizing syndicate, with the approval of the Japanese
Government, was formed in Tokio in 1913, used Japanese capital, emigrants and ships, and has
already settled several thousand people. Studied preparations and soil experiments were made
before any colonists were carried over. Practical results so far have included a large addition to
Brazil’s production of rice, while the resurrection of the once flourishing tea industry is also said
to be in sight. This Japanese colony is notable for its tactful introduction: wishing to 71avoid
even the chance of friction, the organizers stipulated its location in a spot which, able to
communicate by water with markets, does not rub shoulders with other centres of population.
Iguape is reached either by small steamers from Santos, or by rail from Santos to a spot on the
river Iguape communicating with the colony by riverine boats, but little is heard of the Japanese
settlement in São Paulo; they live to themselves and their chief appearance is in statistical
reports. Besides the members of this agricultural colony there are at least another eight or ten
thousand Japanese in Brazil, chiefly house servants, greatly liked for their quick, sophisticated
resource.

Apart from the serious, long-continued work of the São Paulo authorities to win labour from
abroad, there is still a remarkable amount of support given to immigration by the Federal
Government; nucleos to the number of twenty are supervised by the authorities, seven of which
have been “emancipated” while thirteen are still paying for their allotments. The seven free
centres, Tayó, Ivahy, Jesuino Marcondes, Itapará, Iraty and Vera-Guarany, in Paraná, and
Affonso Penna in Espirito Santo, contain nearly 33,000 persons, the remaining thirteen counting
19,000 persons: together the colonies had an agricultural yield in 1915 worth 14,223 contos of
reis, and own livestock valued at 2,427 contos.

The State of Minas Geraes has made repeated efforts to encourage immigration and spent large
sums upon propaganda and the establishment of nucleos. She has under supervision sixteen state
colonies, with a total population of 26,000 persons, agricultural production from the lands under
cultivation amounting in 1915 to 72the value of 3,155 contos of reis. There are also within the
state borders two Federal colonies, one of which, João Pinheiro, has freed itself from
indebtedness and is on the way to become an important agricultural and stock-raising centre;
these two nucleos contain over two thousand persons.

In Rio Grande do Sul colonization has been seriously checked since 1913, but there are two
important centres under State control which call for mention: one is the Guarany nucleo, in
existence for a quarter of a century but counting only 25,000 inhabitants because it is off the line
of communication with state markets; its position is strikingly contrasted with the Erechim
colony, six years old, planted on the Rio Grande-S. Paulo railway line when the latter was
opened to traffic, and which today has over 30,000 population grouped in six or seven bright
little villages.

In 1915, when entries from abroad were checked on account of the war in Europe there were still
immigrants from Portugal to the number of 15,000, 6,000 Italians, nearly as many Spanish, 600
Russians and 500 “Turco-Arabs:” also some two thousand Brazilians were moved from the
“scourged” districts of the rainless north and sent south. From 1820 to the end of 1919 the
number of immigrants entering Brazil has been as follows:—

Italians 1,378,876
Portuguese 1,021,271
Spaniards 500,378
Germans 127,321
Russians 105,225
Austrians 79,302
Turk-Arabs 54,120
French 29,665
British 28,798
Japanese 18,402
Swiss 11,376
Swedes 5,502
Belgians 5,289

73In addition, official lists give another 200,000 of “diversas” nationalities and a margin must
also be allowed for persons who did not enter as immigrants.

Where is the future immigrant of Brazil to come from, and to what part of the country is he to
go? I have put this question frequently to Brazilians, and have almost invariably received an
answer to this effect: “We want white immigrants, and they can settle healthily either in the cool
south of Brazil or on the high interior uplands.” The sertões of Matto Grosso and Goyaz will not
attract foreign settlers until there is better communication; the land is there, but the markets are
not available. But there is land and to spare still in São Paulo with its network of railways and
good riverways, and there is excellent cereal and cattle land in Paraná, Santa Catharina and Rio
Grande do Sul, for the northern-born, who cannot face a semi-tropical climate: for him who can
face it—as the Texas cotton grower should do—there are extensive regions farther north in
Pernambuco and her sister states. The extreme north is not fitted for white, Anglo-Saxon or
Latin, families, and although single men can live healthily in such latitudes for many years, the
life of such tropic exiles is not good for the individual or for society. Coloured or Asiatic
colonists have been suggested for the Amazonian valley, but it is at least doubtful whether the
Brazilian Government would favour such plans, or whether, in view of the fertility of the native
population, such introductions would be necessary; saving babies by improved sanitation would
solve the problem better than any other method of populating.

The question of where white immigration is to come from is a difficult one; after the close of the
European 74War, there was an exodus from Russia and the most troubled regions of Central
Europe. But on the other hand the formation of new States created an appeal to national feeling
that kept at home as creative builders many men who would otherwise have been, probably,
among the emigrants. São Paulo received in 1920 nearly 45,000 immigrants, the bulk of all
entrants, and has added considerably to the southerly Japanese colonies producing rice, silk and
tea; and the conclusion, in late 1921, of an emigration treaty between Brazil and Italy
immediately set flowing a strong tide of Italian workers.

Many ex-service men with camp experiences are still looking about them for the country offering
most to farmers and stock-raisers. To such men there are few parts of the world which offer as
much as does Brazil, with her sincere invitation to foreigners, square dealing, stability, and
rewards for enterprise. The lack of development along certain definite lines is Brazil’s best
recommendation to the enterprising and persistent.

No seeker after dolce far niente should come here. No thought of tropic paradises should obscure
the vision of the newcomer. Brazil is a good country for the worker, with wide southern lands
where careful cultivation will bring excellent results; it is a really free country of tolerant views
as well as of wide spaces. The foreigner who comes here to work, to develop, will feel himself
remarkably soon at home in a friendly atmosphere, and if he cares to identify himself with
progressive movements he will be warmly welcomed; a very long list could be made up of high-
class foreigners who have attained not only to wealth but to positions which proved the open
mind and confidence of the Brazilian authorities. Naturalized foreigners are eligible to the
legislative assemblies of Brazil, and whether naturalized or not foreigners enjoy precisely the
same rights and privileges as Brazilians before the law.
The Barra Road, Upper City, Bahia.

Resaca along the Avenida Beira Mar, Rio; Morro da Gloria in background.

On the Upper Amazon.

75For the mining engineer, the stock-raiser, the expert agriculturist, the fruit-grower, there is
plenty of room in Brazil; along certain special lines his work is much wanted, and he can look
forward to getting a better return for his investment of personality and cash than in most places
in a world that has not many great untouched spaces left. The pioneer, hardy and determined, has
still a chance in Brazil.

76

CHAPTER III
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
One afternoon I sat in a street-car of the Copacabana line running to and from the heart of Rio de
Janeiro city. As we approached the Avenida and paused at a sharp turn at the regulator’s signal, a
small boy poorly clad in cotton clothes got on to the front platform with a dinner pail in his hand.
He set it down, removed his cap, and bent his knee as the motorman, with a swift smile at the
child, extended his right hand. The boy respectfully kissed it, replaced his cap, and jumped
down.

The little incident was typical of the wide spread of gentle manners in Brazil; it is here usual
enough to see elderly bankers kiss the hands of their parents, but courtesy is not confined to
cultured classes. One may in Brazil depend upon a street cleaner as much as upon a senator for
chivalrous politeness. A stranger may address any passer-by in a Brazilian street in the most
execrable Portuguese and will almost invariably receive serious and kindly attention: it is said
that the Brazilian with his agreeably poised attitude to life “laughs at everything except a
stranger who is speaking bad Portuguese.”

I do not mean that strangers are treated with special courtesy; good manners are habitual.
Brazilian men meeting each other in the street half a dozen times in a day, lift their hats to each
other: no one, obliged to step past another closely on a street-car, but will raise 77his hat and
murmur “Com licença!” 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. People of less punctilious societies are
apt to speak with a degree of contempt of “surface politeness,” and to say that they prefer
roughness and a good heart; generally this kind of remark is a clumsy apology for boorishness,
and as a matter of fact a good heart is quite as likely to exist under a courteous exterior as under
a discourteous one; a habit of consideration for others in speech and small actions is without
doubt good training for any variety of heart and head. 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. His excellent manners are a
part of his heritage.

Apparently, the very considerable additions to the Brazilian population by immigration during
the last hundred years have made little difference to Brazilian society; it is true that the
Englishman with his tennis 78and football and his rowing-clubs has introduced and popularized
sport, so that today there are thousands of young Brazilians taking part in these pleasures and it is
true that the influx of artistic French in the reigns of the two Emperors affected and stimulated
sculpture, painting and writing in Brazil; in each case these were entries into Brazilian society,
the new element arriving with a recognized status as members of important firms or with a semi-
official position. There has been family mingling, many English and French choosing wives
from distinguished Brazilian families, and in this way the influence of European ideas frequently
has its effect on the education of the children of such unions. To a less noticeable extent almost
every nationality is found in Brazilian society, for this is a country which has always welcomed
the stranger of distinction, but no race has impressed itself so firmly upon national characteristics
as the Franco-Latin. Immigration, properly speaking, the systematic colonization with which São
Paulo supplied her coffee lands with labour and Rio Grande and Paraná settled their open spaces,
and Minas tried to supplant negro workers, has affected Brazilian social conditions scarcely at
all. Generally isolated in wide areas, often with no communication with the outside world except
by mule-trail or river until the railway came a few years ago, the organized colonies of Russians,
Poles, Basques, Bessarabian Jews, Japanese, Swiss and Germans lived their own lives, retaining
perforce the language and customs of the lands from which they came. The Italians, employed on
great fazendas, were more in contact with Brazilian life than any other race, and even they keep
their own speech together with newly-learned Portuguese, eat Italian 79food and read Italian-
language newspapers printed in Brazil. Not until the development of industry brings the colonies
into closer contact with each other and with Brazilian centres of old standing will the Galician
and Arab affect any society but of his own race. No attempt has been made, probably wisely, to
force these settlers into the Brazilian national communion; they were needed to fill spaces, to
bring land into cultivation and develop the wasted resources of an enormous land: they have
done Brazil this service, and Brazil in return respects their feelings and traditions. One reason for
this lack of interference with the colonies was that Brazil possessed little machinery which could
have brought about a marked change: but deliberate policy also entered into the question. It was
realized that a change would come about with the passage of years, when the second or third
generations grew and mingled in a common society, Brazilians born and bred, and that
meanwhile Brazil was too big to fear the effect of these nucleos with their strong retention of
foreign loves and habits. Broadminded enough to sympathize with such feelings, the Brazilian
knows that no man worth his salt forgets his native land; his idea was expressed by the genial
writer, J. M. de Macedo, when, speaking of the French who made fortunes in Brazil and returned
with their savings to France, he said: “If it be a sin to love one’s own country better than any
other country, then am I a sinner too!” It is in fact because the Brazilian has so keen a devotion
to his own beautiful land that he comprehends the home-love of the immigrant.
Class distinction still reigns in Brazil to a certain degree, as may be expected in a land where
slavery 80existed until twenty-eight years ago, and which twenty-seven years ago still had an
Emperor and a Court with a retinue of nobles. These nobles retain their titles still, except in cases
where formal renunciation was made, but a provision was made at the establishment of the
Republic that they should not be inherited. It is an example of the liberal spirit in which the break
was made, and the absence of ill-feeling towards the Empire, that Brazil thinks as much of her
Commendadores, Conselheiros, Barões, Viscondes and Condes as she does of any newly
distinguished bacharel of today. Dom Pedro II gave these titles, very often, in recognition of
some special service to Brazilian development, and it is for this reason that, encountering the
Conde de Leopoldina, we find him to be an Englishman surnamed Lowndes. When the Princess
Isabel (Condessa d’Eu) celebrated her seventieth birthday in the summer of 1916 the Brazilian
newspapers printed long notices speaking with appreciation of her regencies over Brazil, and
acclaiming her act in freeing the slaves of 1888; a few months previously a monarchical society
held meetings in the capital, their sayings and doings were reported in the public press without
any excitement, and the trend of editorial comment was, “Well, with the republic in such a
muddle, it is no wonder.”

It is needless to say that the restoration of a monarchy in Brazil is quite unthinkable, and that the
society’s existence is more interesting than important, but I mention it to show the amused
tolerance of the Brazilian towards other people’s opinions. He has a detached, sometimes cynical
attitude, believes in frank discussion and the airing of ideas, and together with a markedly
democratic habit of life retains a European 81respect for tradition and authority. 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. From the cultivated caste in Brazil is chiefly drawn
the political group: there have been exceptions, as in the case of Pinheiro Machado, but as a rule
the reins are in the hands of a distinct social element, descendants of white Portuguese families
and frequently men of great intellectual strength. The names of the Visconde de Rio Branco,
Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves, João Alfredo and Affonso Penna are but four out of a long list of
statesmen of the first rank in Brazil. The ruling classes are almost always great landowners,
fazendeiros, and there was a time when sons of such families destined themselves to politics,
agriculture or one of the “professions;” today commercial careers are sometimes chosen—
perhaps partly because the planter of coffee or sugar is often necessarily a mill owner and
shipper as well—as Brazil becomes more industrialized, but although these young men may
enter other than the traditional spheres, it is seldom that theirs is invaded from the world of
industrialists or commerciantes. The latter are, indeed, largely recruited from the foreign
element; shop-keepers as well as commission agents and dealers all down the coast were once
largely British and French, but now 82the energetic Portuguese-born trader, with the keen Italian
and Spaniard, and the still more insinuating Syrian, has absorbed a marked proportion of the
retail business.

Below the commercial element comes that of labour, stratum of entirely different composition; it
differs too in varying localities, from that of the south, where slavery tailed off in São Paulo,
never penetrating the more southerly states, and where white labour of immigrant origin
performs field work, to the central section where the mestizo (mixed blood) of white and Indian
or, about Bahia and Pernambuco, white and negro, blood is the worker; in and near Bahia itself
thousands of pure-blood negroes or mulattos form the labouring class, to the almost total
exclusion of any other. Farther north the negro element fades out and the Indian mixture
predominates in a wiry strain which furnishes all the labour of the Amazon valley.

Upon this great mass of mixed-blood labourers the educational systems of Brazil make a certain
if slow impression. Intelligent and apt, docile if conciliated and stubborn if crossed, the mestizo
has some excellent qualities; the indolence of which he is often accused is sometimes want of
direction, and sometimes the result of ill-health in certain regions, disappearing when the
enervating malaria and ankylostomiasis are conquered, exactly as in the South of the United
States where the same troubles are common. With better sanitation in the crowded warm regions,
and persistence in good schooling, the brasileiro of the labouring classes would not need
supplanting with introduced immigrants. Between him and the legislator there is a great gulf
fixed; its existence might be dangerous were not the 83habit of the Brazilian gentle; it can be
bridged only by education. “We have no organization for the expression of popular opinion,”
declared a Brazilian writer recently. “The statesman, the government official, the legislator, the
administrator has to be a kind of powerful Jehovah, capable of creating worlds out of nothing ...
unless the bachelor (bacharel—“doctor”) president, the bachelor governor, the bachelor minister
or the bachelor deputy should sally forth through Brazil (saiam por esses Brazis afóra), over
mountains and valleys, to enquire at the window of every farm, at the door of every store, at the
entrance of each factory, in each lacemaker’s shop and at each blacksmith’s forge, what
Agriculture, Commerce, Industry and the Proletariat wish for their practical and effective
betterment....” At least it can never be said that the faults and lapses of Brazil are not understood
and discussed by her own educated classes; there is no country where self-criticism is more
hearty. During the early part of 1916 a party of specialists in tropical maladies from the
Rockefeller Institute passed through Brazil and made some investigations; one of the weeklies of
Rio famous for its cartoons and skits on public affairs remarked that the visitors need not have
come to Brazil to study malaria—they would find that in a hundred places: they should study the
troubles that were really peculiar to Brazil. It gave an illustrated list: among the items was the
“national long tongue”—we talk too much; another was bacharelismo—everyone in Brazil
wants to be a “Doctor” of medicine or law or philosophy. It is a disease not altogether limited to
Brazil, despite the Malho.

Cartoons in Brazil have a point of interest in addition 84to their wit, in the presentment of a
national figure, “Zé (José) Povo.” Zé Povo is “the people,” quite distinct from the dignified
figure of the República, a lady in draperies crowned with the Phrygian cap. Zé is the man in the
street who stands by and makes acid comments; he has no counterpart in North American or
English journals, but speaks his mind much as “Liborio” does in the Cuban humorous-political
papers. No one can say that the press is not free in Brazil.

Industrial expansion in Brazil will be the great amalgamator of the grades and divisions of the
population; colonists of foreign origin cannot continue to live in separate nests, commercial
fortunes will blend society, and the expansion of agriculture will sooner or later mean the
evolution of the sertanejo into a modernized, trading farmer; as the hills are opened for metals
and the forests are entered for hardwoods and dyes and latex, the millions of Indians of the
interior must be brought into line, or, retreating, eventually die out—the worst solution of his
case and probably an unnecessary one. But at the present day there are many distinct types
among Brazilian populations, and of them that of the sertanejo, the farmer of the interior, the
sertão, is not the least interesting. Here on the wide uplands of the plateau he lives very much as
Isaac lived, his world about him, his home, servants and herds his chief interests; simple,
philosophic, intensely hospitable although reserved and proud, he makes little money but by his
cattle, and wants little. His bodily needs are few, his furnishings of the simplest; his food is
mainly the inevitable farinha de mandioca, milk products, beans (feijão) and eggs and carne. He
may be the owner of great expanses of land, but he will seldom sell or divide 85it and there is no
other life that he will endure and live. In touch with the open sky, the broad horizon before him,
the sertanejo is of a class apart; his is a simple and a dignified figure.

Brought to town, through acquisition of money or the wishes of his womenfolk, the farmer of the
interior is a peg for many witticisms of the townsman; he is a “caipira,” a countryman, a hayseed,
and endless amusement is obtained at his expense. One of the Rio weeklies, the Careta, once ran
a series of illustrated adventures of such a farmer who is supposed to come to Rio de Janeiro on a
visit with his wife and pretty daughter, and who takes in the “sights” of the Capital from the
countryman’s angle.

A simple camaraderie prevails in the upland interior, where little money passes and barter of
goods is the most common form of exchange; it is frequently impossible to hire labour, and as a
consequence farmers and their sons invite the help of their neighbours when field work is
needed, giving their own time in turn when occasion arises. No distinction between rich and poor
occurs in a society of such friendly simplicity.

In the cattle regions there is a special ceremony every year, for rounding and branding cattle,
known as the feira dos bizerros (calf branding) and the apartação do gado—separation of herds,
frequently running with those of other fazendeiros over unfenced country. All the neighbours
arrive at the farm which is thus counting its stock, families making it an occasion of friendly
reunion. During the evenings of the two or three days of festa there is a continual round of coffee
drinking and eating, many a marriage is arranged and consummated; 86at the close of the work
there is frequently a series of competitions of skill in horsemanship, the clever performance of
the vaquejada or derrubada always exciting a critical audience. Horsemen, mounted on well-
trained animals, post themselves at the gate of the corral where bulls have been shut up for a day
or two; the bars are let down and when the cattle rush out each of the horsemen tries to seize a
bull by its tail and throw it to the ground—success largely depending on the cleverness of the
horse in avoiding the rushes and struggles of the bull. The last night is one of continual dancing
and temperate feasting, the flute and violin sounding until dawn. It is a little curious that these
instruments, with the guitar, are the favourites of the musical peasantry of Brazil, and that the
exquisite marimba of African origin, carried by negroes into Central America and there
enthusiastically adopted by the Quiché-Cachiquel natives, should not have also found a home in
the southern continent.

Among the other figures of the sertão, created by the absence of mechanical transportation in a
series of great regions, is the tropeiro, the leader and frequently the owner of a troop of mules
carrying the products of the interior to market. A good tropeiro is entrusted with the marketing
of the cotton crop of a fazenda or even a district, and he will carry cash for long distances,
settling accounts, making purchases; his mules are trained performers who know their work and
make themselves understood if there is anything wrong with one of their number. In the north of
the Brazilian promontory—Bahia, Pernambuco, interior Ceará, Maranhão and Rio Grande do
Norte as well as the hinterlands of the central states, the tropeiro undertakes the transportation of
87much of the interior crop of cotton, sugar and tobacco.

He is doomed to extinction as the steel arms of the railroads push out into the interior, but his day
is not yet done.

Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the Englishman and baseball to the
North American. It is a form of excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a
great deal, an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. 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. A bicho is in Brazil any kind of
animal or bird or insect—everything living is popularly a bicho—and in this underground lottery
groups of numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc., something more
interesting than a bald set of figures. The bicho was of independent origin, with twenty-five
animals represented, but nowadays depends upon the government results, and is really a gamble
on a gamble, but with the advantage that combinations and groups can be played on, and very
small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on your favourite humming-bird again and again
without feeling the loss when the anta persists in coming up instead, 88and there would be little
harm done did not servants sent to the market get the bicho habit so badly, together with shoe-
shiners and waiters and all the working class, that in its acutest form “playing on the bicho”
becomes an obsession equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the bicho can be bought at many
newsdealers, in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run it, and some daily papers
print pictures of the winning animals: it is well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because
while a modest winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the
assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no redress as the whole thing is
illegal.

Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not yield a public revenue, and that
people spend, in the aggregate, more money on the bicho than on public lotteries which are
sources of governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occasionally prosecuted,
the bicheiros continue to exist and to furnish a mild form of excitement and adventure. I do not
think that lotteries are more objectionable originators of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear
to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is universally abstemious, and the rule is
not broken in Brazil.

Rarely does the Brazilian born and bred drink anything stronger than coffee, and this he takes, in
little cups in the innumerable cafeterias of every city, many times a day. Since the established
price of a little cup of hot, very strong black coffee is but a tostão (two U. S. cents) there is no
great extravagance about this. At family meals a little wine, generally imported from Portugal,
France or Italy, is on the table: since Rio Grande has been trying her hand at wine-making the
bottle may contain vinho nacional; in any case it is sparingly used. The younger generation has
taken to a limited extent to the whisky introduced by the Britisher, the beer of the German, now
very well brewed in the country, and the cocktail of the newcomer of North America, but he
appears to drink these exotics more with a desire to be in the fashion or a “good sport” than
because he likes them.
Monroe Palacio, on the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.

Municipal Theatre, São Paulo City.

89Deliberate drinking is almost confined to the festas beloved of the mestizo and mulatto
populations, especially celebrated in agricultural districts, when the Brazilian-made cachaça, a
kind of rum made from sugarcane, is liberally consumed. Its festive use seems to be a survival of
Indian custom, for the natives of the coasts and forests in pre-Portuguese days made a fermented
liquor (from milho = maize) for special occasions, and their descendants as well as the negro
element, also great lovers of celebrations, regard an occasional period of revelry as a right. The
influence of Christianity has succeeded in identifying these festal occasions with, and confining
them to, saints’ days and other Church celebrations, but their root is more primitive.

Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dissension or the cause of social upheaval: the
original donatarios brought chaplains with them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and
members of Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding
establishments in the settlements. With regard to the natives their task was easy, since there
existed no definite religion to be eradicated, and, except when the work of the missionaries
interfered with the designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the padres,
colonists, and authorities; many 90of them had a hand in political matters, were emissaries
between the mother country and Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever
established in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the erection of the
Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State, probably much to the betterment of
conditions, for considerable criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity following
upon security; put upon her mettle as an independent organization, and faced with the
competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman Catholic church in Brazil is said to
have performed much needed purifying.

Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity exist undisturbed, and

although their temples are very generally attended exclusively by the foreign congregations
responsible for their origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is undoubtedly
useful. In the southern organized settlements each community practises the form of faith of the
home land, the Russians of the Greek church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and
so on; there is not the slightest interference—religious intolerance is indeed unimaginable in
Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that this attitude arises from indifference, that the
practice of religious observances is left to women and children and that the grown men of
communities are cynical—next door to what used to be called “agnosticism” by the professional
European unbelievers of the past generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an
appearance of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is common for Brazilian
men in conversation 91to affect an airy amusement before the claims of religious bodies: but due
allowance must be made for French influence. 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.
As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions comparable to the tendency in
the United States which is so curious an indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to
conceive Brazilian reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable example
of serious adoption of a new faith is found in the extreme South, where the principles of August
Comte have taken root, and the riograndense of the educated ruling class is generally a Comtist.

In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion of Roman Catholic
churches to the population is remarkably large, particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder
sister, Olinda. That they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element, for here
as in all other parts of the world where he has been taken the negro is a fervent admirer of almost
any kind of religion. 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. In these centres all
the many saints’ 92days are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a simple
faith in “white magic” survive; here that the ceremonies of All Hallowe’en are performed by
maids of the sertão, and spells invoked. St. John’s is one of the popular days, with its legends and
traditional celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion as youth of
Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves and flowers, go down to the river
banks to wash, singing as they go, because as the verse says: “Nessa noite é benta a agua. Pará
tudo tem virtudes.” Fires are lighted outside each house in homage to St. John, and at these green
corn is roasted—the traditional milho assado na fogueira. Over the hot ashes of these fires the
faithful walk barefoot without being burnt....

On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart, and girls try to discover
their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is not the only aider of candidates for matrimony—
there is “São Gonçalvo,” a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his
power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint is quoted by Pereira da Costa
in his Folklore Pernambucano and begins: “Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm
binder, tie him who wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder the
steps of Fulano as with a strong cage....”

St. Raymund is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed prayer of noted efficiency is
addressed to him; translated freely it runs:

Miraculous Saint Raymund,

You who help everyone to marry,
Please tell Saint Anthero
93That I wish to be married soon
To a very good-looking young man,
In the church of Saint Benedict.
Before the altar of Saint Rosa
I want to give my hand as a wife
To him whom I love so much,
Asking Saint German
And also Saint Henry
That I shall be happily married.
May Saint Odoric permit
That the young man be rich,
And Saint Augustine grant
That he loves me very much
And I beg Saint Robert
That he may be clever.
Also I pray Saint Vincent
That the wedding may be soon,
Begging Saint Innocencia
Not to let me lose patience,
And asking Saint Caetano
That it may happen this year.
I have already prayed Saint Inez
Not to let this month pass,
And Saint Mariana,
That it may be this week—
And I beg the Virgin Our Lady
That it may be this very hour!

From which it will be seen that the saints are expected to be useful, and that festas of the church
are agreeable to these young people, leading in the older centres a rather restricted social life.

94Women in Brazil occupy a position out of which they have been forced or have voluntarily
emerged in many countries. It is for many reasons a very happy life, for, withdrawn as she is, the
Brazilian wife and mother has complete authority over the wide sphere which tradition has so
long assigned to her. It is a moot point whether women in other lands would seek emergence
from that circle if circumstances did not send them from it; the salary-earning women of Western
Europe and North America perhaps do not always realize that theirs is not altogether a choice
between home and independence, that they work because they must work. The exigencies of
climate, as well as modern education, send women out to the ranks of the workers in lands where
there are at least as many women as men.

In Brazil there is no such equality of numbers. The list of men is always much longer than that of
women, chiefly because of the stream of male immigrants who arrive in the country without
families, and, earning good wages, set about the acquisition of a home. The predominant classes
of such immigrants are Portuguese, and these men, speaking the same language and with close
affiliations to Brazil, readily seek wives among the Brazilian families to which their status gives
them entry. Little social adjustment is needed in such unions, much less than in the case of the
marriage of Brazilian girls with foreigners of a totally divergent origin.

The Brazilian girl is said to be precocious, and she is certainly the possessor of tactful manners
and distinct aplomb in her early teens. If she is a member of a wealthy family she has generally
spent some years in French schools, and it is not unusual to find beautiful 95young women of
nineteen or so who have been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland and England, and who
speak four or five languages fluently. All educated Brazilians speak and read French, most of
them understand but will not speak English, and nearly all those from the more southerly parts of
Brazil have learned German for commercial reasons or have been partly educated in Germany.
Educational affiliations with the United States are new, and apply to young men more than to
girls; technical training in engineering or trading is sought increasingly in North America for
business reasons as commercial exchange develops, but the closely guarded, often conventual
training of the girls has a very different aim. The young Brazilian girl is frequently a good
horsewoman, for life on a farm is almost sure to be included in the tale of her early years; she is
often also a good swimmer. Music is an invariable part of her education on which stress is laid,
and I have heard some brilliant executants among Brazilian women. Dressed in the height of
Parisian fashions, chic, demure outside her family and full of gay camaraderie with her endless
lines of brothers and sisters inside the home, the Brazilian young girl is a very charming creature.
She has the loveliest dark eyes in the world, and often possesses a very fine clear pale skin.

Married, she seems to resign herself contentedly to a purely domestic life; one enters homes in
Brazil whose handsome hostess entertains delightfully, always exquisitely dressed, and sparkling
with the big diamonds that are considered the simple right of every woman in Brazil—my
washerwoman in Rio had a pair of brilliant earrings that cost three contos of reis, representing
her life’s savings—but this same smiling hostess will never 96be seen outside her spacious home
and gardens, except upon the formal occasions when she is obliged to make an appearance in
public with her husband. She not infrequently displays a tendency to embonpoint early in life, the
result of lack of exertion and the eating of the extraordinary and delicious doces (sweets and
candies), the creation of which is a special art of Brazilian women, but she does not mind this at
all, fearing a thin figure as the most terrible of disasters in this land where the highest
compliment paid to a woman is: “How pretty and fat you are getting!” Gorda and bonita are
indeed interchangeable terms.

She accepts her destiny as a mother of many children, and generally spoils them badly, at least in
their infancy; the father is equally indulgent. A harsh parent is a rara avis, and nothing excites
popular indignation in Brazil more than any story of hardship in which children are concerned.
Passionately devoted to her babies, the Brazilian mother stays within her home, is the gracious
sovereign of her circle, and seems little disturbed when it expands notably. This expansion is
likely to happen if any relative either on her side or her husband’s falls upon evil days; in that
case he will come with his family and camp out until fortune smiles again. There is no turning of
the cold shoulder upon poor relations in Brazil—they are welcome to a share of the family fare,
and to hammock space if beds are lacking in the case of poorer homes, secure in the knowledge
that they in turn will repay this good deed with similar ones later on. The city centres have of
course their more rigid social laws, but in the less restricted life of smaller towns or fazendas
there is often encountered another variation from the harsher rules of some other 97lands: this is
the placid acceptance into a home of children who do not claim the mistress of the house as
mother, but who receive from her bed and board and a status little inferior to that of her own
babies, regular members of society. Lapses from social law occur all over the world; they are
punished to a greater or lesser degree everywhere, but in some countries the innocent suffer more
than the guilty; unhappy and unwanted children bear a stigma against which they rebel in vain.
Brazilian opinion does not spare offenders, but it does withhold any harsh hand from innocent
children. Acknowledged and treated with affection, they are given a chance in life together with
the more fortunate.
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. Rio is the “intellectual centre” of Brazil, and here are gathered the scores of good
writers and poets, the artists and politicians, of the country; there is a profuse and characteristic
literature. If the North American writer was correct in saying that “American literature is only a
phase of English literature,” he would have been equally justified in saying that South American
literature is a phase of French literature: yet in Brazil this would have less truth than in most
parts of Latin 98America, because this country has so largely developed a series of writers who
take native Brazilian life for their theme. There are long lists of Brazilian novels and poems
which really reflect Brazil conditions in the very varied sections of the country; I know no other
South American country whose literature is so emancipated, not from French style so much as
from European subject matter. There is for instance the excellent work of the Visconde de
Taunay, whose charming Innocencia is a picture of interior conditions, and has been translated
into almost every language, not excepting Japanese. The books of José de Alencar form another
series of provincial pictures; Machado de Assis wrote a number of historical novels of great
merit and interest; Coelho Netto, Aluisio de Azevedo, J. M. de Macedo, Xavier Marques, are
among a score of names of writers who have left records of Brazilian life. If I were advising the
study of a brief list of such novels, this would be a preliminary dozen:—

Innocencia: by the Visconde de Taunay. Novel of fazenda life in the interior—a delicate and
touching story.

Os Sertões: by Euclydes da Cunha. Powerful and vivid description of a page of national history,
with a setting in the interior Brazilian uplands.

O Sertão: by Coelho Netto. Scene also laid in the interior, with its simple customs.

O Mulato: Aluisio de Azevedo. Deals with the position of the negro half-caste in Brazil.

O Gaucho: José de Alencar. Life of the Brazilian cowboy.

Os Praieiros: Xavier Marques. Life of the fisherfolk on islands near Bahia.

99O Paroara: Rodolpho Theophilo. Exodus of the Cearenses to the rubber forests of the
Amazon.

Maria Dusá: Lindolpho Rocha. Story of diamond hunters in the interior of Bahia.

Braz Cubas and Quincas Borba: Machado de Assis. Historical novels dealing with colonial life.

Esphynge: Afranio Peixoto. Social life of Rio and Petropolis, or Dentro da Noite or Vida
Vertiginosa, by “João do Rio,” also social life of the Capital.
There are also the finely written novels of Brazil’s woman writer, Julia Lopez de Almeida,
whose Fallencia is a very skilful piece of work; and no study of Brazilian life would be complete
without José Verissimo’s Scenas da Vida Amazonica, preserving tales and legends of the
Amazon, and the kindly Memorias da Rua do Ouvidor, of J. M. de Macedo, telling tales of the
early days of Rio de Janeiro.

Poets are many. The “Prince of Brazilian poets,” acclaimed by public vote, is Olavo Bilac,
whose Via Lactea is a beautiful work: he is one of the most distinguished members of the
Academia Brasileira, whose President is the publicist and orator of international fame, Senator
Ruy Barbosa.

Olavo Bilac is something more than a poet; he has recently made it his mission to sound a “call
to arms,” addressed to Brazilian young men, with the object of bringing about physical and
moral improvement through military service. His addresses in the capitals in 1915 made a great
stir: he later, in the middle of 1916, began a tour of Brazil, penetrating into interior regions as
well as visiting coast towns, to repeat his appeal. A most admired and beloved poet, Bilac has
100prestige which few other people could bring to such a self-appointed task.

After Bilac comes Alberto de Oliveira, and a long list of other dexterous versifiers; many
produce charming poems, and he who wishes to have an acquaintance with classical Brazilian
verse must read the output of Gonçalves Dias, who took the life of the Indians for his theme, as
well as that of the lyric writer Gonzaga and the graceful Claudio da Costa.

Brazil also has a national stage. I know of no play of first-class importance, but there is an active
supply of native Brazilian actors and actresses, and if their work is generally that of playing in
the home-made revistas, and if these revistas are not very high art, at least they are genuinely
Brazilian, and often extremely amusing. I suppose that on the stage, as in the pages of the
Brazilian press, there is a limit beyond which the libel law would become active, but I cannot
imagine where it is drawn; the audience rocks with laughter when well-known political
personages are caricatured upon the stage—as they are lampooned in the press—and no notice
appears to be taken of whatever alludes to matters of intimate family concern. Nobody in the
public eye is exempt, and the result is that Brazil possesses a lively, home-made stage which is at
least a beginning in dramatic craft.

Brazil has an exuberant press. There is a large number of dailies and weeklies in proportion to
the population, many of the smaller journals existing to serve the purposes of some special
movement, colony, or party, and there are many technical periodicals of varying merit. Grace,
pungency and a frequently merciless 101frankness are the chief characteristics of the free-lance
sections of the Brazilian press, although there are certain staid and conservative journals whose
dignity never deserts them. The first of all Brazilian newspapers was a little sheet started in Rio,
soon after the arrival of Dom João, by Frey Tiburcio; it was practically a Court Journal. Two of
its notable antagonists later on were the Tamoyo and the Sentinella. All of these early periodicals
died a natural death, the newspaper of longest continual publication in Brazil being the Diario de
Pernambuco.
The premier newspaper in Brazil, which is also perhaps the best in South America, although it
has a formidable rival in the Argentine, is “o velho,” the famous Jornal do Commercio, the semi-
official, powerful, wealthy, and most excellent daily of Rio, with a circulation all over Brazil and
reaching out as well to most parts of the educated world. It is a great paper in all senses of the
word, is finely printed—this great sheet, often with thirty-two and sometimes eighty big pages,
eight columns wide, printed in a language requiring the “til,” “cedilla,” acute and circumflex
accents, constantly employed, comes out day after day almost without any typographical errors.
Its reviews of commercial affairs are made with authority; it is remarkable for having no
editorials, anything that needs to be said editorially appearing in the “Varias Noticias;” months
may pass without this column containing more than chronicles of official acts and movements,
but when the Jornal is moved to speak its voice comes in no uncertain tone. Its denunciations
and pronouncements are discussed like a Papal Edict in the Middle Ages.

102Anyone who reads the Jornal day by day, with its pages of European telegrams, its excellent
letters from world capitals, its fine literary and political essays, its Publicações a pedido where
every kind of public or private matter is thrashed out, often to the great entertainment of the
reader, knows everything that is going on in Brazil, is well up in European news, but will hear
only faint echoes coming from North America and these as a rule only when some distinguished
Brazilian happens to be travelling there, and cables are sent south dealing with his sayings and
doings. When I have enquired the reason for this lack of news from North America the reply has
generally been that the news services are responsible: that the arrangements made with certain
European agencies cannot be duplicated. It seems as if this is a matter needing thoughtful
attention, for it is obvious that the Brazilian cannot be so deeply interested in a country about
which he hears practically nothing as about others which present even trivial domestic news to
him in long cables every day. The same lack occurs, of course, in the United States in regard to
Brazil; if accurate, frequent information were disseminated we should not read that “in the states
of Paraná and Santa Catarina, in Brazil, the entire population subsists on bananas as food and are
famous for their strength and endurance,” or that (an item of early October, 1916) “the Brazilian
coffee crop is estimated at 11,000,000 bags, the greatest ever harvested and three million bags
bigger than last year’s crop,” nor should we see the “Girl from Brazil” represented upon a New
York stage dressed, and comporting herself, much like a Carmen, and speaking Spanish; or read
tales repeated in the press of the “little republic 103of Coanani” near the Guiana boundary in
Brazil which has “sent its army to fight on the side of the Allies.” With the United States as
Brazil’s best customer, and, at least for the present, Brazil’s greatest supplier, there should be
better channels of interchange not only of information but ideas; there should be room for a
Brazilian journal in New York—there is one in Paris—and for a Bureau of Information with
exhibits, something on the lines of the existing Bureau in the French capital, where Brazilian
hardwoods, cotton, precious stones, fibres, ores, etc., are on view. The Pan-American Union, as
well as other organizations and publications with the Pan-American object in view, do sincere
and arduous work which has borne much industrial and social fruit, but their labours are
necessarily spread over a great field: nor can Consuls do everything, however energetic.
Brazilian interchange with North America is quite important and promising enough to merit a
special news service.

Other strong Brazilian newspapers published in Rio are O Paiz, O Imparcial, O Correio da
Manhã issued in the morning, with a host, including A Platea, A Tarde, O Noite and the
afternoon edition of the Jornal do Commercio, issued any time after mid-day: the latter has had a
wonderful war-review series of articles running since 1914. Very many papers of the Brazilian
press, like the major part of the non-German Brazilian people, are strongly pro-Ally, and
particularly pro-French, and have no hesitation in declaring their feelings, as witness the “Liga
Brasileira pelos Alliados” formed by some of the foremost men of the country, but in the case of
the war articles of the afternoon Jornal there was a serious attempt at 104impartiality. It was
possible thus to read first a criticism of the war-telegrams of the day showing that a distinct
advantage had accrued to the Allies, while printed just below would be another analysis by a
second contributor, demonstrating that the news was distinctly favourable to the Teutonic forces.

Also published in Rio are many technical papers, medical and engineering periodicals, etc., and
some of the gay illustrated weeklies of very free speech, as O Malho, A Careta, Fon-Fon; also
the Revista da Semana, a society paper. There are French, Italian and German papers, but the
great home of a polyglot press is São Paulo, with its groups of immigrants. Here the oldest
Brazilian paper is the Correio Paulistano, sixty years established, a daily morning paper; another
in the same class and perhaps the most widely read is the Estado de São Paulo, while the
Commercio de São Paulo[5] also has a high reputation. The Estado runs an afternoon edition, and
there are many other evening papers—the Diario Popular, Naçao, Gazeta, etc. For the Italian
population there is the daily morning Fanfulla, the afternoon Giornale degli Italiani and the
weekly Italiano. Germans have the morning Diario Alemão and the weekly Germania. Two
French weeklies seem to do well, the Messager de S. Paul, and the Courrier Français. There is a
Spanish Diario Español, two Turkish papers, and in the colonies outside the city there are said to
be Russian and Japanese sheets published. The city of S. Paulo counts eighty journals, the State
counting over two hundred dailies and weeklies.

105Rio and S. Paulo are the two chief literary centres, but every town of any size in Brazil has its
newspaper. Of these perhaps the most important are the Pernambuco papers; the Diario de
Pernambuco, already mentioned, bears the proud inscription of its age in conspicuous lettering
on the front of its building in a square in Recife; it is a very good paper, and so is the Jornal do
Recife, among several other daily sheets. Bahia has the Diario de Bahia and Diario de Noticias,
amongst others, and the State Press here also publishes daily an excellent Diario Official.

Pará has quite a variety of papers, the Estado de Pará and the Folha do Norte probably the two
most powerful. Manáos also supports several newspapers, of which the Jornal do Commercio
and O Tempo appear to be most widely read.

Many imported foreign periodicals have a ready sale in Brazil, as the French L’Illustration, many
Portuguese publications, and the Blanco y Negro of Madrid; nearly all the English serious
reviews and illustrated weeklies are sold, and there is an increasing demand for illustrated North
American periodicals of good class. Altogether Brazil has a remarkably cosmopolitan class of
readers and therefore a cosmopolitan press.

Almost all the Brazilian authors of note have, at one time or another, contributed to the great
Jornal do Commercio; this is really the cradle of much fine writing. Founded in 1827, it is today
housed in a splendid building on the corner of the famous Rua do Ouvidor and the Avenida Rio
Branco, the building and press equipment costing over half a million dollars.
Linked with the life of the Jornal for the last twenty-five 106years is that of José Carlos
Rodrigues, Director from 1890 until his retirement in 1915; a great student and great organizer,
possessed of international prestige, José Carlos was the moving spirit of the newspaper for a
generation. He is one of the eminent figures in modern Brazilian life. At seventy-two years of
age he is completing his Vida de Jesus, fruit of long years of research.

José Carlos Rodrigues is one of the constructive Brazilians. There have been many others, as the
great Andrada brothers, Campos Salles, the Visconde de Rio Branco and his son, the Barão;
Varnhagen (Visconde de Porto Seguro), politician and historian; Joaquim Nabuco, writer,
ambassador, and instigator of slavery abolition—as were also several fine men still alive, as
Rodrigues Alves, the great Paulista.

Of modern Brazilians to whom the country owes a debt there are none with more claim to
gratitude than Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who banished yellow fever from coast towns once notorious
for their unhealthiness, and Colonel Rondon, who has devoted his life to the opening-up of the
Brazilian interior, and besides mapping, charting, and creating telegraphic communication
throughout the hinterlands of Matto Grosso, has brought whole tribes of wild Indians into
civilized ways of living.

Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social conditions, that of the
Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy Barbosa said the other day, “Americans are
descendants not of Apaches, but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins.” The Indian
admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical hardihood. The extreme south of
Brazil, as we have already seen, has had during the 107last century an enormous influx of
European white blood other than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Germanic, while all the large
coast cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In the interior of the
northern promontory a noticeable feature is the blonde average of the population, partly an
inheritance from the days of Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the
groups of unhappy retirantes from the drought districts, encountered in the streets of Pará and
Manáos, waiting for shelter and work, there are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue
eyes who might have come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany.

On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there is another very strong
admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but
occasionally the cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says frankly that
the European was not, in early colonial days, “strong enough to repel the native savage and
cultivate the soil, and so resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa ... the ally of the
white men.” He calls the negro “a robust civilizing element,” and says that from the close
association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood descendants, who constitute today “the mass of
our population and the chief beauty of our race.”

“Still today,” he declares, “the most beautiful feminine types are these agile, strong, brown-
skinned girls with black eyes and hair, in whose veins run, although well diluted, many drops of
African blood.... The coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our statesmen, and he spoke
truth; the negro has influenced all 108our intimate life and many of our customs are transmitted
from him. It is sufficient to remember that the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the cozinha
bahiana, is entirely African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature of
ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this energetic race should have suffered
the brand of slavery; we should make a vow to revindicate its place in our history. There are
means of utilizing the negro without degrading him.”

Sylvio Romero adds that “all the first-class people of Brazil have white blood, either pure or
mingled with that of another race,” but that the white element should do justice to the degree to
which the black has been a mental, political, economic and social factor. He traces, in a little
book of which I found a stray copy on a bookstall in Manáos market, the negro element in the
folklore of Brazil (Contos Populares, Rio de Janeiro) as well as that of the native Indian, and
makes the point that both Indian and negro are “inarticulate” in Brazilian society, except through
the medium of a language foreign to their ideas, Portuguese, which has undoubtedly coloured
their mental expression. These Folk-tales of Sylvio Romero’s collection, as well as those
preserved by Couto de Magalhães in his Selvagem, are delightful tales, many hinging upon the
adventures of various wild animals, and frequently displaying a decided streak of humour not
unlike that of the “Uncle Remus” negro tales of North America.

At least one negro poet of Brazil has a claim to fame—Cruz e Souza; the sculptor Pinheiro was
also chiefly of African blood; José de Patrocinio, who worked hard for the abolition of slavery
and stood by the chair of 109Princess Isabel when she signed the decree of freedom, was an able
and eloquent negro writer. Altogether, the debt of Brazil to the strong African races appears to be
quite as important, if not much more so, than that owed to the Tupi-Guarani and other “Indian”
tribes of native Brazil. Fleeing from before the hard hand of the white man, the Indian as a
separate social element has disappeared from those parts of Brazil brought into touch with
modern life.

This native Brazilian, the “Indian” of the coasts, inland plains, and forest-bordered rivers who
lived in the country before Portuguese possession, has left no traces of civilization comparable
with that of the Incas or pre-Incas of the north-west of South America, or with the culture of the
Maya of Central America and their pupils and conquerors, the Aztecs. Only in the north, along
the Amazonian river highway connecting with Peru are there remains of ceramic art, and
survivals of weaving skill, which denote marked attainments by a people with settled homes and
defined social habits.

The Museo Goldi at Pará is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and much dug from burial
grounds on the great island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon; Marajó has a lake which in
turn shelters an island which has proved a mine for the archaeologist—and none too respectfully
treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been more occupied in
acquiring loot than in making historical records. This island in the lake appears to have served
for a burial ground of tribes with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are
large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good artistic design; there is a
very noticeable resemblance between 110certain of these Marajó pottery specimens, especially
the smaller jars and domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central
America.
To the present day the Amazon Indians have preserved their skill in weaving native fibres;
hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with
elaborate feather devices worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices
reaching several hundred milreis. 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. If it were not necessary to enlist his help or enter his
retreats, his effect upon Brazilian modern social conditions would be nil; there was a time when
Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that period is past, although the
effect of the former survives in the fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that
resulted was able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably could not have
done.
Igapó near the Rio Negro, Amazonas.

Caripuna Indians, on the Madeira River.

111Farther south the Indian seems to have been of a different origin, whose cradle is assigned by
some scientists to Paraguay, and who are identified with the fierce Caribs, invaders of the West
Indian islands and destroyers of the gentle aborigines of those shores before the Spanish came.
No pottery remains are found in the south as in the north; these tribes seem to have been nomadic
in tendency, cultivators of no arts that have left traces, builders of but light and temporary
dwellings, living upon few foods and those obtained chiefly by hunting. The chief articles
cultivated were mandioca and maize, the forests yielding wild fruits and nuts. There seems to be
no doubt that the majority, if not all, of these natives were given to cannibal feasts, but in some
cases the act was ceremonial and in others was confined to enemies of the tribe. 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. Since the Jesuits’ work
was destroyed and the missionaries themselves expelled from the country the Indian has been
practically let alone; withdrawn socially, his part in Brazilian life has been a silent one. He has
been still living in the Stone Age. He never knew and has not adopted the use of metal, erected
no stone or other permanent buildings of any kind, and set up no temples to his gods. Idea of a
deity was to many tribes represented by Tupan, a being somewhat resembling the North
American’s “Great Spirit;” medicine men, called pagés, performed and still 112perform,
wonders and enchantments to cure the sick. When Prince Adalbert of Prussia went up the
Amazon in 1843 he was able to see one of these wizards at work upon a sick man, and himself
complained of a pain in his arm, asking the pagé to cure it; the spot was rubbed with unguents,
covered with leaves, exorcisms were made, and at last the pagé blowing upon the arm freed a
butterfly and declared that this was the disappearing pain; the European onlookers said that it
was a marvel that the wizard had been able to go through such a performance with the butterfly
concealed in his mouth: evidently these are quite good conjurers. It is not unknown for the
position of pagé to be offered to a distinguished foreigner: I heard on the Amazon of a German
doctor, whose cures had won the confidence of a remote tribe, receiving this curious honour.

The only man of modern times who has had continued success with the native of the interior is
that great Brazilian, Colonel Candido Rondon: in his work of constructing telegraphs and roads
and mapping and surveying in the vast sertões of Matto Grosso, Rondon has laboured for twenty-
five years to win over the timid and hostile Indians. He has so far succeeded that not only do they
now refrain from destroying his lines and stations, but have been trained to the service of the
Commission which Rondon heads, guarding the posts and cultivating fields in their
neighbourhood for the supply of the engineers. In 1915 a series of moving picture films were
shown in Brazilian cities, made on the route of the Commission’s work, and showing interesting
pictures of Parecís, Nhambiquaras, and other Indian tribes friendly to the invaders of their
interior regions; they are frequently fine-looking, welldeveloped, 113sturdy people, very well
worth saving among the world’s races.
All over the Americas the question of the fate of the native is a painful one. In North America,
both in Canada and the United States, he has diminished with extraordinary rapidity even when
wars have ceased; contact with the white man seems to be fatal to him. It is only of late, since he
ceased to be a physical danger, that conscience has been aroused on his behalf and efforts made
to retain the survivals. Farther south the Aztec is still holding his own, a hardy race living its own
life yet and able to preserve customs and wide land spaces. In Central America the only marked
group of pure race is the gentle Guatemalan Maya, almost enslaved but still living the life of the
sixteenth century in the uplands: when taken to work in the lowlands, he dies.

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. There is, too, a lively public sentiment on the subject of the
Indian in Brazil, statesmen and writers frequently calling attention to the problem. Spaces in
Brazil are so enormous that it will be many a generation before any question arises of
114intrusion upon Indian retreats, and perhaps by that time an extension of the methods of
Rondon will have divested him of fear of civilization.

It cannot, however, be imagined that the native of Brazil will supply the labour needed to
develop great interior regions; he is not willing to work at given tasks at appointed times and to
maintain such work day by day. He is probably not physically fitted for such tasks. When,
seduced by agents during rubber booms, he has been bribed into working at the systematic
gathering of goma, he has failed and died in too many instances; only when his blood is mingled
with that of another race, and the caboclo produced, is the child of the selvagem able to take his
place in the industrial world.

With the suggestion that the Indian should be strengthened by admixtures of introduced Asiatics,
on the score that the Oriental and the native of Brazil are already akin, I have scant patience. A
tilt of the eyelids seen in some Central and South American natives has been the chief basis of a
number of fantastic theories generally pre-supposing the passage of large numbers of Chinese
immigrants by way of the Behring Strait; difficulties are brushed away with an easy hand by
enthusiasts of this idea, but to ignore them is, as T. A. Joyce says, to ignore the value of scientific
evidence. It is just as reasonable to suppose that China or Japan or both were colonized from
South America as to insist on the reverse movement, but as a matter of fact the division is so
extreme on the very points where resemblances should exist—in language roots, social customs,
arts and food, and religion—that discussion of the question appears futile. It may be 115taken for
granted that oriental immigration and mixing will not be accepted by Brazilians as the solution to
the Indian problem; like many another Brazilian problem, it will be solved from within.

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.

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. The Director of Public
Instruction, Dr. João Chrisostomo, in speeches and writings shows that he has a very clear idea
of the object of modern schooling, to train a healthy mind in a healthy body. Medical and dental
attendance upon the children is regularly carried out in the Paulista schools, teachers are trained
in an excellently equipped and managed Normal School, and buildings have been multiplied
until there is today a school for every fourteen hundred of the inhabitants of São Paulo state. The
task of educating the children of the working population is a more difficult one in the agricultural
districts, but every good coffee fazenda has its school. São Paulo has made 116special efforts to
bring new immigrants into touch with Brazilian conditions by establishing a series of night
schools where Portuguese is taught, together with Brazilian history and geography; the writer
once visited a school of this kind and saw Italians, Syrians, Greeks and a Japanese, all adults,
learning earnestly in the same room.

Not all of the Brazilian States have as much money to spare as São Paulo, but the framework,
and much of the real building and equipment, of a satisfactory public school system exists in
every section of the country. Feminine professional education has made a certain start, and the
writer has rarely seen a more promising, and handsome, group of young women than the students
of a normal school in Pará. Many Brazilian cities take pride in their professional and technical
colleges, some of very old foundation, as that of the School of Law of Pernambuco, the School
of Medicine of Bahia, the Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro, and the School of Law of São
Paulo.

Religious scholastic institutions are many, several of the great Orders, such as the Benedictines,
Franciscans, and of course the Jesuits, maintaining splendid, large, and wealthy colleges.
Convents for girls are also of first-class importance in the Brazilian educational field, the Sacred
Heart institutions taking thousands of girls, and apparently giving them a good training. In São
Paulo there are several schools of Italian origin; there is a popular French Lycée in Rio; the
American Mackenzie College in São Paulo, founded by Dr. Horace Lane, is a fine institution
doing good work—possessing a kindergarten branch for young children as well as upper grade
classes and technical courses; and there is a series of excellent and popular schools known as the
Gymnasio Anglo-Brazileiro. The first of these was started in 1899 by an Englishman, Mr.
Charles W. Armstrong, in São Paulo, for boys; subsequently a beautiful property was acquired
among the woods on the lower slopes of the Dois Irmãos mountain just outside Rio, and a second
school opened there, followed in 1913 by the foundation of a school for girls on the slopes of the
Gavea. Sixty-two per cent of the pupils are Brazilians, who seem to take to the healthy open-air
games of the Anglo-Saxon with a great deal of appreciation.
Agricultural School at Piracicaba, S. Paulo State.

Maintained by the State Government; teaches scientific agriculture, conducts chemical

experiments and maintains a splendid demonstration farm. Director, Dr. Emilio Castello.

The Butantan Institute, S. Paulo City.

The Instituto Serumtherapico do Estado de São Paulo is maintained by the State Government.
Several thousand poisonous snakes are kept here in the Serpentario and from them venom is
extracted and injected into horses; the resulting serum is prepared as an antidote for snakebite,
and is distributed all over Brazil. The Director is Dr. Vital Brasil.

117The more southerly colonies have their own schools, generally taught in their own languages;
the only criticism of this retention of the immigrants’ tongue and ideas that I have ever heard in
Brazil made itself known at the time when rumours were freely repeated of plots in the German
settlements of Rio Grande do Sul, soon after the outbreak of war in Europe, and which were
strengthened by von Tannenberg’s book on German expansion, which discussed the annexation
of South Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Brazilian newspapers ran stories dealing with the
possibility of German naval victories being followed by the occupation of Rio Grande and the
use of the Lagôa dos Patos as a base for vessels, and while the defeat of Admiral von Spee off
the Falkland Islands disposed of such a plan if it ever existed, the suggestion drew the attention
of many formerly indifferent people to the self-centred life of some of the German colonies. It
was complained that nothing but the German language was taught in the schools, that public
notices and records were issued in German, and the German ideal held before the people to the
exclusion of any other. The matter was very 118warmly argued, the colonists scouting, and with
a show of reason, any evil intention; it is hardly to be supposed that any sane person could plan
the deliverance of a piece of South American territory to a foreign power, with the surrounding
republics, not to speak of Brazil herself, looking quietly on. But so much feeling was expressed
that the Governor of Rio Grande thought it well to announce new introductions of the Portuguese
language into schools. As a matter of fact the Italians in Rio Grande out-number the inhabitants
of German blood, few of whom are German born; emigration to Brazil was forbidden by the
German Government in the year 1859, after some eighty thousand people had settled: the
survivors with their descendants are said today to number two hundred and fifty thousand.
Living as they have chiefly done, in isolated towns, it would be strange if they had acquired any
habits and customs other than those of their European fathers; they speak German for the same
reasons that they sleep on feather beds, brew beer, plant gardens and build comfortable houses.

The sweeping charge that South America is a land of revolutions is made so often and so lightly
that few people stop to consider the record of the vastly different countries comprising the area
below Panama. When the writer has remarked—outside Brazil—that Brazil has never as a whole
had any blood-stained revolution, the statement has been received with looks of polite
incredulity, and yet it is true. Prior to separation from Portugal a few local, factional feuds
occurred, as in Pernambuco when the natives quarrelled with the petty merchant Portuguese, and
in Minas when the Paulistas 119fought the men of other states for claims to the gold mines, but
there was no more serious internal disturbance. Independence from Portugal was achieved
almost without bloodshed, by force of a proclamation: the end of the monarchy and
establishment of a republic was attained peacefully.

After the republican régime began there was occasional trouble, a mere candle flicker compared
to the republican bonfires in neighbour states, the insurgents of Rio Grande giving trouble for
some years; there were two revolts by the navy, of a not too creditable kind. In none of these
were the Brazilian people deeply concerned, nor did they affect the government of the country.
No Viceroy of Brazil, no King and no President, has been assassinated in the history of the
country.

External troubles, excluding the fights for twenty-four years to expel the Dutch from
Pernambuco, are limited to two, with neighbours in the south; the first of these was as much the
fault of Brazil as that of Argentina, and she was forced to give up the Cisplatine Province
(Uruguay) forcibly annexed: but in the second, the Paraguayan war, Brazil acted only after years
of aggression obliged her to take up arms. The fact is that the Brazilian is a peace lover, that
Brazil has had few wars in the past and has no cause for quarrel as far as can be foreseen.

Wars between South American states have frequently hinged upon questions of boundaries, the
result of vague delimitation in colonial days when much of the interior was still a sealed book.
Brazil took steps early in her history as a republic to avoid such differences: that good diplomat
the Barão de Rio Branco worked for years on the subject of Brazilian boundaries, and succeeded
120in making definite settlements with the Argentine, Bolivia and French Guiana.

Another big step for the preservation of Brazilian peace was made when in 1915 a pact was
arranged between Argentina, Brazil and Chile which binds the three greatest South American
states in a closer alliance than has yet been possible between North American countries. The
terms include “rules for proceeding to facilitate the friendly solution of questions that were
formerly excluded from arbitration” in virtue of the treaty of 1899 between Brazil and Chile, of
1902 between Chile and Argentina, and of 1905 between Argentina and Brazil. The articles of
the new agreement arrange for the submission of disputes to a permanent Commission, the
signatories agreeing not to commit hostile acts while the Commission’s report is pending or until
one year has elapsed: the constitution of the Commission is provided for, and it is agreed that any
one of the three contracting parties has power to convoke it; the seat of the Commission was
fixed in the neighbouring (and presumably neutral) Republic of Uruguay—at Montevideo—and
after it had presented its report upon matters in dispute the contracting parties, it was agreed,
would recover liberty of action “to proceed as best consults their interest in the matter under
investigation.”

The A. B. C. Treaty, as it is known, was signed at Buenos Aires on May 25, 1915, by
representatives of the three Governments; its strength has not been tested, but there is little
reason to doubt that the formal acceptance of the arbitration principle by these three powerful
states in the agreement is a big step forward in American history. “Brazil has always been an
121advocate of arbitration, and has accepted the fiats of arbitrators even when against her
interests,” says J. P. Wileman, adding that the actual treaty is but a development of Brazil’s
historic policy, though in the particular form it has taken the formula adopted by the United
States has been followed; it is also significant because it “diminishes, although it does not
eliminate, chances of war between the three leading South American countries,” and “leaves no
excuse for the ruinous competition in armaments that has contributed so powerfully to the actual
financial crises in all three countries.” With burdensome purchases of fighting vessels, rifles and
cannon eliminated from their budgets the Argentine, Brazil and Chile can therefore “in future
devote all their energies and resources to the moral and material advancement of their peoples.”

The proof of arbitration puddings is in the eating. If the contributed ingredients do not emerge
from well-kept cupboards, they are apt to sour whatever the label upon the cooked product.
North of Panama the five Central American Republics agreed upon the erection of the Court of
Cartago some years ago where all disputes between these neighbours should be thrashed out.
Approval smiled upon the project from the United States, deeply interested in the peace of
Central America; Mr. Carnegie spent a large number of dollars upon the building of a beautiful
palace, and the first meetings were held with mutual kindliness and the applause of the world.
The writer saw the Peace Palace in May, 1910. A few days previously an earthquake had visited
the lovely mountain-surrounded valley of Cartago and nothing remained of a charming city but a
heap of broken bricks and stone. The Peace 122Palace was a dust-heap, with twisted iron girders
thrusting up against the serene sky from a medley of disaster. The sight was symbolical of the
spiritual fate of the Court. At the shake of an earthquake of opinions it is in ruins.

When Nicaragua signed a treaty which Costa Rica, Salvador and Honduras declare an
encroachment upon their territorial rights, recourse was had to the Court, re-erected in San José.
The Court found for the three appellants—and Nicaragua refuses to accept its decision.

Let us hope the A. B. C. treaty is made of better material.

123

CHAPTER IV
TRANSPORTATION
I. River and Road

All the great railway systems of Brazil are pioneers, lines of penetration, driving into new
country like hopeful explorers, and starting from one of the old centres of population on the sea-
border. Within the last few years links have been completed between some of the cities where
the lines originate, so that there are now long strips of line running parallel to the coast, and thus
Central and South Brazil are benefited by this junction so far as it exists: but for several
neighbour states the only means of communication with each other is the sea.

The Brazilian, descendant of the seafaring Portuguese, is a good waterman by instinct; thousands
of little sailboats navigate the sea margin of Brazil, homebuilt, doing an active petty traffic in
raw materials and fruit and merchandise. This traffic figures in Brazilian statistics as cabotagem.
Passengers of a humble class are carried in addition to freight and there is also a fishing fleet
attached to every sea town, so that the total of Brazilian vessels of this useful little class is large.
When the first hardy Portuguese and their descendants the mamelucos began, very early after the
acquisition of a few strips of coast by the first captains, to penetrate the interior of the Land of
the True Cross 124they used the rivers as highways. The settlers of São Paulo sailed their canoes
on the Tieté, the “sacred river of São Paulo,” and it was a facile system of exploration because
this river flows inland from the heights of the mountain barrier where it takes its rise; running
north-west for four hundred miles it joins the great Paraná and thence continues southward,
finding its way to the sea as part of the Rio de la Plata. The water systems of the east coast of
South America are so enormous and so closely linked that it is possible, with but a few miles of
portage, to traverse a river path all the way from Buenos Aires in the Argentine to Pará in North
Brazil, a journey of some four thousand miles.

What the Tieté was to the pioneer Paulistas, the slave-hunting indomitable bandeirantes, the São
Francisco was to the early colonists of Bahia, no less energetic, fearless and predatory. This
noble river rises in the mountains of Minas Geraes, flowing north and eventually turning east
towards the sea and forming the renowned Paulo Affonso Falls. When the mineral riches of the
“General Mines” were discovered this river became a busy highway of travel, the Bahianos
flocking to the regions of gold and precious stones in such numbers that the coast settlement was
almost deserted.

It was during this period of gold fever that two of the very few good roads in Brazil were
constructed: one ran between Rio de Janeiro and the first capital of Minas, the mining town of
Ouro Preto (“Black Gold”), and along it caravans travelled weekly, bringing out ore and hides
and taking in slaves and merchandise. Villages which sprang up along the line of this old
highway still exist although the road itself has long fallen 125out of repair, and one, Juiz da Fora,
has grown into an important well-built town, the centre of a mining and agricultural section now
served by a railroad.

The other road which owed its construction to the exciting tales from the gold camps ran
between São Paulo city and the mines; its existence was limited by the days of prosperity of the
gold-seekers, and when the rich deposits of alluvial gold were exhausted and the batea had
perforce to be exchanged for the spade, the road was abandoned. The ill luck which attended the
pitched battles of the Paulistas with other claimants to the General Mines caused the withdrawal
of many fortune seekers back to the plantations of S. Paulo and hastened the decay of the
highway.

Another of the few much-travelled roads of the colonial or indeed any period of Brazilian
history, until the opening of the flat lands of the extreme south by imported European colonists,
was one built by the Jesuits from the coastal colony of São Vicente to their own mission
settlement at São Paulo; this highway negotiated the mangrove swamps of the flat belt edging the
sea and then climbed the rocky barrier of the Serra do Mar to the cool interior plateau. Before the
construction of this Caminho do Padre José the ascent must have taxed even the stout spirits of
those indomitable priests. The good Padre Vasconcellos wrote, three hundred years ago, of the
journey:—

“The greater part of the way one cannot really travel, but must make one’s way with hands and
feet, clinging to the roots of trees, and this amongst such crags and precipices that I confess I
trembled whenever I looked downwards. The depth of the valleys is tremendous and the number
of mountains rising one 126above another appear to leave no hope of reaching the climax.... It is
true that the labour of the ascent has its compensations now and again, for when I rested upon
one of the rocks and looked below it seemed as if I were gazing from the heaven of the moon and
that the whole round universe lay spread beneath my feet.”

When Fletcher (Brazil and the Brazilians) visited São Paulo in 1855, he made the trip from
Santos on horseback over a Serra road, remarking on the excellence of the section on the flat to
Cubitão; he was two days on the journey and says that the road “which traverses this range of
mountains is probably the finest in Brazil, with the exception of the Imperial highway to
Petropolis.”

This was not the first road constructed to bridge the barrier range, for in 1790 the Portuguese
Governor superseded the Jesuit highway by a new one which included four miles of solid
pavement and had more than one hundred and eighty angles before it reached the plateau. It was
still too steep for wheeled traffic and the troops of mules which traversed it in thousands,
bringing coffee from the interior after this product became a commercial factor and before the
railway was built, often slid down the steep slopes on their haunches. It is said that both this and
the first road were lined with the bones of mules that died by the way.

Similar stories are told of the Imperial road, built by that genuinely progressive ruler, Dom Pedro
segundo, from Rio de Janeiro to his pet colony and residence Petropolis, a lovely nook in the
heart of the Serra behind Guanabara Bay. This road, too, traversed flat, marshy ground before it
began to climb the terrible Serra, and the latter section remained in use for some 127years after a
railroad was constructed over the flats to the foot of the mountains: engineering difficulties were
considered too great for a railroad until eventually Swiss engineers applied the same methods as
had solved the problem in their own mountain country.

Many people in Brazil talk of the old coaching days in Petropolis, when stout mules toiled up the
sharp gradients with their loads of passengers and freight. The team was changed in Petropolis
and the route pursued on into Minas Geraes. This road is still in good condition—Petropolis the
flower-decked and spotless is a centre of fine valley roads leading in seven different directions—
and is a panorama of charming scenes. Like its sister mountain road in São Paulo and the
“Graciosa” road from Curityba in Paraná, it has entered upon a new lease of life with the coming
of the automobile.

Will the entry of the cheap automobile develop road-making in Brazil as it has assisted in that
good work in the United States? It is possible. Before the War, the chief importation of motor-
cars was from Europe, the class was high grade, beautiful and extremely powerful. It is said that
no city in the world can show more expensive high-power cars than Rio de Janeiro, where every
hired machine is called upon to climb the steep grades of Tijuca or some neighbouring mountain.
There are large numbers of such cars also to be seen in wealthy S. Paulo, but they do not go far
from the Avenida Paulista for lack of good roads; the luxurious European car does its chief duty
within city bounds.
But with the introduction of the inexpensive car of North American build, the fazendeiro is
acquiring a 128car for country use. It seems certain that what may be called the agricultural use
of such cars will help to bring about improvement in interior highways that was not necessarily
called for when a trusty horse or mule could negotiate any kind of a boggy track. At the same
time it is not to be expected that Brazil will soon be extensively traversed by great high roads
such as France possesses or such as the Romans left in Britain. 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. In
thinking of possible Brazilian highways, it is necessary to eliminate from present consideration
much of the great teeming forestal belt of the north, and the precipitous Serra regions of the
south sea-border; the areas where automobile roads could be built with a chance of permanence
without exhausting expenses in upkeep are the flat lands of the north, where some excellent plans
and beginnings have been made in Bahia and Pernambuco; part of Minas, where the Triangulo
already has a public automobile highway service, connecting Uberabinha with the railway; the
wide uplands of S. Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul; and the interior
plateau of Goyaz and Matto Grosso.

129The proof that permanent, and not too costly roads, can be made in Brazil lies in the fact that
they have been made: the Russian carters of Paraná take their teams over rough but serviceable
trails on prairie lands, and across the high sertão of Matto Grosso that great and gallant explorer,
Rondon, has built roads over which services of automobile trucks are maintained for the
convenience of the telegraph building, geological and charting work of the Commission. The tale
of the magnificent work in the interior done by the Rondon Commission is an epic of the
Brazilian interior, and one of its great merits has been the proof that this unknown country is no
terrible jungle, but an open, honest country awaiting the plough.

II. Rail

Initiative in railway construction in Brazil is credited to a clever priest who acted as Regent
during part of the minority of Pedro II. In October, 1835, Padre Feijó presented a bill to the
Legislative Assembly in Rio de Janeiro advocating the creation of a railway system; amongst
other suggestions his scheme included a limitation of rates for freight and passengers—the
former to a maximum of twenty reis for each arroba carried a league, and ninety reis for each
passenger carried a like distance. Nothing was done for seventeen years, and then in June, 1852,
the Brazilian Government sanctioned a concession for a railroad to link the port of Pernambuco
to a point upon the river S. Francisco, above the falls which blocked the way of boats traversing
the busy interior river highway. This road was never built. In 1853, another concession was
130granted for a line to reach the river from the more southerly port of Bahia: this plan was
carried out and the road opened to traffic (Bahia to Joazeiro) in the year 1860, but before that day
three other railways had been built and brought into operation.
The first of all railways to operate in Brazil was the Emperor’s road running from the outskirts of
Rio city across level ground to the foot of the Serra: it was opened in 1854. This, and the
subsequent mountain climbing section extending from the Raiz da Serra to the Alto da Serra, are
part of the important system of lines owned and operated by one of the big English companies,
the Leopoldina: I refer in detail to this series and its development work on another page. A short
strip, now part of the (English) Great Western of Brazil Railway, running on level country from
the city of Pernambuco was opened in 1857, and a line from Rio de Janeiro to Queimados, a
distance of sixty kilometers, was opened to traffic by Dom Pedro in the year 1858: it forms part
of the valuable series of penetrating lines owned and operated by the Federal Government today.

Before 1870 the most important producing states, the seaboard territories with surplus sugar,
coffee, tobacco, cacao and cotton had been furnished with strips of line penetrating limited areas
of the interior. In the north engineering problems were easier, for the frowning wall of the Serra
do Mar melts away in South Bahia, but it was in the temperate zones of the more southerly
regions that transportation was urgently demanded to serve the needs of the rapidly expanding
coffee regions; São Paulo was feverishly planting all over her best red lands, and the only outlet
for the 131crop was the steep mountain road to Santos. An English company took up the work of
building a railroad, completed it after surmounting a series of difficulties and opened it to traffic
in 1867. It is a triumph of engineering, and has never had a competitor; from S. Paulo city itself a
fan of railway lines branches out in every direction except seawards, and while other great
centres of rail networks in Brazil originate at the sea edge, here in S. Paulo the point of departure
is from the plateau above the hill barrier. 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. It is a joy to ride over this line, with its magnificent
equipment, minute neatness, drainage system of the mountain sides involving a remarkable series
of cemented channels—the very rocks beside the track are tarred to preserve them from decay,
and the sides of the hills are built up with elaborate care unparalleled in railway work; the
company’s power-houses, cottages for employees, and stations along the route, with the fine
terminal in Santos and the beautiful “Estação da Luz” in S. Paulo, are models. Once upon a time,
it is said, an American railroad man was shown over this line and asked if he could suggest any
improvements. “Not unless the ends of the ties could be carved or the rails set with diamonds,”
replied the visitor.

132Upkeep of the line is costly, soil and climate working against durability of any human effort;
the climb up the steep Serra, electrically operated by rope haulage on the “endless rope” system,
requires incessant watchfulness, as does the condition of the several tunnels blasted through the
heart of the mountains. There is no better way to appreciate both the engineering problems and
the superb beauty of the green Serra with its abrupt peaks and deep valleys than to ride on the
brake of a train making the descent to Santos.

The distance between Santos and S. Paulo is about seventy-nine kilometers, but the company
owns branches, and there is a duplication of the track, the result of reconstruction and the choice
of a new route for the Serra ascent in 1901, which brings the total length of line owned to one
hundred and fifty-three kilometers; the old track may be seen below the new one on the hillside,
and is being electrified with a view to renewed activity as a freight carrier. The enormous
volume of Paulista coffee seeking an outlet by the line—17 million bags in 1915–16—is a strain
upon capacity in the busy season; the exports of S. Paulo are also developing in a new direction
with the entry of Brazil into world markets with chilled beef, and refrigerator cars are monthly
increasing in traffic over the road.

The capital of the company, whose headquarters are in London, is six million pounds sterling,
and up to the year of war in Europe a dividend of fourteen per cent was regularly paid: in 1914
twelve per cent was paid, and in 1915 there was another drop to ten per cent, chiefly consequent
upon the fall in Brazilian currency which caused heavy losses when earnings counted in milreis
were turned into sterling for remittance to Europe. Lowered exchange has caused serious
embarrassment to most companies operating in Latin America with foreign capital, especially the
transportation companies whose rates are fixed, and it was loss on this account rather than
reduced business which brought gloom into railway and street-car circles in 1915.
The São Paulo Railway.

Operates between São Paulo City and the port of Santos, and is the great coffee-carrying line.
Above, Estação da Luz, S. Paulo City. Below, part of track traversing the steep Serra do Mar,
showing tunnels blasted through granite.

133There are three railways which climb the mountain wall of South Brazil: the first was the São
Paulo line, and the second the Petropolis link, built on the rack system; some wonderful views
are passed on the two-hour journey. The third mountain climbing line connects the port of
Paranaguá to Curityba, in the State of Paraná, some three hundred miles south of Santos. The
construction of this line was as remarkable a feat as that of the São Paulo railway, and is even
more spectacular; it was only completed after the first daring attempt had failed, and today the
line hangs breathlessly on the sides of mountain precipices, traverses canyons on apparently frail
bridges, and plunges into tunnels blasted through granite. The Serra is extremely steep in the
region traversed by the railroad and the scenery is quite the most wild and beautiful of the
Brazilian mountain barrier. The line is the outlet for the products of the mills of industrious
Curityba, and from here the herva matte of the interior woods of Paraná is sent to Paranaguá and
thence by boat to its chief destination, Argentina. Paraná and the neighbouring forests comprise
almost the sole source of supply of matte leaves, and thus the mountain line has a practical
monopoly in the transportation of this wild product; if recent Argentine plans for planting the
shrub are successful a heavy blow would probably be dealt to this industry.

134Brazil built her first railway three years before the Argentine brought her first line into
operation—a modest strip of thirteen miles running west from Buenos Aires—although British
Guiana has the credit of possessing the earliest railroad of South America; during the Empire
construction proceeded steadily but with a certain caution, and it was not until after the formation
of the Republic in 1889 that floods of concessions for railway construction invaded Brazil. The
years 1890–91 show the highwater mark of such plans, and while many of these dried up without
leaving a trace there remained sufficient impetus for much genuine and useful construction.

Lines began to go farther afield, to form networks and connected links; they were part of general
improvement plans which presently included harbours and wharves, waterworks and sanitation
schemes, city paving and draining and beautifying. It is true that from the time of the Republic is
dated Brazil’s plunge into debt upon a great scale, but since the new American countries could
not wait until they had sufficient money in the national pockets to pay for railway, harbour and
sanitation, and Europe stood ready to lend her surplus gold in aid of the work, Brazil is scarcely
to blame for borrowing as did her sisters, north and south. Her very extravagance helped to
advertise and advance Brazil, the royal-spending world customer with rich products for sale to
justify her; she attracted immigrants, merchants, capitalists, technical men and scholars as she
never would have done without her renown as a land of careless magnificence.

Borrowing and building went on without any serious check until 1912, when the first Balkan
War cast long 135shadows into the financial world; less than two hundred miles of new railway
line have come into operation since that year in Brazil. But the previous fat years, many more
than seven, had by that time not only brought about rail access to many fertile interior belts, but
also the linking of the more important systems by lines reaching up and down the coast. The
brilliant French author, Pierre Denis, was able to say ten or twelve years ago that there was “no
general railway system in Brazil; there are small independent systems, covering with their
meshes the regions of long-established colonization, but without inter-communicating lines.” He
found connection between two groups only, remarking that “the line from S. Paulo to Rio is
today the only means of transit between two groups of states, excepting the ocean highway.”

At the end of 1922 the situation is greatly changed. Not only have many states been linked up but
three sister Republics are in direct communication with Brazil by rail. São Paulo city
communicates by systems under allied control with Uruguay; Argentina is in touch at the
western edge of Rio Grande do Sul, where the town of Uruguayana stands on the river boundary
between the two countries opposite to the Argentine port of Libres; Bolivia is reached at the
frontier town of Corumbá, on the border of south-western Matto Grosso, as well as at the
Madeira-Mamoré Falls in the north. Linking up with south-eastern Bolivia is the result of the
penetration of south Matto Grosso by the North-Western of Brazil Railway; this line, which has
direct communication with the city of S. Paulo, reached Itapura on the river Paraná a few years
ago, and pushed on energetically from that western edge of S. Paulo 136State across the narrow
southerly neck of the huge neighbour, arriving early in 1916 at Porto Esperanza on the river
Paraguay, only a few miles from the objective of the road, Corumbá town on the frontier of
Bolivia. This transportation service gives Bolivia an outlet of which the interior republic has
stood in need since she was deprived of a seaport of her own on the Pacific; perforce sending her
products out through other republics, Bolivia has been already aided in the north with the
opening of the Madeira-Mamoré line, giving better access to the river highway of the Amazon.

The North-Western line has pushed farther afield from the seacoast than any other in Brazil: the
constructing company is Belgian, with headquarters in Brussels, and the Federal Government in
this as in many other instances guarantees interest on the capital expended, a loan having been
raised for this purpose in Paris in 1909. An able Brazilian engineer, Dr. Firma Dutra, directs the
work; all the rolling stock, including dormitories and restaurant cars, has been built in Brazilian
workshops with Brazilian hardwoods. Another approach, parallel to and south of the north-
western, to the great stock-raising lands of Matto Grosso is offered now that the extension of the
Sorocabana line from Salto Grande to the port of Tibiriça on the Paraná river is completed;
Tibiriça is a famous cattle crossing where thousands of head of the stocky beasts reared on
luscious interior pastures are brought into the State of S. Paulo. Their numbers have been greatly
augmented since the opening of two packing-houses in S. Paulo at the end of 1914, and excellent
service has been rendered by the Paulista enterprise, the Companhia de Viação São Paulo-Matto
Grosso, 137which owns the port of Tibiriça, operates ferries, runs a steamboat service up the
Paraná river to Jupiá (Itapura) where the North-Western brings merchandise from S. Paulo city,
as well as service on three or four tributaries of the Paraná; the company has constructed a
highway, now bordered with coffee plantations, rest-pastures for the passing cattle, and embryo
villages along the route, all the way to the city of S. Paulo.

There are three chief fans of radiating railroad lines in Brazil, starting from the coastal border
from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco. The first two form networks of lines of much
greater extent than the third, and besides these systems there are several points along the littoral
where a railway penetrating inland is already the handle of a new fan. The southernmost state of
Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, is well served, lines running through the middle of her territory from
north to south (the Auxiliaire, now part of the Brazil Railways group) and east to west, so that
the state is in touch with Argentina, with Uruguay, with the States of S. Paulo, and Santa
Catharina and with the seat at each end of the Lagôa dos Patos, a busy lagoon with the town of
Rio Grande at the entrance and Porto Alegre at the northern end: the railroad splits into two at
Cacequy in order to serve both the rival ports. Superior docking at Porto Alegre sent practically
all visiting vessels to the upper end of the lagoon until the end of 1915, when the new harbour of
Rio Grande was formally opened. The work, a long and expensive series of tasks, was performed
by a French company, and includes the deepening and maintenance of the channel to permit the
entry of deep-draught vessels, docks and wharves; Rio Grande 138is a fine state with a cool
climate, an industrious population, and thriving business. It has been carefully colonized with
white European settlers, has space for a million more, and with its easy access to other centres of
population by sea and rail has much to attract newcomers. Increasing exchange is carried on with
the Argentine, chiefly by water.

Santa Catharina’s rail service consists of the north-and-south link of the São Paulo-Rio Grande
line, a short local line between the colonies of Blumenau and Hansa, and two short strips running
inland from the sea, one from Imbatuba to Laguna and thence inland to Lauro Muller, serving the
coalfields of that region; the other from the excellent little island port of São Francisco, across to
the mainland at Paraty, and thence inland to Joinville, Rio Negro and Tres Barras, where the
lumber yards of a company controlled by the Brazil Railway Company feed it with freight. The
Tres Barras yards operate with the Paraná pine for which the southern States of Brazil are
famous, ship it to many other parts of the Brazilian Union, and in 1915 arranged to supply
Argentina alone with forty million feet a year.

S. Francisco port has entered upon a new life since the lumber business has been flourishing; a
double row of settlements has sprung up beside the track of the railroad and agriculture is
showing development in a region that has been steadily if slowly settled by the descendants of
the early colony of Joinville.

The State of Paraná is better off for connections; in addition to the north and south link with the
sister states of São Paulo and Santa Catharina, she has a railroad running off from it at the station
of Ponta 139Grossa due east to Serrinha (whence a branch connects with Rio Negro directly to
the south), on to the pleasant capital town, Curityba, and down the wonderful mountain road
already referred to until the port of Paranaguá is reached, one of the lively younger shipping
points of the southern littoral.

São Paulo, the next state northwards, is the possessor of the best system of penetrating railroads
in Brazil: she has more mileage than any other single state in the Union, counting over four
thousand miles. In his Message read before the S. Paulo Congress on July 14, 1916, the President
of the State, Dr. Altino Arantes, remarked:

“During the past year we had an addition of one hundred and forty-two kilometers to the railroad
mileage of the State, bringing the figures of the total system to six thousand two hundred and
seventy-nine kilometers on December 31. Of this total four thousand three hundred and fifty-five
kilometers belong to private enterprises; one thousand five hundred and sixty-nine to the State
and the remaining three hundred and fifty-five to the Union.”
The most important of the lines belonging to the State referred to by Dr. Altino Arantes is the
Sorocabana, with over eleven hundred kilometers of track, which is leased to the Brazil
Railways: the other two state properties are the Funilense Railway and the Cantareira Tramway,
running from S. Paulo city up a green, well-settled valley to picturesque waterworks among
woods.

The Sorocabana with its general westerly direction is one of the lines which are pushing ahead
towards the Matto Grosso boundary; building on from Salto 140Grande on the Paranápanema
river, the line reached Caramarú in 1916. As we saw when on the subject of the line from Santos
to S. Paulo, railroads in the State of São Paulo only began forming a network at the top of the
plateau after the Serra had been conquered[6]; the next to be constructed was the Paulista, which
has its northern terminal at Barretos, in the heart of good cattle lands: a flourishing packing
house owned by the Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril of S. Paulo is situated near Barretos, and
has as its president the same energetic Paulista who heads the railway, Conselheiro Antonio da
Silva Prado. Both packing house and railway are purely Brazilian enterprises financed with
Brazilian money, but the construction of the road was headed by an American named Hammond,
and was in consequence known for a long time as “Hammond’s road” to distinguish it from
“Fox’s road” as the pioneer line to Santos was called after the English engineer. The Paulista
both served and created coffee plantations, following the lines of richest deposit of the red
diabasic soils that have made S. Paulo the great coffee country of the world; the same may be
said of the Mogyana, almost parallel to the Paulista but farther north, also a Brazilian owned and
operated company, and the Northwestern.

Today these paralleled lines are linked with branches and possess steel arms reaching out into
rich developing districts so that there is a genuine “rede ferroviario” 141over Paulista territory.
The great coffee centre of Campinas is the point of departure for a star of lines, and so is the
more northerly Riberão Preto, in the heart of the dark blood-red lands.

In a particularly fortunate position with regard to communication with other States as well as
interior service, S. Paulo is linked directly to Rio by the line owned and operated by the Federal
Government, the Central system, and onward from Rio due north to the port of Espirito Santo
State; to the interior of Minas Geraes by way of Uberaba, Araguary and over the border into
Goyaz to Catalão and Roncador; by following the Central’s lines the capital of Minas, the new
town of Bello Horizonte, is reached; southward, the series of lines controlled by the Brazil
Railways take the traveller from S. Paulo all through the States of Paraná, Santa Catharina and
Rio Grande to the Republic of Uruguay, with connection at the border town of Santa Anna do
Livramento with a line running south to Montevideo.

The writer followed this route in December, 1915. The journey took six days and nights, three of
the latter being spent in the train and three at points en route while waiting for connections,
certain trains running but twice a week. My path was smooth by official courtesy and the trip
was pleasant as well as interesting; the sparsely occupied country, with colonies set down here
and there near the track, has a delightful freshness born of bright empty spaces, woods and a
multitude of shallow rapid streams.
The pine forests of Paraná and Santa Catharina with their flowery carpets were a series of fine
pictures, while the wide-spread sunny pastures of southern Rio Grande, a perfect cattle country
with a cool climate, are waiting 142for more white immigrants. Herds stray on the sides of gentle
grassy slopes and in the valleys where a cluster of green marks the bed of a little river, fields are
marked out and a red-tiled house nestles—but these are all too few.

The Brazil Railway Company was formed in 1906 through the initiative of Percival Farquhar
with the object of unifying railway lines in South Brazil, then in several different hands as a
result of the concessionary system which was the only way of inviting foreign capital in earlier
days: the project also included the control of accessory ports and large industrial development
along the line of the roads. About the same time the syndicate formed by Farquhar obtained
interests in railways in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile; a huge unification plan was
foreshadowed.

Some of these plans have fallen through—the narrow-gauge Argentine lines leased have, for
instance, returned to their former control, and Chilean interests have been dropped—partly
because disturbed conditions in Europe since the first Balkan war in 1912 ended opportunities
for obtaining more metal props.

Registered in the United States, the Brazil Railway Company is really a monument to French
confidence in Brazil, in that the capital employed, as well as the properties acquired, is Gallic in
origin to a large extent. The capital of the company is fifteen hundred million francs, and of this
huge sum nine hundred million francs were subscribed in Paris, the rest of the money coming
from Brussels and London. The company is interested in thirty-eight subsidiary companies,
including several railroads which were bought or leased (and, in the case of the Madeira-
Mamoré, constructed), a frigorifico 143recently completed on Rio docks, a flourishing cattle
company, a land and colonization company, lumber business, interest in ports, as at Pará, Rio
Grande City and Rio de Janeiro (leased out to another company), a steamship service on the
Amazon river, et cetera. Land owned by the cattle company totals to over eight million acres, in
the States of Matto Grosso, S. Paulo, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, and serious efforts are being
made to improve the stock of the two or three hundred thousand head of cattle kept in various
regions by the introduction of first-class breeding stock. Animals are sold to the second of S.
Paulo’s packing-houses, the frigorifico at Osasco, just outside S. Paulo city, an American owned
and operated enterprise[7] dating also from 1914, which has friendly connection with the Brazil
Railways.

A few of the interests of the Brazil Railways are in a prosperous state, as the lumber and cattle
businesses, but the position of the company as a whole suffers from the weaker elements of the
group, perhaps particularly the Amazonian, which were injected into the earlier South Brazilian
plans; many of the development companies not only do not pay but need money to carry them
along. The affairs of the company are now in the hands of an American receiver, and the latest
report presented to long-suffering shareholders at a London meeting was optimistic in tone. It is
the most ambitious group of enterprises under one control in Brazil, and perhaps this is one
reason why its plan of line, land and port management has not been always looked upon with a
favourable eye by Brazilian authorities. 144Objection seems also to be made to the introduction
of foreign capital not for the purpose of development work of a new kind, but when employed in
acquiring properties already existing.[8]

In South Brazil the company operates over three thousand miles of line, including the State-
owned Sorocabana, the São Paulo-Rio Grande, the Paraná line, the Auxiliaire traversing Rio
Grande do Sul, and the little Thereza Christina in Santa Catharina.

São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are linked by the line owned by the Federal Government, the
Central do Brasil, a series running off from a point on the S. Paulo line into the State of Minas
Geraes; the writer followed this road when visiting Bello Horizonte, the new capital of Minas, a
beautifully placed city with mountains rising behind it and terraced plains and valleys sweeping
away in front. The line into Minas traverses a hilly country, green, fertile, well-watered with
turbulent rivers whose valleys are sedulously followed. From near Bello Horizonte a long arm of
steel reaches out past Sete Lagôas, Curvello and Curralinho, where a branch runs to the famous
diamond fields of Diamantina, and to Pirapora on the river São Francisco: from this point
steamboats meeting the trains take their goods and passengers down the waterway to Joazeiro in
145Bahia State. It Is from this river port of Pirapora that an extremely bold railway has been
planned, to run almost due north to the city of Pará, the latter part of the route following the
valley of the Tocantins river: the line would be some two thousand miles in length, traversing
country never properly explored or charted. Authorization to contract for the work was given in
1911 to the brilliant Brazilian engineer, Frontin, to whose genius the beautifying of Rio de
Janeiro is due, and a beginning was made between Pirapora and Formosa, but the universal lack
of money has given a check to operations. The headquarters and main station of the Estrada de
Ferro Central do Brasil are situated in Rio de Janeiro. Three trains are run daily each way
between Rio and São Paulo, those starting in the early morning landing passengers about six in
the evening; they are equipped with a satisfactory and inexpensive restaurant service. The two
night trains leave each city at intervals of an hour and a half every evening; the first leaves about
seven o’clock, and is modestly furnished with beds on the North American Pullman plan, while
the famous “luxo,” on which newspaper reporters always attend to take down the names of the
illustrious, starts at nine o’clock; each camarote is a separate apartment with an individual
toilette, fans, electric light, bells, and very prompt attendants always at hand, in the style of the
best European trains. Leaving Rio the track runs through a pretty green valley, intersected with
palm decked little ravines and numbers of round hills, until the uplands of São Paulo are
approached. The line has never paid its way under Government control, although deficits have
been recently much reduced by stern elimination of free passes 146for politicians and their
friends. Expenses of operation were in 1915–16 abnormally inflated by the cost of coal which at
one time reached one hundred and twelve milreis a ton (over twenty-eight dollars) and alterations
were made in many of the locomotives to permit the use of oil as fuel. Coal used in Brazil is
practically all imported, development of national southerly fields not being yet sufficient for a
tithe of the needs, and while Welsh hard coal soared high when the British Government checked
exports, North American was offered at prices little inferior on account of the making-hay
methods of United States shipowners. Oil, too, is imported, but the Federal Government
procured a large stock before changing the fuel methods of the Central, and is able to buy
supplies from three different firms. Several railroads of Brazil, in these days of stress, burn
wood.
From Rio de Janeiro city is an exceedingly important “rede” of lines, for in addition to the
excellent system of the Central is the series belonging to the Leopoldina company, an admirable
constructor, operator and developer company. The Leopoldina owns about one thousand eight
hundred and fifty miles of track, serves an area of two hundred thousand square miles, and
penetrates the three States of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Geraes and Espirito Santo, linking the port of
Victoria to Rio by a lateral line with little branches joining up small ports by the way, and
passing through the rich sugar country of Campos and the active town of Itapemirim
(Cachoeiras) where several industries obtain power from the falls; other lines run off from
Itapemirim, Campos, Macahé and several points penetrating fertile interior country with good
transportation 147service. This coastwise series, and another running to Nova Friburgo and on in
a general northerly direction, start from Nictheroy, across the bay from Rio city: the bay is
traversed by a thoroughly up to date system of ferries, of the Cantareira Company, which
originally belonged to a Brazilian firm but was purchased and is now operated by the
Leopoldina.

The fine line to Petropolis starts from the Praia Formosa in Rio, the ascent taking two hours,
apparently never grudged by the scores of business men whose homes are in the mountain city
during the summer and who travel daily to Rio; from Petropolis it runs on into the Minas interior,
serving a coffee and dairy country.

The Leopoldina Railway Company was formed in London in 1897, and with the capital
subscribed existing lines were acquired which have since been improved and largely extended;
the series was bankrupt when taken over but with unification of the lines and the encouragement
of agriculture along the course there has been a respectable dividend-earning for the last ten
years. The company maintains demonstration farms at Nova Friburgo and Bem Fica in the
interior of Rio State, where irrigation is applied to the rich little valleys that intersect a multitude
of hills; on the hilltops coffee has been grown for half a century, and while this process has been
one of gradual but certain exhaustion the valleys have been neglected. It is interesting to see, all
along the Leopoldina’s lines, efforts made by the Brazilian small farmer to imitate the methods
of Bem Fica. Another demonstration farm at the station of Campos, on the way to Victoria, was
changed in a few months from a piece of waste land to a lusty field of cotton as an example; all
this coastal belt is an old sugar country 148which should also be a great producer of cotton and
fibres and fruit. Running on to the capital and port of the State of Espirito Santo, Victoria, the
line serves at the latter end a hilly coffee country with one of the most wonderful winding
panoramas of scenery in South America; a dormitory and restaurant service of high-class type
operates between Rio and Victoria, and from this exquisitely framed little port, “O Rio em
miniatura,” go out four million bags of Brazil’s coffee crop. The city lies at the end of a bay
entrance of great beauty, green, broken by fantastic hills reflected in pellucid water; port works
of the best modern design have been begun by the Leopoldina engineers, but when the writer
visited the port in late 1915 work had practically ceased as a result of financial stringency. The
hopes of Victoria to become one of the busiest centres of activity are high, for in addition to her
coffee export trade she may serve as a great doorway for outgoing minerals from Minas Geraes:
enormous iron deposits for which Victoria is probably the most logical outlet have been acquired
by a British company and with the war over, are awaiting loosened purse-strings, for
development.
In addition to the coastwise link with Rio, the State of Espirito Santo is traversed in a north-
westerly direction by a line which enters the valley of the Rio Doce and passes on into Minas
Geraes; about four hundred and fifty kilometers are in traffic of this system, which, linking up
with other lines in the south of Minas, will serve a fine region and add to the prestige of Victoria.

Looking up the coast from Victoria there is observable a gap between that pretty port and the
cacao centre, 149Bahia, as regards railroad connections parallel to the sea coast. The greatest
networks of lines have ceased in Espirito Santo, and above this region there is only one linking
series of lines, the system of the Great Western of Brazil, serving the whole of the great north-
east promontory of Brazil. The lines of Bahia do not form a coherent system, important as they
are as regards local needs.

Below the port of Bahia (properly the city of São Salvador, but as little popularly known by that
name as Rio is recognized by her official title of São Sebastião) there are two lines penetrating
from coast towns inwards to cacao-producing country: the most ambitious runs from Ponta da
Areia, close to the port of Caravellas, westwards across the narrow southern neck of Bahia State,
into Minas Geraes to the town of Theophilo Ottoni, a distance of three hundred and seventy-six
kilometers. The second penetrating line runs from the port of Ilhéos to Conquista, a distance of
eighty-two kilometers. During the war and post-war booms this was a notable freight carrier and
profit maker, for the cacao plantations tributary to the line have yielded unprecedentedly large
crops at a time when every ounce of cocoa in the world has been called for at high prices. The
isolated little Ilhéos rolled in unexpected money in 1915–16, and prospered again in 1919.

Bahia’s great port farther northward stands on a peninsula at the north of a large, deeply
indented, island-studded bay. There is no river delta here to assist transportation problems, and
connection between the lines originating at different parts of the bay is rendered difficult by the
depth of sea inlets and the marshy character of the intervening land. It is for 150these reasons
that a line runs south from Nazareth, itself south of the bay, west from São Felix, north-westerly
from Cachoeira, with the most important line of all running from Bahia city across country until
junction with the legendary river S. Francisco is effected at Joazeiro: this latter line branches off
at Alagoinhas (“Little Lakes”) to Aracajú, the port of the little-known State of Sergipe, and
forms the only linking railroad of the series serving Bahia. The cacao crop of the State is all
marketed in and shipped from Bahia city: it reaches that distributing point from the producing
centres of the more southerly lands by sea, a state-owned service of small steamboats, the
“Navigação Bahiana,” helping in this transportation work, besides operating on the S. Francisco
river and running to and from certain productive islands off the Bahia coast. In 1915 Bahia
exported 41,546 tons of cacao with an official value of 37,000 contos of reis, or about nine and a
quarter million dollars, yielding in taxes to the State 6,388 contos, in addition to large sums
contributed by the tobacco and coffee export. As far as rail connection is concerned Bahia is
practically out of touch with active regions of Brazil, but since her one city of first-class
importance is situated on the sea margin, and she is very well served both by cabotagem and by
ocean-going vessels, national and foreign, no complaint is heard in Bahia concerning the
deficiency. The line from S. Felix, a town reached by boat across the bay from Bahia which has
achieved fame for cigar manufacture, penetrates richly producing tobacco country: Nazareth is
the headquarters of a district exporting manganese ores.
Rua Barão da Victoria, Pernambuco.

Inauguration of Avenida 7 de Setembro, Upper Town, Bahia.

151Proceeding northward past the mouth of the São Francisco river no railway is encountered
between Aracajú and the coconut-embowered port of Maceió (Jaraguá), capital of the State of
Alagôas: construction of such a link would involve engineering difficulties in crossing the wide
river delta and, north of it, negotiating the chain of picturesque lagoons (“lagôas”) which give the
State its name. Alagôas, wedged under the shoulder of Pernambuco, is a fine sugar country: the
lower, business section of Maceió literally runs and drips with sugar; the warehouses along the
waterfront are piled with bags from which cane juice leaks, and the heady smell of it permeates
the streets. From this busy, hot little city the most southerly arm of the Great Western’s series of
linked lines reaches, a branch penetrating sugar lands by way of Atalaia and Viçosa, while a
more northerly track connects with Garanhuns, runs thence north-east, and, with a sea-ward
branch to Barreiros, connects with the fan-handle of the system at Recife (Pernambuco).

The Great Western of Brazil Railway was formed in London in 1872; the first work done was the
construction of one hundred and eighteen kilometers from the port of Recife to the town of
Timbauba with an extension to Limoeiro; in 1901 connection was carried on to the Conde d’Eu
line in Parahyba, and in the same year the company leased seven other disconnected lines of the
north-east promontory, with the object since attained of forming a linked system. Of the seven
thus controlled three had been built by, and still belong to, the Government, while four were
English built.[9] As operated today 152the Great Western line includes more than eleven hundred
miles of track, links and penetrates the four States of Alagôas, Pernambuco, Parahyba and Rio
Grande do Norte, and serves the ports of Maceió, Recife, Parahyba, Cabedello and Natal, an
independent line extending north of this point to the town of Pedra Preta. The system has done
excellent work in developing sugar, tobacco and cotton country, but it has suffered from the
financial difficulties of the last three years, droughts reducing the agricultural product of
northerly regions and adding to troubles consequent upon fallen exchange: the company has
asked the Federal Government for relief from the onerous financial obligations of the original
contract, and, with this revision accomplished, will be in a better position.

North from Natal, with the land sloping sharply east towards the Amazon delta, no more
railroads are encountered until almost midway along the shore-line of the State of Ceará the port
of Fortaleza is reached. From this point a line runs south-west into the interior to the town of
Iguatú, the track with a couple of little branches including four hundred and twenty-three
kilometers. Ceará is unenviably famous for the terrible droughts which from time to time scourge
and depopulate it, but when rains visit this territory it is extraordinarily fertile, crops are
abundant, the fecund Cearenses return and cattle-raising is resumed. A second strip of line runs
inland, almost due south, from sea-margin Camocim to Granja at the head of the bay and thence
to Cratheus, three hundred and thirty-five kilometers distant. Exports of carnauba wax, of a
special class of rubber (maniçoba = manihot), and of 153hides, go out from the ports of Ceará,
and since the last drought of 1914–15 broke in abundant rainfall there has been unprecedented
planting of fine cotton which is said to promise well. The next state northward is Piauhy, with
but a span of coast and no railroad as yet, although one is projected to connect with Ceará.
Maranhão has two lines: one, planned from São Luis to Caxias, of which some separate sections
are already in operation, and the other running from Caxias to Cajazeiras, serving interior
country. An important branch, to penetrate the sertão, is projected from a point along the first-
named line to Barra do Córdoba.

The last strip of railway which serves the north Brazilian coast extends from Pará city (Belem),
which is situated inside the mouth of the Amazon about one hundred and sixty miles from the
sea, to the seacoast town Braganza, three hundred kilometers away. The country traversed
produces Brazil nuts, tobacco, cotton and sugar, and free grants of land have been given beside
the track to settlers.

For the extreme north of Brazil the great fluvial network with the Amazon as the great main
channel serves as the only means of communication: it will probably remain the sole highway for
a long time to come. There is a total of over forty thousand miles of navigable waterways in the
Amazon valley, with service by steamers and small embarcações which suffice for the present
needs of this immense but sparsely populated territory. The waterways of Brazil are of such
extent and size that it is not possible as yet to foresee the time when they will be superseded
either by rail or road.

154There are in the Brazilian interior several strips of railroad which serve no other purpose but
that of supplementing riverine ways; the most spectacular and important of these is the renowned
Madeira-Mamoré, one of the most costly railroads in the world and the imposer of the highest
tariffs. Planned for the purpose of passing the dangerous falls blocking the Madeira-Mamoré
river, outlet for rubber districts of Peru and Bolivia as well as of the Brazilian State of Matto
Grosso, the line was completed in 1912 by the engineers of the Brazil Railways Company. Work
was originally started more than forty years ago by the initiative of Colonel Church, two or three
attempts ending in failure; when the last relay of American engineers took up the task in 1908
many relics were found of previous effort, one a locomotive imported by the Collins expedition
of 1878: it was cleaned up and put into use. The line as completed has a length of two hundred
and ninety-two kilometers; the chief enemy to construction was the deadly climate which took a
terrible toll of lives both of engineers and labourers until sanitation measures similar to those
enforced in Panama were taken.

The line is said to be paying its way, but its success depends very largely upon the fate of
Amazonian rubber in world markets. With the price of “hard fine” reduced by the competition of
the rubber of Eastern plantations, it is difficult to see how freight rates over the railroad can be
maintained at the present very high scale, necessary in order to give a return on cost; and, rich as
the tributary country is in drugs, dyes and hardwoods there would have to be a great deal of
development in production before the place of rubber could be filled. It will be extremely
regrettable if this remarkable line, a band of steel in the middle of a country of deep wild forests
cannot succeed financially: it is one of the world lines which are life as well as time savers, for
before its inauguration the annual loss in the falls of both freight and men was twenty-six per
cent.[10]
Porto Velho, Madeira River, in construction period of Madeira-Mamoré Railway.

Igarapé of S. Vicente, Manáos.

155Another line whose raison d’être is the necessity for avoiding falls on a river is the Estrada
de Ferro Paulo Affonso, on the S. Francisco river, extending from the port of Piranhas in
Alagôas State to Jatobá, in Pernambuco territory; the line is one hundred and fifteen kilometers
long, runs on the left bank of the river, and serves as a carrier for the raw material and output of
the big cotton-spinning mill (Fabrica da Pedra) recently established. The factory obtains power
from the tremendous Paulo Affonso Falls, about thirty miles distant, and several plans have been
made to convey force to Bahia city, dependent upon imported fuels for generating motive power.

The third interior, river-serving little strip of railroad is in the State of Maranhão, running from
Therezina on the Parnahyba river, boundary with Piauhy State, to Caxias; the fourth is a line in
the interior of Pará, and is still under construction although about fifty kilometers are in
operation. It runs from Alcobaça on the Tocantins river past a series of troublesome runs and
cascades to the Praia da Rainha, near the junction of the Tocantins with the greater Araguaya.

156Railways in Brazil have thus chiefly served the settled sea ports, penetrating the producing
agricultural areas behind them; coastwise linking from town to town has been an afterthought,
and has not been greatly needed with the maintenance of good shipping service. The Brazilian
lines have been criticized for lack of coherence, but the fact is that no other plan could have been
followed at the time when Brazilian building began; mileage may appear small in relation to the
republic’s 3,300,000 square miles of territory, but it is not poor in regard to the great centres of
population, all of which are grouped upon sea or river borders and possess ample shipping
facilities. At the beginning of 1922, according to the calculations of Brazil-Ferro-Carril, there
were twenty-one thousand miles of railways in operation in Brazil, with three thousand under
construction and twenty thousand miles projected; as we have seen, today a great deal of
interstate linking has been accomplished, as well as junction with sister republics.

Lack of coherence in operation is perhaps more open to criticism than any other point in
connection with Brazilian railroads. Certain lines are owned and operated by States; others are
owned by States but leased to private foreign or Brazilian companies; again there are groups of
lines built, owned and operated by private foreign or Brazilian companies, and there are lines
owned by the Federal Government some of which are leased to private operating companies and
some operated by the Government itself. The building of the lines was extremely cosmopolitan,
lines having been built preponderantly by the British but also by French, Belgian, German and,
in the case of the Madeira-Mamoré, 157American, companies: this entailed remarkable variety in
equipment—for instance, when taken over by the Great Western in 1901 the little São Francisco
line had a gauge of five feet three inches. As some other strips then acquired were narrow gauge
much work had to be done before a uniform width of one meter was created.

At the beginning of the present century the Federal Government determined upon a plan of
ownership of lines which has been followed as far as finances would permit; a large sum of
money, of which £12,935,480 is outstanding, was borrowed in London at four per cent interest
and with the proceeds many railroads were bought up. In most cases the Government decided not
to operate the lines acquired, and leased them to foreign companies. As a result of the concession
system Brazilian Federal accounts show the curious financial anomaly of the Government paying
out sums to railroads because interest had been guaranteed on the foreign capital invested, while
the same road is paying rent to the Government.

The lines owned and operated by strong British companies are quite the most prosperous in the
country: many of them were fortunate in their choice of locality, each of three climbers of the
Serra do Mar for example remaining the only negotiable link of the coast with interior regions:
the Brazilian Government, in common with certain of the other countries where Federal control
of transportation has been tried, has reaped small financial reward from lines officially operated.

In an exposition of Brazilian railway conditions made before the Rio Legislature in October,
1915, Elpidio de Salles declared that better supervision was badly 158needed: “deficits constitute
the normal state of the Federal services” and it is only from privately owned companies that
profits are obtained, he declared, proceeding to show that from systems leased to other
companies by the Union an average income of five thousand contos of reis is paid to Brazil,
these contributions coming regularly from the Great Western, the Ceará-Piauhy, the Viação
Bahiana, Sul-Mineira, Central of Rio Grande do Norte, Madeira-Mamoré, the Auxiliaire and the
Santa Catharina lines. On the other hand, Cardoso de Almeida has shown that the Brazilian
Government has spent 1,100,000 contos of reis (at normal exchange, about £75,000,000 or
$375,000,000) on construction and “rescision” of railroads, bearing the burden of forty thousand
contos due annually as interest. Railroad debts are, however, those which a sturdy developing
young land can bear better than older countries can hope to do, and Brazil certainly is not over-
railroaded: Argentina, next door, with a quarter of Brazil’s population and one-third of her
territory, has thirty-five thousand kilometers of line.

Brazilian “estradas de ferro” have nearly all one promising feature in common: they are pioneer
paths, with new towns camped beside their tracks, and new industries growing up about them:
with the exception of the old mining settlements in the interior of Minas and Bahia, scarcely any
development existed in the Brazilian hinterlands until the railroads drove a way; nearly all give
access, and as they move farther across sertão and through forest, will give greater access, to
virgin lands uncharted and unknown. In the southern states many of the concessions given to
railway companies carried colonization clauses as a continuation of 159the deliberate,
thoroughly worked out plan of the authorities by which during the nineteenth century settlements
were made of Poles, Russians, Swiss, Germans and other European races, with the object of
feeding the lines and stimulating agriculture. The European War has checked these plans: settlers
from Europe will in all probability be scarce for many years to come, engaged as the racked
countries will be in their own rehabilitation. 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?
Frontin’s daring scheme to build a line from Pirapora (due west from Caravellas in Bahia) along
the valley of the Tocantins to Pará has already been mentioned: the scheme lags for want of
money. Another conception is that of a railroad which would run almost parallel with the
Pirapora-Pará line: it would extend from Cuyabá in the middle of the diamond district of Matto
Grosso almost due north along the valley of the Tapajoz river to the town of Santarem, a pretty
trading point at the junction of the black river with the yellow Amazon. A third ambitious project
is a railroad to run from Manáos northwards, along the valleys of the Negro and the Branco into
British Guiana.

160None of these schemes is less justified than the Transandine line farther south, the
transcontinental lines across the United States and Canada or that conception of Cecil Rhodes,
the Cape-to-Cairo road of Africa. In no case were those pioneer tracks built to serve an existing
population—they brought population and consequent production along their trail over the prairie
and the veldt, and these new Brazilian lines would bring people and agriculture into the sertão.
The climate is unhealthy only in the swamp regions, and railroad construction with
accompanying drainage accomplishment would be the best means of sanitizing the country; it is
no worse than many parts of India, East and West Africa, and the low-lying borders of the
Caribbean where successful railroads have brought malarial jungle into such a condition that
white men dwell there with safety, and a hardy native race can cultivate the rich soil.

Engineering difficulties are probably least in the Cuyabá-Santarem plan. There is less matto
(thick woodland) country, no important system of serras to climb; much of the track would run
on the high level land of the Matto Grosso interior. The regions served could be expected to
produce meat and hides from the enormous pastures of the State; minerals from the mountains of
Goyaz; hardwoods from the northerly forests; rubber from the same forestal lands, together with
dyes and drugs; the line would greatly encourage cattle-raising and cereal planting. The packing
industry is yet in its infancy in Brazil, for the first frigorificos were only opened in the latter part
of 1914, and the world has not yet realized the extent to which it may attain. Brazil has more
head of cattle than has the 161Argentine, and almost illimitable space for scientific breeding; she
has areas for cereals which could make her a rival granary of the world. She has room and to
spare for one hundred million population.

But her two great interior states, Matto Grosso and Goyaz, the heart of Brazil, with their two
million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand square kilometers of land, are traversed by less
than five hundred kilometers of railroad. 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.

III. Shipping
The rivers of Brazil, highways of necessity, and a wonderful penetrating system in themselves,
are quite well served; the Amazon river with its tributaries comprises a fluvial network of over
forty thousand miles, and the producing areas are served partly by steamers and also by small
launches and native embarcações which fearlessly traverse narrow water lanes almost closed by
verdure, darkened from the sun by walls of tropic green, and negotiate the runs and cascades of
the more distant reaches. The excellent steamers of the Amazon Steam Navigation Company are
now 162part of the interests of the Farquhar syndicate, but formerly belonged to a British firm
which acquired the rights of the early Brazilian operators. To force the sale of the Amazon
company, a few years ago, a number of new steamers were brought from the United States and
put into use; when rubber boomed there was freight for most of them. But today, with the object
of their introduction attained and at the same time a shrinkage of commerce upon the Amazon,
many are idle. In lines outside the Port of Pará these vessels are lying, empty, motionless, just so
much good money thrown away for lack of foresight.

Besides the ships of the “Amazon Steam” serving the route between Pará, and intervening ports
(Santarem, Itacoatiara, Obidos, etc.) to Manáos, ships run up another thousand miles to Iquitos,
and also up the Madeira to the hither side of the Falls, where the railroad ends. The English
Booth line and the Lloyd Brasileiro also run up from Pará to Manáos, and there is a service on
the Tapajoz and Tocantins by small steamers. The Amazon has all the riverine service that is
called for, and chiefly feels the need of more ocean-going steamships.

The São Francisco river is served by a line belonging to the State of Bahia, the Navigação
Bahiana, which runs up and down the navigable stretch between the headwaters and the Paulo
Affonso Falls, touching one railhead at Pirapora in Minas Geraes and another at Joazeiro in
Bahia. The Paraná river is served by the ships of a Paulista company, running up and down from
Itapura to the Tibiriça ferry, and up various affluents, while every coastal town traverses its
nearby rivers with small steamboats privately owned. One of the most actively traversed water
regions of Brazil is the Lagôa dos Patos in southern Rio Grande, where communication between
the towns at each end of the lagoon is carried on entirely by boat. The Brazilian has been in the
forefront of enterprises helping in the water communication between port and port in Brazil, and,
as the thriving condition of the Lloyd Brasileiro demonstrates, is able to go abroad and compete
with foreign companies.
Water-front of São Salvador (Bahia).

Floating docks at Manáos, Amazonas.

163The Lloyd had a marked advantage after the War started in being able to offer neutral
transportation for passengers and freight, and while as a matter in which all Brazil was interested
the charges for coffee carrying were long kept at a low level, there has been during the last year a
natural tendency to raise general rates under tempting conditions. When the British
Government’s Statutory List went into force in Brazil, about March, 1916, the British boats
serving the Amazon were unable to carry rubber shipped by firms of Teutonic ownership; the
Lloyd thenceforth remained the sole carrier of German-shipped rubber, and it appears reasonable
to suppose that this fact had something to do with the Lloyd’s price of transportation to New
York rising to fifty-four cents per cubic foot while Booth’s were charging their British and their
neutral customers but thirty-four cents. All South American services made big money while
these rates held, and for the Lloyd palmy days were especially opportune after a long season of
poor returns. In common with the Central Railroad, it has been in the past an instance of a non-
paying governmental company, but with drastic reforms and present good management it is in an
enviable position.

164Sea communication between Brazil and the rest of the world is carried on mainly by
European steamship companies: good work is also done by the fleet of the Lloyd Brasileiro,
which in addition to serving most ports of the country maintains a busy tri-monthly passenger
and freight service to New York. Japanese vessels call at south Brazilian ports, as also do ships
of the Australasian trade; the most conspicuous laggard in the shipping world was formerly the
United States. In sailing-ship days American shipping was busy in these waters, but the lines
were gradually displaced by more enterprising service from Europe; before the war the harbours
of Brazil sheltered fine ships of the Royal Mail, Lamport and Holt, Booth, Harrison, Hamburg-
American, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, Transportes Maritimes, the Sud-Atlantique, of
Italian and Austrian lines, Scandinavian, Belgian, Dutch—every flag was common but that of the
United States, and when this entered it was at the stern of an oil tanker or a sailing vessel
bringing lumber. The lines connecting with Europe were many; sailings to New York were few;
service from New York direct to Brazil was still rarer, for the European lines created a dexterous
commercial triangle by which merchandise of European origin came across the Atlantic to Brazil
in ships which discharged their hardware and textiles, took on a load of coffee and hides for New
York, there discharged the Brazilian goods and re-loaded with North American grain or cotton
and with this steamed across the Atlantic home again.

The war stimulated direct service between the United States and Brazil, several lines now
competing for business formerly held by Europeans; fast steamers offer quick passenger and
freight service, following the hasty war revival of the wood-built sailing-ship: 165during 1915
there was a remarkable increase of activity in these vessels, and the writer has seen ten or more
at the same time lying in some bright Brazilian port, their long graceful lines of the schooner
taking one back to the days of Midshipman Easy or Tom Cringle of the famous Log. Many
shipowners of these sailing craft must have made fortunes, for whereas in normal times they
would have gladly carried freight for three dollars a ton, they were able to get four to four dollars
and a half and so on in an ever ascending scale until over fourteen dollars was taken, and with a
somewhat haughty sniff at that in late 1916.

In 1916 the only steamers under the United States flag operating in Brazilian waters were oil
tankers, the coal-carriers of the Berwind company, and the vessels of the United States & Brazil
S. S. line, carrying the products of the United States Steel corporation and taking back
manganese ores and general cargo. Later, with the creation of a big American mercantile marine
by the U. S. Shipping Board, and the allocation of a large number of ex-German steamers to the
service of the United States, strongly sustained direct lines between North American and
Brazilian ports were created which carry immense quantities of coffee in exchange for
manufactured goods. Chilean, Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine and Uruguayan vessels now visit
Brazil from sister Republics, and her own mercantile marine has undergone a remarkable
development.

Not only did the Cia. Nacional de Navegação Costeira and the Cia. Commercio e Navegação add
in a most enterprising manner to their fleets, but the Lage firm created important repairing and
ship-building yards upon an island in Rio Bay, which performed great service to the Allies
during the war; and the Government-supported 166Lloyd Brasileiro began to send its steamers
far afield to North American and European waters.

The list of the Lloyd’s vessels presently received notable additions. At the outbreak of war a
large number of German and Austrian steamers took refuge in Brazilian ports, and there lay for
two and a half years, idle and rusting. After Brazil’s entry into the conflict many of these ships
were brought into use, seventeen being added to the national fleets, while twenty-eight were
chartered to France. By the middle of 1922 France had returned these vessels in first-class
condition, and the bulk of them were permanently added to the Brazilian mercantile marine, the
Lloyd counting forty ex-German steamers out of her total fleet of one hundred and two. Brazil’s
claim for the price of the coffee seized by Germany at the beginning of the war, for the four
Brazilian vessels torpedoed, and the maintenance of about seven thousand German sailors, is
offset by the value of these merchants ships.

Smaller Brazilian lines are the Amazon River Steam Navigation Co.; the Cia. de Navegação de
Maranhão; the Cia. de Navegação Bahiana; the Empreza Brasileira de Navegação; the Lloyd
Nacional; and the Lloyd Transatlantico Brasileiro. The service to Brazil performed by the home-
registered lines is proved by statistics: for out of 24,736 vessels calling at Brazilian ports during
1920, 19,542 were under the flag of Brazil. It is true that the size of the ships was comparatively
small, the tonnage of nearly 25,000,000 being divided between 15,000,000 “Foreign” and
10,000,000 Brazilian, but the low average is due to the small boats employed in various riverine
services. The Brazilian merchant service is the largest in South America and performs invaluable
interstate transport work.

167

CHAPTER V
INDUSTRIES
THE COFFEE INDUSTRY OF BRAZIL

The huge coffee industry in Brazil will not receive a great deal of space in this book for two
reasons: the first is that the subject needs a special monograph to deal with it thoroughly, and
there is an entire literature on the subject, especially excellent in French, Portuguese and Italian;
the second reason is that coffee culture and marketing is so highly organized that there is little
room for outside enterprise. Existing plantations are probably quite capable of taking care of
what new planting may be required—and this likely to be in the immediate future: the drastic
checks given to planting by the authorities after the terrible fright of the great over-production of
1906, that led to the much-discussed Valorization, have done their work so thoroughly that at the
present, with the elimination of many thousands of trees owing to exhaustion, there is room for
extended planting on São Paulo and Minas fazendas. Brazilians, to whom life on a fazenda is
always pleasant, are large owners of coffee-producing lands, and are quite aware of economic
conditions, as well as being experienced growers and exporters of coffee. I do not, therefore,
advise any tyro to enter upon the business of a coffee fazenda; such plantations offer good
opportunities for investment, but apart from that angle do not call for outside activity.

168There are many foreigners in the coffee-producing business in Brazil, of course. Italians,
besides supplying a very large percentage of the labour on the S. Paulo estates, are considerable
owners of plantations; the Dumont Estates, English owned and operated, are world famous; and
the greatest single owner of coffee trees in the world, possessor of thirteen million shrubs, is
Francisco Schmidt, who began life in Brazil as a poor German immigrant.

The first coffee plants brought to Brazil were of the liberica variety and were planted in Pará at
sea-level, a situation to which this kind is not averse. This was in 1727 and when in 1761 the
Mother Country remitted taxes on coffee from her American possessions, cultivation was
encouraged and spread south to Maranhão, Ceará, Espirito Santo, Minas and Rio, eventually
reaching the red diabasic soils of São Paulo. The variety grown here is chiefly café arabica,
preferring an upland habitat, but in the course of years Brazil has developed hardy hybrid
varieties of her own.

A couple of sacks of coffee are said to have been sent out from the south early in the nineteenth
century, but real business did not develop until after Dom João arrived and promulgated laws
freeing Brazilian trade from its swaddling clothes. Between 1835 and 1840 export began in large
quantities, the latter year recording 1,383,000 sacks sent abroad for sale; slave labour was used,
and the interior was searched for the deepest blood-red lands, found in their richest belts in São
Paulo State.

By the year 1870 Brazil was exporting three million sacks annually (of sixty kilos, or about one
hundred and thirty pounds, each); before the end of the century the 169output was ten million
sacks, but meanwhile Brazil passed through a severe labour crisis. Abolition of slavery in 1888
left the plantations without an adequate supply of workers: it was necessary to supplement the
free negro element remaining at work with more “braços”—the eternal need of Brazil.
Experiments had already been made in colonization by Dom Pedro, and these proved the
excellence of the Italian labourer; prompt measures were taken by the State as well as by private
fazendeiros to bring agricultural workers from North Italy, the breach was filled, and so
successfully that today out of a population of three million people in S. Paulo State, one million
are Italians. Disputes occurred in early years owing to the disparity of race, and partly the lack of
experience of the planter in dealing with white labour, but the State Government took up the
cudgels on the part of the immigrant, saw to it that he was paid justly and that his condition was
economically sound—to the great advantage of coffee cultivation in Brazil. This was the work of
the Patronato Agricola, a Brazilian invention which owes much to Dr. Sampaio Vidal; its
successful operation was instrumental in contenting the immigrant who came to work on coffee
plantations, and while it was at first regarded with suspicion by some fazendeiros, eventually
received their cordial co-operation as a source of mutual benefit.

Not only São Paulo but the coffee-growing regions of interior Rio, Minas, and Espirito Santo,
sought immigrants officially: in spite of efforts there was no section of Brazil so successful as the
southern State. Colonos who were brought to Minas melted away to São Paulo, perhaps chiefly
on account of the “sympathy of numbers.” 170São Paulo eventually remained the only State with
an organized, active immigration system.

At the end of the nineteenth century big prices were paid for coffee: on a few occasions a sack
fetched one hundred and thirty-five francs, and large quantities were sold at ninety-five and
ninety-seven francs. Cost of production was about fifty francs, and sixty-six was considered a
fair return on investment; the industry was greatly stimulated by these profits and planting began
feverishly all along the lines of deposit of the richest red soils. These new plantations came into
bearing four or five years later, and in the crop season of 1906–07 a staggering yield was ready
for an overwhelmed market. The bounty of nature brought Brazil face to face with ruin.

São Paulo State harvested 15,392,000 bags; Rio de Janeiro State offered 4,245,000 bags; Espirito
Santo and Bahia together had another half million. Altogether Brazil had over 20,000,000 bags
of coffee for sale, to a world whose annual consumption was then not much more than
17,000,000 bags; and in addition to the new Brazilian crop there was a harvest from Mexico and
Central America of 1,500,000 bags, from Colombia of 1,000,000, with another half million from
the East and 400,000 from the West Indies—and the not to be ignored contribution of real
Mocha coffee of 115,000 bags.

Nor was that all. There had been a big Brazilian crop in 1901–02, reaching the then
unprecedented figure of 15,000,000 sacks, and with a world consumption at that time of only
13,000,000 there was a large surplus of this coffee left in hand, as well as stocks of other
varieties. Prices went down, and the planter was 171only saved by the imminence of a fall in
exchange which meant that although his coffee sold for less gold than normally, yet this gold
brought so much more Brazilian paper when exchanged that he was able to pay operating
expenses and still count a profit in national currency.

From a gloomy level of thirty francs a bag, coffee rose in 1904–05 to about forty and fifty francs;
but the threatening feature of the situation was retention in world warehouses of a stock
averaging 11,000,000 bags. When Brazil was confronted with 20,000,000 bags of the new 1906
crop she thus had to consider a market which already held seven-tenths of the coffee needed
annually by the world, apart from other sources of new supply.
To throw her coffee upon Europe and the United States meant the ruin of the premier industry of
Brazil. After a series of hotly debated discussions, which had begun with the menace of the big
crop of 1902, the State of São Paulo, with the support of the Federal Government and in
agreement with the States of Rio and Minas, decided upon the famous, greatly abused and
passionately defended Valorization Plan. The methods adopted may be open to criticism, but
some remedy had to be sought, and the plan had the merit of boldness as well as the sanction
given by success; the fact that this success was partly adventitious would probably prevent
recourse to like measures at future times. The “Taubaté Agreement” forming the base of the plan
obliged the contracting states to sell their coffee at not less than a given price, [11] to prevent
exportation of grades below Type Seven; to commence propaganda 172work abroad to increase
coffee sales; to collect a surtax of three francs per bag on all exports; and to limit new planting of
coffee. It was farther suggested that the surtax proceeds should be held by the Federal
Government and used for the amortization of the loan to be made, creating a Caixa de Emissão e
Conversão to deal with financial aspects of the Plan and to regulate exchange—an excellent
measure which was eventually carried out.

Difficulties checked the original agreement and in the end São Paulo faced the situation alone—
meanwhile the harvest was coming in, and the price of coffee dropped below thirty francs a bag
—obtaining a preliminary loan of £1,000,000 on August 1, 1906, from the Brasilianische Bank
für Deutschland, for a one-year term; in December £2,000,000 was obtained through J. Henry
Schroeder & Company of London, and subsequently the National City Bank of New York
negotiated another million sterling. The money was used to buy and store the coffee of the
Brazilian plantations, and was rendered sufficient only by the co-operation of fazendeiros and
exporting houses.

In June, 1907, São Paulo held 8,000,000 bags of coffee, buying only high types and through the
sole agency of Theodore Wille and Company, a strong coffee exporting firm of Brazil. When
Minas and Rio protested against the exclusion of their eight and nine type coffees from the
stores, the Federal Government at last actively assisted, lending the State of São Paulo ten
million francs for the purchase of the lower types. In July, 1907, S. Paulo stopped buying. She
had acquired over 8,000,000 bags, one-third of the total purchase price of 400,000,000 francs
coming from foreign 173loans and the remainder from advances by commission houses in Brazil
on coffee consigned to their keeping. Subsequent sums for the redemption of this coffee were
obtained: two million pounds sterling came from Rothschild’s through the Federal Government,
and a similar sum was obtained by the lease of the (State) Sorocabana railway to the Farquhar
syndicate.

With the exception of a few hundred thousand sacks all this coffee was sent to different world
markets for storage until opportune sales could be made; for a whole year not one ounce of it was
sold, and then, when the next Paulista harvest turned out to fill only five million bags, the
preciously guarded coffee was dealt out warily to a firm market at an average price of sixty
francs a bag. Without this action Brazilians say that the price must have fallen to twenty francs.

At the end of 1908 financial adjustments were made; older debts were covered by a new loan of
£15,000,000 arranged with an international syndicate headed by Schroeder of London and the
Société Générale of Paris. These houses took £5,000,000 each, and the remainder was distributed
between Germany, Belgium and New York. The loan was guaranteed by the coffee surtax, raised
to five francs a bag, and by the seven million bags remaining in international warehouses. Havre,
with nearly two million bags, was the greatest holder of the valorized coffee, and it continued to
be sold during the next five years only when the price offered profits.

When the European War broke out stocks of this coffee amounting to three million sacks still lay
in the countries suddenly rendered belligerent—it should be mentioned here that coffee improves
by careful keeping. 174The combined stocks in Hamburg, Bremen and Trieste totalling
1,200,000 bags were at once taken over by the Teutonic governments, and the price (about
£4,500,000) paid to a Berlin bank; it got no farther because proceeds of the coffee sales being
mortgaged to London bankers, transfer would “benefit the enemy.” Germany was in this case
only following the same financial rules as other belligerents, but Brazil was placed in the
invidious position of innocent bystander, and in 1922 was still trying a way out of the difficulty.
Adding the value of the Antwerp stock also under German control (718,000 sacks) São Paulo
was owed nearly seven million pounds sterling, and this sum together with the price of the Havre
stock, 1,216,000 bags, was about equal to the foreign debt of S. Paulo.

Although payment for the seized coffee stocks was necessarily delayed, São Paulo was by this
suddenly opened market for her coffee relieved of the anxious time that might otherwise have
been hers after the 1914–15 crop was harvested. A large crop was once more the result of perfect
climatic conditions following small colheitas (harvests) of one or two previous years.

Early in 1915 the Federal Government prepared to lend São Paulo one hundred and fifty
thousand contos of reis with which advances were to be made to planters, enabling the retention
of surplus coffee—a variant of the valorization plan which was more generally approved. But by
good fortune sales 175of Brazilian coffee far exceeded expectation; the Scandinavian countries
enormously increased their purchases and although a general idea prevailed that it was largely
passed on to Germany, no objection was for a long time raised by the Allies.

Country 1913 1915 1920

United States 4,914,730 7,061,319 6,248,000 bags of 60 kilos.
Germany 1,865,632 545,000 „ „ „ „
France 1,846,944 2,449,223 1,540,000 „ „ „ „
Netherlands 1,483,097 1,486,994 376,000 „ „ „ „
Austria 1,016,824 80,000 „ „ „ „
Belgium 444,988 320,000 „ „ „ „
Argentina 249,045 269,987 285,000 „ „ „ „
Great Britain 246,161 413,786 73,000 „ „ „ „
Italy 237,126 710,800 1,002,000 „ „ „ „
Sweden 212,034 2,333,386 386,000 „ „ „ „
Spain 108,928 106,329 145,000 „ „ „ „
Total exports 13,267,449 17,061,319 11,525,000 „ „ „ „
Prices, 1921—down to 7 m. bag; 1922 15816 m. In 1921 shipments were checked by the slump,
and the Brazilian Government bought and held 4,500,000 bags. Prices, fallen to 7 milreis in
1921, recovered to over 15 milreis per 10 kilos in early 1922.

Agricultural maps of Brazil, freely and courteously handed to any visitor at the Escriptorio do
Informações do Brasil in the rue St. Honoré in Paris, show a huge patch of green in the middle of
S. Paulo State and extending to a point very near the frontier of Minas Geraes. This patch
represents some seven hundred and twenty-two million coffee trees, covering a total space of
over two million acres.

176At least one hundred million pounds sterling is invested in coffee plantations, and, with an
output of an average twelve million bags, income from crops is not less than twenty-five million
pounds sterling a year.

Advancing into the interior when the advent of railroads made cultivation of the sertão a
commercial possibility, the culture of coffee in Brazil and especially in São Paulo is carried on
upon a large scale: the plantations are great businesses, scientifically operated. The number of
trees on a good estate is likely to run up into millions, although no other single grower rivals
Colonel Schmidt’s production of eleven or twelve thousand tons of coffee. Visiting a fine
fazenda one is aware of seeing the inside of a commercial undertaking of striking magnitude,
where activity is regularized, the whole life of the fazendeiro and the colonos subordinated to the
supreme interest—at least during the rush season of the colheita. Looking from the windows of
the fazendeiro’s residence, which is generally upon a little eminence, one sees an ocean of dark
green shrubs, planted in perfectly even lines, stretching away in unbroken symmetry as far as the
eye can see. 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. In the
background is the area of wild woodland, for “no fazenda can prosper unless it has a certain
amount of matto,” say the Brazilians. In the flowering season a coffee estate is a lovely sight, the
sturdy shrubs strewn so thickly with waxy white blossoms that it seems as if snow had fallen on
them; the air is clean, cool and sunny, and bees hum over the sweet-scented flowers. The trees
are larger than those seen in Central America, are unshaded, and generally three or four roots
stand together to make the bush. The ground beneath the shrub is kept carefully weeded.
The S. Paulo Coffee Industry.

Labourers’ houses; the coffee harvest; drying grounds; view of coffee plantation.

177When the round berries turn red harvesting begins. Men, women and children turn out,
trained to strip the berries from the slender little branches without injuring the tree; the whole
fazenda is in a bustle, the water-channels are racing with scarlet berries carried along in the
stream, and the machinery house is noisy. When the berries are pulped and the twin beans freed
and cleaned, the business of packing begins; day by day wagon loads of sacks leave the fazenda
for São Paulo city, consigned to Santos, and thence to some country overseas. Brazilians appear
to love fazenda life; the wife of a coffee fazendeiro will often take as keen and business-like an
interest in the work as her husband does, discusses theories of planting with spirit, and will show
you all the details of the new imported machinery. There is a true hospitality and geniality
permeating the fazenda in Brazil; very large sums are often made, and while quantities of coffee
money have been royally wasted on extravagances, there is a class of strong business men in
plantation work who put profits into improvements, follow new ideas, and build up their estates
from year to year in an admirable manner.

178It is in São Paulo, and especially about Riberão Preto, Campinas, São Simão, S. Carlos, Dous
Corregos, Botacatú,—all along the lines of the fans of railroad—that the great coffee estates are
found. The original Coffea Arabica has some naturalized children in Brazil of great merit and
hardihood; the Nacional or Commun, the delicate Bourbon, yellow Botacatú, the big aromatic
Maragogype, all have their defenders. From these plantations come the hundreds of thousands of
tons of coffee that have made Brazil the premier coffee country of the world, and brought her to
this eminence in a remarkably short space of time. The development of coffee culture in Brazil,
and the simultaneous development of public taste for its essence, is one of the great industrial
stories of the nineteenth century.

The interior of Rio State, with its endless series of little round hills crowned with coffee shrubs,
is an assiduous producer; farther inland Minas Geraes substituted cotton with coffee when the
United States began to sweep world markets with her product, but is now going back to cotton
here and there as the demand of her own factories brings unheard-of prices for native fibres; she
is however a regular supplier of coffee, in common with her neighbour Espirito Santo, and the
more northerly state of Bahia. North of Bahia commercial production ceases, but, as in the case
of cotton, shrubs may be seen all along the Brazilian littoral, up to Maranhão and Pará—of an
African variety which does not need hilly country.

The world is steadily drinking more coffee. Consumption was only able to take ten million bags
in 1885: the estimate for 1922 is 22 million bags. It is this 179reflection which preserves the
fazendeiro from having nightmare whenever he sees a fine colheita promising. Increased sales of
coffee seem to be partly the result of greater world demand for non-alcoholic drinks, but have
been undoubtedly developed wherever a systematic propaganda has been carried out. São Paulo
State went deliberately and level-headedly into the advertising and demonstration business; the
campaign was first started in Great Britain, by the São Paulo Pure Coffee Company, which
roasts, packs and sells good grades of beans. Numbers of cafeterias were established in which
strong, hot, sweet Brazilian coffee was perfectly served. Later on the plan was carried to other
European countries—notably France, Germany and Austria, all good customers of Brazil—to
North America and even to Japan.

Recently the São Paulo Pure Coffee Company was acquired by the Brazilian Warrant Company,
an enterprising house established in Brazil, with branches in São Paulo city, Santos, and Rio de
Janeiro, and headquarters in London: a specialty is made by this company of advances against
coffee, as well as sugar, cereals and general merchandise, while they are also commission and
consignment agents. Exporters of Brazilian coffee are legion, but it is instructive to note how
large a proportion of the names listed are Brazilian; coffee is not one of the businesses which the
South American leaves to the foreigner.

Coffee accounts for forty per cent of all the Brazilian export. As far as S. Paulo is concerned,
coffee represents over ninety-seven per cent of her exports. In 1915 the state’s total exports were
worth a little over 180465,000 contos, and of this coffee was worth 453,000 contos. In S. Paulo
city itself if one is not in business circles the predominance of coffee might escape the visitor but
not so in Santos; here, in the coffee port, the apparatus of shipping has largely been constructed
with coffee-loading as the aim: special mechanisms serve the ceaseless stream of laden coffee
bags that arrive at the lines upon lines of armazens (warehouses) on the dock front. 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.

The coffee industry is one which is a satisfaction to contemplate because it is a clean, wholesome
business, from first to last; the conditions under which it is carried on are not only ably organized
and in a prospering state, but the workers as well as the estate owners and shippers have a chance
to make money and lead pleasant lives.

THE RUBBER INDUSTRY ON THE AMAZON

Rubber, the elastic gum bled from certain trees and shrubs, has been so long associated in
thought with the sweltering, shadowy forests of the great Amazon river, that it is not a matter for
wonder that for many years after Wickham made his famous experiments with rubber seeds, first
in Kew and then in the East, both Brazilians and the general public paid little heed to the
possibility of plantation rubber as a commercial rival of 181the Amazonian product. It was not
until 1910 that manufacturers began to take plantation rubber seriously and to use it freely, and
not until 1912–13 that production from these sedulously cared-for trees drew level with and
surpassed the output from Brazil. Today, with plantation rubber offering something like one
hundred and fifty thousand tons of crude rubber, and Brazil maintaining her average output of
about thirty-seven thousand tons, the race would be a very uneven one if it were not for one
factor, the wonderful resiliency of “hard fine Pará” which renders it unequalled in quality.

The two industries, that of Brazil and of Malaysia, are strikingly at variance in almost everything
except the fact that they deal with extraction of the latex of hevea brasiliensis. In Brazil we have
enormous areas of dim, sultry, water-bordered forest, where wild rubber trees are sought for
amongst eighty or so other varieties of trees: where the labourer is, or at least imagines himself to
be, a free agent, bound only by his debt to the central store, working when he thinks fit, living in
a solitary hut without society, and making a little balance of profit at the end of the season if he
is lucky; he buys all his necessities of food and tools in the dearest market in the world, and sells
at the price forced upon the Amazon by the rival industry half the world distant. In the East is an
organized industry operated by wealthy companies, where land was cleared, rubber planted
methodically, hired labourers working under control, paid by the day, where the latex is
coagulated in factories, milled into fine sheets, and goes to market in a form that does not bear
outwardly any relation to the big black balls, smoke-cured in the seringueiro’s hut, 182sent out
from the Amazon. Nevertheless it is the unorganized, unscientific industry which yields the
product with the highest price on international markets, and, huge as is the deluge of plantation
rubber today, there is no good reason why the Eastern and Amazonian industries should not
continue side by side. Arabian coffee has not been commercially ruined on account of Brazilian
production of coffea arabica.

There are in the world very many plants and trees yielding rubber of differing qualities. Three
kinds of elastic gum are exported from Brazil in addition to the latex of the heveas: they are
known as mangabeira rubber, from mangabeira hancornia speciosa; maniçoba, from the
manihot plants of several kinds (euphorbias, and first cousins of mandioca); and caucho, drawn
from the castilloa elastica tree. All these have their places in world markets, but, as also in the
case of balata from the Guianas, and the gum of the guayule shrub in Mexico, it is not upon these
rubbers that the great manufacturing industries of the world are based. That distinction belongs
to the heveas, native dwellers of the deep, hot Amazonian valleys.

The elastic, resilient, waterproof properties of rubber were first discovered by the native children
of the Americas, both in South and Central America and Mexico. When Hernan Cortés took his
handful of conquering Spaniards into Mexico he found the Aztecs playing a game with bouncing
balls made from castilloa, but during three centuries the Europeans visiting the New World did
not dream of turning the gum to any utilitarian purpose. The first traveller who took recorded
note of native use of rubber for water-proofing was the French scientist, de la Condamine, who
came to 183Peru and travelled down the Amazon in 1743. He took specimens of what he spelled
as “caoutchouc” back to Paris. In 1779 Priestly noticed that the gum would erase pencil marks on
paper; small pieces were sold for this purpose, and as the chief supplies came from the East
Indies (from the ficus elastica) the name India-rubber clung to the product. In 1823 Charles
Macintosh found that rubber was soluble in benzine, and so led the way to its commercial
adaptation—thinned out, spread into sheets, rendered amenable; the idea applied to waterproof
coats immortalized his name.

In 1832 the Chaffee & Hoskins firm, founded in the United States, began manufacturing water-
resisting objects, and thus laid the foundation of the present great rubber business in North
America; their company, the Roxbury India Rubber Co., had in its employ a young man named
Goodwin, and when this experimenter discovered that the gum would resist great extremes of
heat and cold when sulphur was mixed with the solution, the process of “vulcanization” was the
result, and rubber was made applicable to a score of new uses. Its great commercial employment
dates from this time.
The Amazon valley began to send coagulated gum abroad: before this occurred, objects, chiefly
high boots, were sent all the way to Pará to be water-proofed with a series of layers of the fresh
latex. The industry was still in existence in the 1850’s, but died a natural death when rubber
manufacturing got into its stride. It did not make this movement until large quantities of crude
rubber began to reach world markets, and such amounts were not shipped until the Amazon
received a great addition to its labour supplies. In 1877–79 184one of the terrible droughts that
scourge the State of Ceará drove the populace out of the foodless region; hardy, daring, the
Cearenses swarmed up the Amazon, into the reaches of the upper tributaries, into the Acre,
searched the forests for seringueiras, and gathered a great harvest of latex. A little later the
bicycle was invented and popularized, rubber tyres were called for in addition to the established
demand from the boot and shoe trade, and rubber export became one of the big businesses of the
industrial world.

The Amazon had shipped 31 tons in 1827; 156 tons in 1830; 388 tons in 1840. In another ten
years she was shipping 1,467 tons; in 1860, 2,673 tons; 1870, 6,591 tons; 1880, 8,680 tons.
Three years later she was sending over 11,000 tons, year by year adding about 1,000 tons until
by 1890 the supply and demand came to 19,000 tons. It may be said here that up to the present
demand has invariably taken the year’s supply; with great volumes coming from the Eastern
plantations a surplus may occur, but with the present greatly stimulated demand such a condition
is not yet in sight.

Steady rises in Amazonian production went on at the end of the century, and 1903 registered the
receipt of over thirty thousand tons; when in 1906–07 the crop attained thirty-eight thousand tons
output it had about reached its maximum with the quantity of labour available upon the Amazon.
Production has fluctuated about this figure for the last ten years. It could be increased, if the
estimate of 300,000,000 untapped trees in the deep interior forests is anywhere near the mark, to
almost any amount; but the present production is the work of some one hundred and twenty
thousand seringueiros, chiefly Brazilians, with some 185Bolivians and Peruvians, and there is no
immediate prospect of labour supplies being largely augmented.

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; a stream of jewels, silks, fine wines and foods, furniture, carriages,
adventuring people and solid cash went up the Amazon, passing for a thousand miles nothing but
the green matted walls edging the huge yellow river and an occasional palm leaf shack perched
half in the water, and one or two trading points, to find their objective in the brilliant little
mushroom town on the Rio Negro. There was one year when the yield of taxes from rubber to
the public revenue of Amazonas was twenty-three thousand contos of reis, and this at an
exchange of over £66 to the conto, means £1,520,000 or nearly $8,000,000. Practically the whole
of this money was collected and spent in Manáos, then (1899–1900) a city of fifty or sixty
thousand population—much of it “floating,” as its present reduction to about forty thousand
demonstrates. It was in the golden period of Amazonian rubber exports that both Manáos and
Pará clothed themselves in all modern civic graces; fine public buildings, well-paved streets,
street-cars, good sanitation, water-supplies of unimpeachable source, electric light, and numbers
of splendid private dwellings remain as a return for some of 186the floods of money earned by
the gum of the deep forests. There was at the same time tremendous waste and an enthusiastic
“graft” era, which has left a heavy burden of debt upon the Amazon. Numbers of unfinished
buildings, some begun at great cost, still stand in Manáos, eloquent witnesses to the headlong
gambling spirit that informed this city a few years ago. The Amazon refused to believe that any
but temporary shadows could fall upon the rubber industry: there had been several periods of
depression from various causes before plantation rubber loomed into view, but always
“something happened to help the Amazon,” whether quickened demand or a fall in exchange
which reduced local costs; now the European War is operating to stimulate American demands
for Brazilian rubber, and to that extent faith in good luck is again justified, but the rubber-
producing centres will need good works as well as faith if the present rewards, comparatively
modest as they are, are to be maintained.

In 1874, and for some years afterwards, Amazonian rubber prices ranged between fifty-two and
seventy-five cents (U. S. currency) a pound; between 1879 and 1880 there was a quick climb,
due to the bull operations of a Brazilian syndicate which bought and held rubber. It was
temporarily successful, prices during the last year of the ring’s existence touching one dollar and
twenty cents and never falling below ninety-five cents, but in 1884 the bottom fell out, and
rubber took a hasty dive to forty-eight cents—recovering, however, in the course of the next
year, in response to demand for rubber tyres, to ninety-eight cents. For the next ten years rubber
fluctuated about sixty, seventy and eighty cents, with new industrial uses developing 187in
Europe and North America and demand always keeping pace with supply; by this time the total
yield offered to the markets was about fifty thousand tons yearly, the Amazon supplying half and
the rest coming from West Africa, Mexico and Central America. In 1896 the price rose, ranging
between ninety cents and one dollar and twelve cents, and the Amazon boomed again as it had
done twelve years before; Manáos, the terminus of ocean transportation and the central collecting
point for the rubber of the upper rivers, bedecked herself in these rosy days. Five years later the
failure of the American Crude Rubber Company, a distributing firm domiciled in New York,
threw large stocks of the goma upon unready markets, and the price slumped. Rubber merchants
upon the Amazon would have suffered more than they actually did had not the factor of
exchange come to their aid; between 1899 and 1906 the value of the milreis oscillated all the
way from sixpence to fifteenpence, and while to some Brazilian operations a low rate of
exchange meant embarrassment if not ruin, it spelt salvation to the dealer in raw products. In
1906 exchange was fixed by the establishment of the Conversion Office in Rio, but by this time
rubber was fetching such good prices that the Amazon was again basking in prosperity. The
prices paid for Amazonian rubber during the period from 1903 to 1915 show the rise of the third
great crest of rubber waves to the dazzling height of 1910, when the merchants who would have
sold at seventy-five cents and made a profit found themselves with a dollar and a half, two
dollars, two and a half and then three, without knowing why; money came like dew from heaven.
In many instances it also melted as readily:

188
1903 78 to 1.13 cents
1904 94 to 1.30
1905 1.18 to 1.35
1906 1.22 to 1.37
1907 82 to 1.21
1908 67 to 1.24
1909 1.20 to 2.15
1910 1.50 to 3.00
1911 93 to 1.75
1912 93 to 1.30
1913 59 to 1.10
1914 49 to 1.15
1915 75 to 1.00

While the feverish drama of the Amazon was going through scenes typical of a gold-mining
rush, the curtain was slowly rising upon another rubber scenario away over on the islands and
peninsulas of Malaysia. Its movement passed almost unnoticed and unheeded by the very people
who had most cause to watch it with alarm.

In 1871 an Englishman named Henry Alexander Wickham sailed from Trinidad up the Orinoco
river, there studied latex-yielding trees and eventually made his way to the Amazon through the
interior forests by way of the river Negro. His book of notes was published in London in 1872—
Rough Notes of a Journey Through the Wilderness, with his own excellent drawings to illustrate
his story of actual labour in the “ciringa” districts. In 1876 he was back again on the Amazon,
with the idée fixe of rubber so firmly in his head that, going up the Tapajoz from Santarem, he
filled his cases with seventy thousand seeds of hevea brasiliensis and carried them over to Kew
Gardens in London. Here 189in carefully graduated hot houses the oval, mottled seeds were
germinated, and in June of the same historic year Wickham was carrying his baby seedlings to
Ceylon, believing that this island offered the climate most similar to that of the Amazon to be
found under the British flag.

Two thousand nurslings were thus transplanted to the Spice Isle, lesser quantities going to Java,
British Burma, Singapore and other points which appeared to offer the needed conditions for
healthy growth. It was in Ceylon that the first young rubbers flowered in the year 1881; there is
no earlier record of the blossoming of heveas outside their habitat in the Amazonian valleys. The
resulting seeds were used to create new plantations, but the whole thing was still in a purely
experimental stage; time proved that many saplings were planted under incorrect conditions, but
the planters had nothing but theory as their guide; they cleared land—at great expense—kept it
clean while the young plants grew, and waited; they did not know if the heveas would live, or
that, living, they would produce latex coagulating into commercial rubber. Nor did the Amazon
rubber dealers know it or believe it. When tales of Wickham’s enterprise came to Brazil a law
was passed forbidding the export of rubber seeds, but this locking of the stable door after the loss
of the steed was of no more avail than the subsequent measures promulgated to prevent export of
the uricury nuts used for smoking the latex.

That the Amazonian industry could be duplicated in the East was not seriously credited. The
thing was impossible! The plants would die; or if they did not die they would not yield latex; if
they yielded latex it 190would coagulate into such wretched rubber that no market would accept
it. Disease, blight, drought, would ruin the presumptuous plantations—something, in fact, must
happen to prevent such an incredible, absurd event as rivalry between the famous and unique
“black gold” of the Amazon and a plantation stepchild. The few people who spoke out about the
danger were ignored.

While unbelievers still protested the deluge of plantation rubber began. In 1900, 4 tons of crude
rubber were exported from the East; in 1905, 145 tons; in 1910, over 8,000 tons; in 1912, over
28,000 tons; in 1914, well over 71,000 tons; in 1915, nearly 107,000 tons. The output for 1916 is
variously reckoned at 140,000 and 160,000 tons, from an area totalling about 1,350,000 acres in
Ceylon, Malaysia, Dutch East Indies, India and Borneo.

When plantation rubber was first offered to manufacturers they were not greatly interested; it
was taken rather grudgingly and at prices well below those paid for the black pelles of the
Amazon to whose perfections and imperfections the industry was thoroughly accustomed. It was
the artificial forcing up of prices in 1910 that sent manufacturers into the arms of the planters,
for, while plantation rubber profited by the golden rain of that year, it did not attain the value of
“fine hard Pará.” Today plantation rubber sent to the markets in sheets of creamy “crêpe” or
clear brown gum is used for almost every manufacture demanding rubber; there are still some
complaints that it is over-milled, that the treatment it undergoes takes the “nerve” out of it, and
for this reason Amazonian rubber remains triumphant in certain lines requiring 191the highest
resiliency—as, for instance, rubber thread. In spite of the preponderance of quantity of the
plantation product since 1913 there has nearly always been a margin of price in favour of Brazil;
during September and October, 1916, “fine hard Pará” fetched about seventy-five cents a pound
in the New York markets while Plantation only brought sixty-five (due to shortage of Amazonian
supplies through shipping difficulties as well as droughts upon the upper rivers which, impeding
navigation, prevented normal supplies from finding exit); the difference in price is larger than is
apparent, for reasons resulting from differences of preparation of the two products. Plantation
rubber, product of an organized modern industry, is placed upon markets in such a form that the
manufacturer can send it direct to his mills; the average amount of impurities contained in the
sheets is less than one per cent. Amazonian rubber on the other hand contains anything from
fifteen to forty per cent of impurities, which may include leaves, sticks and dirt due to sheer
carelessness, or gums other than that of hevea, old nails, lumps of wood and axe-heads,
deliberately introduced by the seringueiro to add weight to his pelle. Add to these considerations
the cost of cleaning Amazonian rubber and the loss in time while this operation is performed,
and it is plain that the manufacturer really pays a great deal more than the few cents’ difference
of the market price for the Brazilian product; this money advantage might be largely retained by
the Amazon if methods, not necessarily those of the East, but more careful and cleanly, were
employed in coagulation.

The entire series of processes of Amazon rubber 192production, from the day when the matteiro
clears a path in the forest from rubber tree to rubber tree, until the shipper boxes the split halves
of the pelles in the armazem in Manáos or Pará, is in remarkable contrast not only to plantation
methods, but to the system under which that other great Brazilian export staple, coffee, is
prepared for market. It is the contrast between an industry that has evolved itself from methods
first discovered by Indians of the forest interior, and another whose processes are mapped out on
a preconceived plan. To this day the rubber dealers on the Amazon will tell you that they do not
know the cost of production of a kilo of rubber; all that they or the collectors know with certainty
is that it must necessarily cost less than the price at which the rubber is marketed—a smaller
amount must be paid, and adjustment has to be made in the seringal, not in New York or
London; with the inflated prices paid for every simplest necessity of life upon the Amazon,
nearly all imported because the craze for rubber-collecting some years ago led to the
abandonment of even such prolific crops as beans and mandioca, a time of stress falls most
severely upon the people who are least able to bear it. Remedies for the ills of the Brazilian
rubber industry have been suggested and demanded for many a year by the more far-seeing
Brazilians; there is perhaps no better presentment of the subject than the paracer read to the
Brazilian Congress in December, 1913, by Eloy de Souza, afterwards published in Rio under the
title A Crise da Borracha (The Rubber Crisis); he speaks of the condition of “economic paradox”
by which Amazonas “gave millions upon millions of gold without any part of this being used for
the prosperity 193of the immense region where so much wealth was produced” and tells that
when plantation rubber was looming in competition with the Brazilian product the authorities
were entreated to arm themselves against the danger, but “the echo of these voices was lost in the
wide desert of national indifference.” When the truth could be no longer avoided steps were at
last taken, with nothing but the waste of enormous sums in the tragi-comedy of the “Defesa da
Borracha” as the result: its failure was no fault of the men who constantly spoke out about
conditions, such as Miguel Calmon, the Deputy, the journalist Alcindo Guanabara, Dr. Passos de
Miranda, and the “genial and devoted Apostle of the Amazon,” Euclydes da Cunha.

Almost all of the people engaged or interested in the rubber business of the Amazon are agreed
upon certain measures which should be taken to put it upon a sounder footing; they are, briefly:
—

1.
Increased production of cleaner rubber, whether obtained from Amazonian plantations or
by opening out new forestal wild regions.
2.
Reduction of living expenses of the rubber-collector, by increased Amazonian cultivation
of cereals, beans, mandioca, fruit, vegetables, etc.
3.
Creation of a sturdier and larger labour supply, by rendering rubber regions healthy,
improving living conditions, and thus inviting and retaining permanent dwellers.
4.
Reduction of export taxes imposed by the State authorities of the rubber regions.

The question of Amazon plantations is hotly debated. A few exist, and are living proofs of the
fact that planted rubber kept clean of other growth yields 194latex at four or five years, at which
time it is as large as a wild rubber twelve years old; but opponents of the system ask why they
should plant “when Nature has already planted?” and declare that the best thing to do is to tap
the latex of more of the reserves of the interior, calculated at three hundred million trees.
Arguments in favour of this system include insistence upon the superiority of the latex from
matured trees slowly developed in their native habitat, the chief reason of the high resilient
quality of the Amazonian product; it is along the upper rivers of the Amazonian fluvial network
that the “black” hevea is found most abundantly, yielding latex of the best variety, tough, elastic,
resilient, and always fetching a better price than the fraca (weak) rubber from the latex of the
“white” hevea, or the product of the “red,” which coagulates badly, and is listed as “entre fina”
instead of “fina.” It is partly because the seeds which Wickham took from the Tapajoz in 1876
were of the “white” hevea brasiliensis variety, common in these lower regions, that the product
of the plantations is more or less of the “fraca” quality; only a few hundred acres of the entire
Eastern area under cultivation is planted with the fine “black” rubbers.

Can the untouched rubber regions of the upper rivers be opened up? The districts richest in
seringueiras are frequently on the margins of these rivers, accessible by boat, but there are other
areas thickly sown with the trees which, as in the Acre Territory, could be served best by a
railroad line, such as has been projected to run across this region. Other plans deal with drainage
of forestal areas, now rendered exceedingly unhealthy by their swampy, mosquito-breeding
195condition, and the introduction of immigrants accustomed to torrid climates. At present the
working capacity of the collector is reduced from a possible two hundred and ten days, during
the seven months of tapping, to an average of one hundred and twenty, chiefly as the result of
sickness: he produces thus only about four hundred and fifty kilos of dry rubber, when under
better conditions he could be expected to market about seven hundred kilos.

A few years ago Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, a Brazilian authority on tropical diseases, made a report
upon the health conditions of certain Amazonian regions and those traversed by the Madeira-
Mamoré railway: he said of Santo Antonio that there are “no natives of this place; all children
born there die,” and that here (its ill-fame is not unique) “the region is infected in such a manner
that its population has no conception of what good health means; for them the normal condition
is sickness.” Brazilians born are as much subject to disease, it appears, as strangers, for among
the workmen employed in the construction of the Madeira-Mamoré line ninety per cent of the
natives of Brazil and seventy-five per cent of the foreigners were weakened by hookworm. Sharp
changes of temperature in some districts, producing a devastating pneumonia; dysentery; beri-
beri, and the worst and constant scourge, malarial fever, haunt certain of the interior regions:
until a better medical service is established, and measures taken to render the country more
healthy through engineering work, and through field cultivation, an increase of permanent
dwellers in the deep rubber regions cannot be expected. Until then Amazonia can scarcely be
other than what Eloy de Souza calls an 196“invaded region” which has been subjected to a
“social phase of pure conquest.”

Cheapening of living expenses can be done just as soon as the fertile Amazon valley again
supplies enough food for its population: there was a time, between 1886 and 1891 when the
cereals grown sufficed for needs; today, with the threat of falling prices for the precious goma,
cultivation has been resumed to an extent which is encouraging, but only a year or two ago Pará,
Amazonas and the Acre were together importing beans, rice, and sugar to the value of 11,346
contos (over three million dollars); dried meat (xarque) to the value of 7,400 contos; bacalhau
(dried cod), 846 contos; live cattle, 2,000 contos; tobacco, 1,000 contos, and conserves costing
2,600 contos, among other importations. Almost all the above list could be filled from Amazonia
if the rubber-collecting fever, relaxing, permitted the development of other industries.

The price paid for many articles of prime necessity upon the Amazon is fantastic. While such
rates are maintained it is a matter for admiration that Amazonian rubber can be placed upon the
markets at all, in competition with the plantation product; it can only be done by the reduction of
the seringueiro’s earnings to a minimum, and this will eventually lead to his extinction if
conditions are not remedied. The following is a list of what are considered the chief articles
needed by the collector for his lonely sojourn in the forests during the gathering season, with
prices in milreis:—

197
Price to Rubber-
Price in Rio In Pará In the Acre
collector
5 alqueires of farinha[12] 20 27$500 100 175
40 kilos of sugar 14 26 45 80
25 kilos of coffee 24 25 34 100
128 kilos of lard 16 20 36 100
50 kilos dried meat 40 40 77 150
50 kilos of feijão
12.500 15 51 100
(beans)
16 pounds of tobacco 11 22 53 120
5 gallons of kerosene 4 4 11 30
Half-sack of salt 1 1$500 8 15
40 kilos of rice 20 20 36 100
Half-case of soap 3 4 11.500 20
30 litres cachaça (rum) 15 15 46 105
3 boxes cartridges 24 30 33 45
Medicines, clothes, etc. 120 130 180 250

Total 324$500 380$ 721$500 1.390$

The price of an outfit for the season thus varies from about 324 milreis in Rio to 1390 milreis in
the forest, or between, say, 80 and nearly 350 dollars.

If the collector in the course of his season’s work produces four hundred and fifty kilos of
rubber, worth, at a good price of about five milreis, 2:250$000 (two and a quarter contos, or
about five hundred and sixty U. S. dollars at 1916 exchange), he has left only seven hundred and
fifty milreis to carry him through the rest of the year, and to support his family back in Ceará: but
even this modest sum is reduced by the river freight of the rubber before it is marketed at
Manáos or Pará, three hundred reis per kilo; rent of the seringal, commission to the aviador, and
frequently freight of the pelles from the interior of the forest to the water, which items are likely
to add up to another four or five hundred milreis.

Denunciations of the “truck” system, and the prices 198charged to the rubber collector are
common; but the supplier of foodstuffs, etc. (the aviador) himself takes long risks and is bound
to insure himself against them. His customer (aviado) may become ill and unable to work; he
may die; he may, if he can elude the river guards and traverse the steaming interior forests, run
away, although in these regions where the river is the only highway, this does not often happen.
Also the price of rubber may drop—rubber has been a business so speculative that it has become
a gamble in which the aviador, himself caught in a deeply-rooted system, takes long odds. He
makes money nearly always, and the ownership of much of the great areas of Amazonian rubber
forest has passed into his hands, but he is scarcely to be blamed for securing his profits in the
manner decreed by the system; to change the industrial routine would be to effect a revolution
upon the Amazon.

The approach of the dry season upon the Amazon heralds the incoming from other northern
regions, generally Ceará, of a host of workers. Anyone who has travelled on the steamers going
up the river at the beginning of the rubber season has looked down upon the deck where throngs
of people are herded together, their hammocks slung in tiers one above the other; at times of
drought whole families come out from the “distritos flagellados,” and men, women and children
are crowded in an intimacy which would be more trying than it is were it not for the apparently
unfailing good-nature and mutual courtesy of these northern peasants. Much of their simple
cooking, washing, and toilet changes are perforce unsheltered; gentle, easily amused, they never
seem to complain, but, playing their inevitable 199guitars and singing their modinhas, they
watch the yellow flood of the great river, bordered with the line of distant forest, so vast that
ideas of size are lost in its sweeping monotony. Arrived at Manáos the collector goes to the store
of the aviador, gets his outfit of tools—cups for collecting latex, big knife (machado), little axe,
bucket, and metal cone for smoke-regulation in the coagulating process—as well as food and
such clothes as he may need, possibly adding a gun, and when the cost of his lodging has been
added to the bill, he may set out in one of the gaiolas that ascend the upper rivers, en route to the
seringal where he has arranged to work. An average seringal contains fifty estradas; to each
seringueiro (collector), two estradas are allotted, tapped on alternate days and each estrada
(literally road or walk) contains, in a good seringal, an average of seventy to one hundred and
twenty trees. Before the seringueiro does a stroke of work there has been a heavy outlay by the
owner (patrão) of the estate for its preparation. Forestal opening is done by the matteiro, the
expert forester whose work is probably better paid than any other manual labour of the Amazon;
it is he who enters the wild forest, locates the rubber trees within a given area, and makes paths
from each seringueira (rubber tree) to the next in the central part of each estrada, always ending
by cutting an encircling road which runs all about the estrada. On this outer road the rubber
collector usually builds his little hut—“more of an oven than a home,” says Eloy de Souza—of
palm thatch, and the tiny smoking room (defumador) where each day’s supply of latex is
coagulated.

The work of the matteiro is paid according to the number of rubber trees found and prepared for
tapping; 200he gets about the equivalent of one dollar for each tree; Woodroffe reckons that in
the cases when the patrão of an estate has advanced money for the steamship fares of his
imported labourers, advanced food and equipment, and paid for preparation of the seringal, each
man represents an outlay of “quite £100 by the time he stands up under the trees to tap them.” It
must not be supposed, therefore, that because rubber is wild upon the Amazon that it costs
nothing to collect it; on the contrary in spite of the lavish hand of Nature expenses in the wild
regions of South America are far higher than they are in the East, where land has been cleared
and each sapling patiently planted and tended.
Rubber on the Amazon.

Hevea brasiliensis tree, scarred by tapping.

Smoking the day’s collection of latex.

Hut of the Seringueiro.

201The seringueiro has no easy life. He gets out of his hammock before dawn, and with his
lantern fixed to his head makes his way through the forest, laden with his little machadinho, the
universally used and abused axe with which the trees are gashed, with the big knife, the
machado or machete inseparable from the Central or South American, and perhaps a gun in case
any edible animal of the woods is encountered. As each tree is reached it is hastily gashed, a little
metal cup (tigelinha) fixed below each wound to receive the milk which immediately runs out;
when he returns at last by way of the outer path to his hut it is past six o’clock and quite light. If
he has a family with him, his senhora has prepared his coffee, but if as is usual he is alone he
will now light a fire, drip his coffee, prepare a little food, and smoke a cigarro. Later in the
morning he must make a second round, if the milk is not to coagulate in the cups; he takes his
bucket (the balde), tips the contents of each little cup into it, carefully inverting these on sticks at
the foot of the tree, to prevent the clotting of drippings and the invasion of insects. When he
returns he may have four or more litres of milk which must now be coagulated in the defumador;
the process may take half an hour or over two hours, according to the amount brought in and the
quality of the latex. A fire is made with nuts of one of the attalea palms, generally “uricury,”
which give off a remarkably acrid smoke with properties for rendering the rubber just what it
should be that are the despair of chemists: no substitute has been found that equals it. A metal
cone a couple of feet high is placed over the well-started fire, to bring the smoke into a narrow
channel at the top; the seringueiro takes a prepared piece of wood, dips it into the bucket of milk,
or pours milk over it with the cuia (little bowl made of a half-gourd) and holds it over the smoke.
The milk coagulates instantly, turning pale brown on the outside; layer after layer is added, a
skin at a time, until all the latex in the bucket is coagulated. It may be late at night before the
seringueiro has finished his work, for in the course of the day he has walked anything from six to
ten miles, and every part of the operations has been performed by him alone. It is fortunate that
his housekeeping work is limited to the preparation of his food: practically the only furnishing of
his hut is his hammock.

To produce a pelle, the big black ball which may be seen in Pará and Manáos on the wharves, in
warehouses, on the pavements, whole or sliced in halves with their creamy hearts displayed, or
floating down the tributary rivers on rafts, the seringueiro has to work for about a month. Each
day’s collection of latex is coagulated on top of the previous rubber until the ball is made to what
the seringueiro thinks is a convenient 202size. Day after day, only interrupted by sickness, he
labours in the sweltering forest at this toil, eating food of very limited variety, without
exchanging a word, perhaps, with another human being for weeks at a time; each seringal is
supposed to be under inspection, to avoid maltreatment of the trees, but as a rule this supervision
is a fiction. Small wonder that when the collector at last leaves the seringal, and takes his rubber
to Manáos, he spends a few riotous days, limited by the amount of his money balance remaining
after the debt has been paid to the aviador. The aviador it is who also buys the pelles and in the
busy season when rubber begins to come in, these stores present a curious sight. Sometimes the
seringueiro, in good years, saves money; he may buy a seringal or a little store of his own; a few
fortunes have thus been made from the collector class, but they are rather the exceptions that
prove the rule.

These conditions, under which a nominally independent collector works in a rented estrada and
sells his rubber to the store-keeper to whom he is in debt—and who is often also the owner of the
seringal—are general as regards the collection of the latex of the “black” rubber trees of the
upper Amazon. This is the origin of the fina class of rubber, with sernamby or scrap as a kind of
by-product, result of carelessness; the fina, however, is usually at least eighty per cent of a good
workman’s product, and this is the rubber which, with caucho, has made Manáos.
Caucho is rubber produced from the milk of castilloa elastica, growing in profusion along the
banks of the Rio Branco, tributary of the Negro, in North Amazonia and on many streams of
Peruvian origin; the industry 203connected with this tree is really independent, the result of
individual searchings for trees. Parties go up these rivers, hunt in the bordering woods for the
castilloa, straightway cut it down and bleed it for the last drop of latex, and go on their way.

Down near the mouth of the Amazon, where the “white” rubber trees are most commonly found,
it is not unusual for collectors to own sections of forest with their little homes at its edge; they,
too, are almost independent—of everything except the industrial conditions upon the Amazon,
and the rubber prices fixed far away in London or New York.

Nearly all South American States depend upon export and import taxes for their main revenues,
and it is a fairly general rule that native products leaving the country pay heavily for that
privilege. In Brazil all import dues are imposed and collected by the Federal Government, and
are similar throughout the country without respect to the special conditions of separate states; the
export taxes are imposed by the State Governments, without restraint. In some regions the
“pauta” or export tax is changed every week or so in conformity with prices in world markets, a
board sitting specially for the purpose of making these constant adjustments. Some Brazilian
products are taxed to what may be called a reasonable extent, but in others exports have been
bled out of existence, while still others are barely able to enter world markets, staggering under
their load. How many exporting countries would put upon a product facing competition abroad a
tax equal to one-third of its value? This is the weight with which Amazonian rubber went to
market for many years: the combined charges of the 204State, municipalities, and other smaller
items added up to over thirty per cent of the “official value” of the product.

In response to appeals, export taxes were reduced after the outbreak of the European War, and
during the year 1916 State taxes, together with dues put on by cities, amounted to about twenty
per cent of the value of the rubber—a sufficiently heavy burden, but which Amazonas proposes
to increase again; at the same time the product of Matto Grosso pays only twelve per cent, an
equal amount is imposed upon rubber originating in the Acre Territory, while that exported from
Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, but finding its exit by the water highways of the Amazon, pays only
five per cent. As a result of these lesser dues collected by sister countries, there is a certain
amount of smuggling done: rubber originating near the boundaries is passed across, and exported
as if coming from one of the three Republics named; that such evasion of taxes is limited is due
to the lack of roads or of any communication means besides those of the rivers, all of which are
watched by Government agents. At the same time that the Amazon imposes this burden upon her
rubber, the Eastern (Plantation) product pays nothing at all when the market price is below 18
pence—say thirty-six cents—a pound, and when it stands above two shillings a tax of two and a
half per cent of the value is paid.

Consumption of the entire supply of marketed rubber was, immediately prior to the European
War, almost evenly divided between North America and Europe: one of the industrial
adjustments made after 205hostilities began was the shifting of a larger share of rubber, and
rubber manufacturing, to the United States, so that in 1914 she took fifty per cent of the
marketed total, one hundred and twenty thousand tons, and in 1915 increased these purchases to
nearly sixty-two per cent of the total marketed, or ninety-seven thousand tons out of about one
hundred and fifty-eight thousand.

Distribution of the world’s crop in 1915:—

United States 61.5 97,000

Great Britain 9.6 15,072
Russia 7.6 12,000
France 7.2 11,500
Italy 4.8 7,500
Germany, Austria 3.8 6,000
Canada 2.5 4,000
Japan and Australia 1.6 2,500
Scandinavia 1.4 2,252

The course of the next few years may see Brazil herself on the lists as a rubber-consuming
country. For fifty years she has exported rubber, crude, and such manufactures of rubber as she
has used have been imported from the United States or Europe; she imported in 1915 about six
hundred and eighty-three tons of rubber manufactures, chiefly tyres, worth a million dollars,
which was less than the imports of 1913, and which might show greater diminution if the
unfortunately conceived law intended to protect “fine hard Pará,” but which resulted in
paralyzing rubber imports, were sustained. This alteration in the tariff, operating early in 1915,
changed the old import tax of five per cent ad valorem to a scale with violent differences;
206rubber manufactures made with the Brazilian product were charged one hundred reis a kilo (a
fraction over two cents U. S.) while articles made with foreign rubber were taxed ten milreis (say
two dollars and sixty cents) a kilo.

An excellent idea, warmly applauded; but when the time came to apply the law it was found
impossible to discover the real origin of the rubber, and in order to avoid any chance of letting in
foreign material practically scot free the official valuers charged all entering articles at the high
rate.

Thus a consignment of two hundred pneumatic tyres which under the old law would have paid
about 2:200 milreis in duties for entry were under the new tariff charged 22:000—or let us say
about $5,500 instead of the former $550, for import taxes alone. Needless to say, importing
houses left rubber goods in the customs-houses while they appealed to the authorities for relief
from this too paternal measure. Some of the Amazonian rubber merchants have defended the
idea, which is good enough in theory, but in practice it seems to have been as little useful as that
extraordinary commission charged with the Defesa da Borracha, which in the years 1912–14
spent about twenty-eight thousand contos of reis (over $7,000,000) in salaries, investigations,
recommendations, experiments and printed matter, and has today not an iota of improvement of
Amazonian conditions to show for the money.

Brazil has a few rubber factories of her own, generally small, but doing a satisfactory and
increasing business; the Brazilian Government has also concluded an arrangement with the
Goodyear Tire Company for the 207erection of a factory which should greatly increase national
rubber manufactures. The first modern rubber factory in Brazil was established in São Paulo
State, in 1913, by Theodore Putz and Company, where solid tyres, tubes, stamps, valves, and
other articles are made; it has a capital of two hundred contos and an annual turnover of three
hundred contos, paying twenty-five contos a month for labour. Five hundred kilos of Pará, and
one thousand kilos of mangabeira rubber are used monthly. Another firm of recent origin is that
of Berrogain & Cia. in Rio, turning out a variety of manufactures and prospering.

The future of rubber production is a question frequently discussed. It is not immediately probable
that the Brazilian output will greatly increase from its average of twenty to thirty thousand tons,
not only because more labour is not as yet available, but also because the untapped resources
away from the easily reached river banks can scarcely be reached without large outlays on roads,
drainage, and other expenses connected with opening-up, which are not more than planned for
the time being. Plantation rubber has not yet reached its expected maximum, but no very great
areas have been added since 1911, and it is reckoned that with an average yield of four hundred
pounds an acre the world’s output will in a few years place from three hundred thousand to three
hundred and thirty thousand tons of dry rubber on the markets. Demand by the year 1930, if it
kept up at the same ratio as the last five or six years, would require a great deal more than this,
no less than three hundred and seventy-three thousand tons of rubber. This will not occur unless
automobile sales in the United States keep up also at 208the same rate (tyres for this industry
already take over 100 thousand tons of rubber) but even with a diminution in the increase there
appear to be good prospects ahead for the rubber industry: Germany, for instance, will be
demanding crude rubber in great quantities when the European War comes to an end, for in spite
of the ingenuity of German chemists it is plain that synthetic rubber is not a success. If it were
anything like a substitute for the real thing the Central Powers would not have made such
constant efforts to obtain even small quantities of the precious gum through the blockade of the
Allies. The war has definitely disposed of that spectre. Synthetic rubber requiring a base of a
special turpentine is said to be produced at a cost four times that of the gum of the hevea, and
that figure alone would dispose of it as a commercial possibility, apart from the limitation of
turpentine supplies, the need for mixing the solution with real rubber, and the practical
demonstration of its unsatisfactory quality.

PACKING-HOUSES, MEAT EXPORT, AND CATTLE RAISING

The meat business is not a new one in Brazil, for her cattle raising states have had a surplus of
beef animals ever since the first donatarios sailed out to take possession of their strips of coast,
and brought seeds, saplings, ducks and chickens, goats, horses and cattle along with them: the
cattle throve, soon ran wild in the interior, and becoming modified by natural selection
developed national types which are today quite distinctive although their European origin is
recognizable. The first cattle were shipped to Brazil to the Capitania of S. Vicente in 1534 by
Dona Anna Pimentel, consort of the 209first captain, and manager of the interests of the colony
during his absence in India.

Brazil has thirty million head of cattle. That is to say, two or three million more than the
Argentine possesses. But her herds are only worth a fraction of the Argentine value because the
stock is poor, some of it thin and scrubby, with but one steadily developed type of first-class
quality. The scientific breeders of Brazil—and there is quite a list of them—have lacked a reason
for developing their work until recently. In the absence of the packing-house there was no
demand for beef beyond that of the matadouros (town slaughter-houses) and the xarque
factories. For the xarque makers any class of animal would serve: a Hereford of pure blood
would bring no more than a zebu unless he happened to weigh more.

Xarque making is the ancient meat-drying industry, invented by who knows what hunter in
bygone ages; it is the biltong of Africa, the tasajo of the Argentine, the jerked beef of the North.
Well salted and dried, it is good food enough, and France did not disdain to buy it from Brazil
for the use of her troops in 1915–18. The southerly states of Brazil are the great supporters of
cattle stocks, and there are the extensive beef-drying factories; Rio Grande slaughters over half a
million head of cattle for this purpose every year, the number rising to its maximum in 1912 with
nine hundred thousand head, and chiefly ships the xarque produced to other Brazilian regions; it
is the carne secca of that beloved Brazilian dish, the feijoada, eaten all over the Union. The
coastal and northern regions of Brazil, comparatively poor cattle regions, are so much dependent
upon dried beef imports that the xarque industry 210should have a ready market in the future as
in the past: but since 1914 a rival has risen up seriously threatening the old industry in prestige.

Almost simultaneously two packing-houses, both in S. Paulo State, began demanding cold
storage space in vessels calling at Santos, and refrigerator cars on railways leading to the port.
Brazil, to the astonishment of the markets, was offering chilled and frozen beef. At any other
time she might have received a welcome less enthusiastic, but her offer came at a time when
Europe needed every pound of meat for army use; the Brazilian product was tested by Smithfield
standards, found good, and today has its place in overseas meat markets. It is a modest place, but
today beef is taking its stand among the “principaes artigos da exportação”—hides have long
stood in the list of thirteen favoured names—although the end of the war diminished overseas
demands.

During 1915 shipments were made in increasing amounts month by month, the total for the year
reaching about 8,514 tons, with a value of 6,122 contos. In 1916 shipments rose to nearly 34,000
tons; in 1917 to over 66,000; but sales decreased after the close of the war, when contracts for
supplying troops in the field ceased, and markets closed in the slump of 1921.

The first frigorifico of Brazil was built by Paulista enterprise with Paulista capital, in the far
north-west of São Paulo where the best pastures extend. The Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril
built its plant near the terminus of the Paulista Railway, at Barretos, and is headed by Dr.
Antonio da Silva Prado, an energetic builder-up of his State and a man with many honours and
interests. Opened in 1913, the frigorifico first 211supplied chilled meat to the city of S. Paulo;
export was not seriously considered until the war in Europe began with its demands upon world
food supplies. The first Brazilian shipment of exported meat was sent to England in November,
1914, an experimental ton and a half. During the ensuing year that country took four thousand,
three hundred and sixty tons, Italy over two thousand tons, and the United States nearly the same
quantity.

The figures displayed a steady rise all through 1915, January’s ten tons being quickly outclassed
by April’s two hundred and ten and June’s over five hundred and seventy tons; by November
Brazil was shipping two thousand tons a month. The standard was more than maintained as time
went on cattle raisers improving animals for sale to meet demands, and proving the fattening
quality of Brazilian pastures. But until after the close of 1918 little blood stock could be
imported, and in 1922 an expert calculation gave 12% as the proportion of fat cattle in Brazil.

The output of Barretos was speedily rivalled. In May, 1915, another packing-house started
operations, at Osasco on the outskirts of S. Paulo city. It is the property of the Continental
Products Company, capital and personnel originating in the Sulzberger house at Chicago, and it
is independent of, but has friendly relations with, the Farquhar group of interests, which include
large railway control and a thriving land and cattle company.

The Osasco plant is, like Barretos, an excellent specimen of its class, operating with fine up-to-
date machinery and all modern packing-house devices; on the edge of S. Paulo city, separated
from the railway only by 212a strip of open grassy country, this establishment has the advantage
of a short haul for its meat. The São Paulo Railway has to carry the product but fifty miles to
Santos port. On the other hand, the Barretos plant’s position has the advantages of being in the
heart of the best cattle country, and of getting both animals and labour at low prices; the journey
from Barretos to S. Paulo, by the Paulista line, takes about fourteen hours. Brazilian employees
are used at both packing-houses, the industry occupying about a thousand workmen. During
1916 a third frigorifico was opened, on the docks of Rio de Janeiro, but this chiefly performs
cold storage functions, and before the close of 1919 ten packing-houses were in operation or
building. General world depression in 1921 was responsible for the closure of most of these
establishments for more than local demands. Few complaints have been registered in regard to
quality so far; the Brazilian beef is on the whole smaller than that to which the meat markets are
accustomed, and it was found that the quarters did not fill the space allowed for similar
Argentine and Uruguayan meat when shipping first began. Dr. Prado says that the average
weight of beeves slaughtered for export during the first year of operation at Barretos was only
two hundred and eighty kilos. But this small, fat-less meat has a superior flavour—as anyone
who travels in South America knows well.
The Cattle Industry.

The two frigorificos (packing-houses) in operation, at Barretos, top; at Osasco, below. Also
humped “zebu” cattle of Indian descent, and, lower, a calf of native Caracú stock.

213It is generally reckoned that ten per cent of a cattle herd is fit for the slaughterhouse: but
Brazil cannot offer three million of her existing stock to the yards. She has too many varieties,
probably too much of the humped breed derived from Indian ancestry, although it has warm
defenders, and there is a conspicuous lack of young fat cattle. As an example of the speed with
which poor stock may be improved by good, unified methods, there is Brazil’s neighbour
Argentina, a country which thirty-five years ago had less than nine million head of cattle, and
these of a breed inferior to the Brazilian average today. Setting about her task methodically,
Argentina created a complete transformation in the character of her herds, and while exporting
great quantities of meat at the same time increased her stock so largely that by the year 1910 she
had thirty million head. Sums spent on breeding stock were enormous during this period: in
1906, the banner year of importation, Argentina purchased (almost exclusively from Great
Britain) 2,450 pure-bred cattle, 7,500 thoroughbred sheep, and one thousand blood horses. As a
result she has animals today which take prizes side by side with pure Herefords and Durhams;
the average abattoir price for steers is about two hundred Argentine pesos, or say eighty
American dollars; she is able to record the sale of thousands of splendid creatures, amongst them
a champion bull bred on her pastures which brought the price of thirty-two thousand dollars in
United States currency. Today Argentina has more herds of thoroughly pure stock cattle than any
other country in the world; estancias full of animals of fine blood, so much alike that to see them
in endless lines, with white star on breast and head, is like looking at a concrete arithmetical
calculation, are handed down as inheritances. Yet when the Argentine began her work she had no
such advantages of modern invention as lie to the hand of Brazil; cold storage was not
commercially developed, packing-houses were immature. She had to face the competition of the
United 214States, and world markets were not educated to the reception of South American
meat. Now cold storage is an art, steamers are fitted with refrigerator space as a matter of course,
South American meat is welcome on world markets, and the United States is no longer taken into
consideration as a rival meat exporter.

In 1901 the United States exported 352,000,000 pounds of beef; in 1910, 76,000,000; in 1914,
only a little more than 6,000,000 pounds. Argentina had caught up with her North American
sister in 1905, passed and out-distanced her until she was able last year to say that her only
serious competitor was Australasia. It is true that the European War has caused a revival of meat
export from the United States, but home demands are today so acute that no more than a
temporary reaping of high prices is at the bottom of the movement. Argentina may look for a
more formidable, because a younger, rival, nearer to her northern border.

The qualifications of Brazil as a future land of fine cattle are three in the main: first, her
possession of an existing rebanho of 30,000,000 head; next her natural pastures and good climate
which permit stock to remain in the open during the winter; third, tremendous expanses of
suitable lands at moderate prices. Argentina has no natural pastures; she sows alfalfa, needs five
acres of it to fatten one animal for six months and is thus at an expense of $7.50 for this purpose
against Brazil’s outlay of rather less than three and one-half dollars, counting the value of the
five acres of alfalfa land at three hundred dollars, the cost of twelve acres of Brazilian capim
gordura at one hundred and thirty-three dollars, and interest on the two investments at five per
cent. In regard to available 215territory there is no comparison; Brazil’s one state of Matto
Grosso could swallow the whole cattle-raising country of the Argentine, without taking into
consideration Goyaz, Minas Geraes, S. Paulo, Paraná or Rio Grande do Sul.

Space and climate, however, are not all that goes to make a cattle country fattening fine stock,
and it need scarcely be said that much must be done before the cattle lands of Brazil can
seriously compete with those of the Argentine: the time is not yet ripe for the wild pastures of
Goyaz and Matto Grosso to fatten cattle in the same proportion as Rio Grande State. This state,
with an area of two hundred and thirty-seven thousand square kilometers feeds about nine
million head of cattle, a remarkably good showing in comparison with the premier cattle
province of Argentina, Buenos Aires, which, with a superficial area of not much more than
305,000 square kilometers, feeds seven and a half million head.

Pastures are not—except by careful fazendeiros—planted in Brazil because there happens to be a

gift of nature in the way of natural grasses, the capins of the sertão. Some of these are good, and
some would feed nothing but a goat. Brazilian stock-raisers who combine earnestness with
capital plant their own best grasses and appear to get satisfactory results, while I have also seen
some interesting experiments made with “Soudan” or other of the wonderful varieties of grasses
with which Africa is endowed. For lack of interior pastures the cattle of Brazil are periodically
brought on foot for distances which may vary from a hundred to six hundred miles; many die by
the way, and the unfortunate beasts are mere skin and bone 216when they arrive in the good
grass country. On the São Paulo side of the Paraná river are some of the finest natural pastures of
Brazil, but in many parts of the São Paulo uplands, interior Rio, Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio
Grande, admirable cattle lands are to be seen. Rio Grande, especially towards the Uruguay
boundary, is one of the most delightful grazing regions imaginable; Minas, too, shows some fine
lush green grass lands, with the special advantage that cattle need never be put under shelter in
the mild winter which visits this region. 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.

Brazil possesses half a dozen technical breeding “posts” maintained by State or Federal
Governments, but their number is insufficient to attack the work needed, and needed quickly;
private enterprise must and does supplement government labours, but there is room in Brazil for
scores of expert cattlemen with knowledge of semi-tropical conditions. Three-fourths of the State
of Paraná, all Santa Catharina and all Rio Grande do Sul are below the Tropic of Capricorn, but
although the great sertões of Brazil are inside the 217tropical belt, the effect of this latitude is
partly nullified by the height of the plateau to which the largest area of the country attains.

One of the best breeding stations in Brazil is situated at the good, modern, actively-managed
School of Agriculture at Piracicaba, in S. Paulo State, reached by the Sorocabana line; good
imported bulls are stationed here, as well as some fine specimens of types developed in Brazil,
notably the Caracú, a well-formed animal with a pale buff hide that is well fitted to form the base
of standardized herds. The Caracú already has its official herd-book. Some attempts made to
introduce pure blood foreign animals have ended in the death of the importations, perhaps
chiefly because their accustomed food was lacking; for this reason the opinion of many stock-
raisers in Brazil is against efforts to create pure herds of, say, Herefords, as Argentina has done,
preferring the selection of a sound national type, acclimated, hardy, which can be improved by
careful breeding. Controversy rages about this question in Brazil, and without trying to enter into
it I will quote the opinion of Dr. Cincinato Braga, one of Brazil’s authorities on the subject of
cattle, who says that at least six thousand pure-race bulls should be imported annually to improve
the existing stock, while as a matter of fact only a few hundred enter yearly, and these chiefly as
a result of private enterprise. The vexed question as to whether the introduction of Indian cattle,
with its resultant inheritance of a hump in the zebu type (the hump has the disadvantage of not
“packing,” say some of the buyers for frigorificos), is good or bad may be safely left to those
ardent cattle-breeders Drs. Pereira Barretto, Eduardo Cotrim, Assis 218Brasil, Fernand Ruffier,
and many others; it is undoubted that in the Triangle of Minas Geraes, with its centre Uberaba,
fortunes have been made from prolific Indian cattle, but public opinion remains perplexed.
Writing from Minas in early 1916, J. Nogueira Itagyba told the tale of his experiences as a cattle-
breeder—how he imported a bull from Holland, bought Caracú cows, obtained a young herd, and
then when droughts came in 1913–14, lost “thirty or more head, under a deluge of ticks, tumours,
insects of all kinds....” He then bought a Nellore (Indian) bull, obtained a breed that was “a
revelation” and came to this conclusion: “In Paraná and Rio Grande, where the climate is cold
and there are fine pastures, a stock breeder with capital can raise the Devon, Hereford, Flemish,
Durham, Jersey, etc.; he will have appropriate forage, and can use dips and calf-foods ... but in
wild rural regions only strong, acclimated races resisting climate and insect plagues can
prosper.”

Until the development of the meat industry for export Brazil sold nothing abroad as the product
of her vast herds except hides, just as in the early days of Texas when only the skins of her cattle
were worth anything. Today the cow-hide leather industry of North America in particular is
largely dependent upon South American production, the three republics of Brazil, Argentina and
Uruguay together furnishing fifty-five per cent of all the hides sold in world markets. Now and
again the export of hides leaps for reasons that do not mean good business, as when Ceará in
1914–15 shipped out, in addition to her normal sales, the hides of animals that died of the terrible
drought to the number of eight hundred thousand head; looking north to 219Mexico we find
another big leap of hides exports after revolution invaded the cattle states, owners slaughtering
their stock to avert theft by bandits.

Rise in sales by the Argentine and her neighbours since the European War has, however, been
largely on account of increased slaughter in response to calls from the meat market: in two years
Argentina has doubled her export of hides, Uruguay has multiplied her contribution by five,
while Brazil between June, 1915 and March, 1916 shipped out thirty-seven million pounds of
hides as against two and a half million pounds in a corresponding period two years previously.

The total value of Brazilian hides exported in 1915 was $13,260,000 U. S. currency; the amount
was thirty-seven thousand metric tons. Of this nearly twenty thousand tons went to the United
States, Great Britain taking 6,000 tons, France less than 3,000, and Uruguay 3,400 in round
numbers.

War orders account for the marked stimulation of the leather business which is dependent to a
considerable degree upon supplies of cattle-hides, the United States alone increasing her exports
of leather from thirty-seven million dollars’ worth in 1914 to eighty million dollars’ worth in the
fiscal year June 1915–16.

COTTON GROWING AND WEAVING

Cotton is native to Brazil, as to other regions of northern South America, Central America and
Mexico, the south of the United States, and the West Indian islands. Wild, or carelessly
cultivated Brazilian cottons are despite neglect of such excellent quality that George Watt, in
Wild and Cultivated Cotton of the 220World says that when they are properly selected and
standardized they will “make Brazil as famous as Egypt in the production of excellent fibres.”
North American cotton buyers, visiting Brazil early in 1916 were astonished to find cotton of
long silky fibre produced here, and made arrangements for shipping quantities of the Seridó
variety to the United States; England has for a very long time been a purchaser of the same fine
qualities of raw cotton, for mixing, as Egyptian cotton is mixed, with the short-fibre product of
the United States.

Cotton of one kind and another is grown all over Brazil. There seems to be no region which
refuses to mother it. But the best lands, yielding most prolifically and with large areas suitable
for cultivation on a great scale are in the centre, on the north-east promontory, and all along the
coast to the mouth of the Amazon. Comparatively very small fragments of this belt are under
cotton culture, although wild cotton and patches of cultivation of more or less merit are widely
scattered; Todd, in his World’s Cotton Crop says that Brazil “might easily grow twenty million
bales, but her actual crop does not yet reach half a million bales.” Now, with the encouraging
measures taken by the Brazilian Government as well as the enterprise of individual firms and
planters, and the new realization of the opportunity waiting for the farmer with small capital but
large technical skill, experience and good sense, cotton culture should open up great spaces of
land suitable for this well-rewarding form of agriculture. Brazilian cottons or their Peruvian and
West Indian kin have endowed the world with fine varieties; it remains for their standardization
to benefit the land of their origin.

221Cotton was used by the Aztecs for making elaborate clothes, richly dyed and embroidered,
long before the Spanish Conquest in 1520. Farther south, the carvings of the Maya show that that
race was using textiles hundreds of years previously—as early as the beginning of the Christian
Era, if the dates assigned to the Copán and Quiriguá temples are correct. In Brazil, where the
inhabitants were much less socially and industrially developed, small domestic use was made of
the fibre, but it had its name, amaniú.

Cotton (Gossypium) belongs to the natural order of the malvaceas, claims more kin in the New
than in the Old World, and its parents are genuine tropical dwellers; there seems to be little doubt
that the first of the fine, long staple cottons introduced into North America were perennials, and
that they became annuals only because they were unable to survive the winter cold. Names of
cottons grown in Brazil leave the searcher after details rather hazy on account of the many local
appellations given them, but the scientist has classified them by the characteristics of their seeds,
dividing them into eleven kinds. The first, Gossypium herbaceum, is not a tropical native, was
brought in from Asia both here and to the United States, is not common or successful, and so
may be dismissed.

G. mustelinum again “is only interesting for botanical reasons,” but is found wild in the hilly
interior of Brazil; G. punctatum is said to be identical with the wild cotton of the United States;
G. hirsutum is a true native of South America and the West Indies, and is the lineal parent of the
“Uplands” cottons of North America. G. mexicanum is, together with hirsutum, which it
resembles, grown all over the coastal cotton country of 222Brazil; it is a small plant with a
prolific yield. The writer has seen in the vicinity of Campos, State of Rio, tiny plants of this
variety not more than eighteen or twenty inches high, bearing forty and more bolls and forms. It
is true that the district had suffered from lack of rain and thus the tendency to run to growth
rather than production, the agricultural curse of the tropics, had been checked. The field yielded
over a bale to the acre.

G. peruvianum is a highly interesting, hardy, prolific variety, relative of the best native cottons of
Brazil. Professor Edward Green says that he considers it one of the two most valuable in the
country. It is a perennial, grows best in the humid North, often reaches a height of four metres,
and yields a crop for at least three years.[13] Maranhão has produced it for centuries, getting a
reputation for long fine fibres on its account; the percentage of fibre is over thirty-eight per cent
of the total weight of the boll, a very high average, and it is undoubtedly well adapted to the river
valleys of North Brazil. It is said to be identified with the carefully cultivated, irrigated cotton of
the Incas.

Cultivated forms of this excellent cotton are the famous Mocó, grown so successfully in Ceará,
Parahyba, and other northerly states, the Seridó, and the Sede de Ceará, local names of which
Brazil is proud.

G. microcarpum appears to have a relationship with the peruvianum, and seems also to be
derived from the other side of the Andes; it is credited with producing a pound of clean cotton to
one hundred and twenty bolls. 223This is the last on the list of cotton with “fuzz” on the seeds;
the remaining four varieties have clean, free seeds. Of these by far the most important is the fine
G. vitifolium. From this stock most of the cottons described as “Sea Island” are derived, as well
as the best of the Egyptian varieties, and in a genuine wild state in Brazil it still produces a
beautiful long silky fibre. When grandchildren of its stock have been brought to Brazil from the
United States they have rapidly degenerated, delicate nurslings of exotic temperament; beside
them the old estirpe selvagem flourishes and yields royally. G. purpurescens is another black-
seeded perennial, identified with the “Bourbon” of Porto Rico, and said to owe its introduction
into Brazil to the French. G. barbadense is a blood-brother of the vitifolium, and like all the Sea
Island-Egyptian group, is a highly esteemed producer of top-priced cotton. The fourth of this
class is G. brasiliense, a true native, observed growing wild by Jean Lery as early as 1557.

The two most precious of the list, Gossypium peruvianum and Gossypium vitifolium, possess the
advantage of being genuine South Americans; they form a magnificent stock from which the
expert cotton grower can develop a product for the market which need not fear Sea Island as a
rival.

Cultivation of cotton by the Portuguese colonists began very soon after the granting of the
capitanias in 1530. By the year 1570 large crops were being produced in Bahia, chief centre of
industrial activity, although they could not equal sugar in value. Europe was just beginning to
use this material, for with the acquisition of strips of India by the Portuguese there 224was an
entry into European markets of Calicut “calico.” Before this dawn of the cotton era Europe went
clothed in leather, wool, and, on occasions of great splendour, silk. We may conclude that the
clothing of the day was probably as comfortable as, and certainly more substantial than,
garments of the present period, if not as sanitary: but cleanliness had not yet become a virtue.
India taught Europe the use of cotton, and the spindles and looms of the ladies were filled with
the vegetable fibre in lieu of wool.

In Pernambuco the culture of cotton became of more importance than sugar; farther south the
Paulistas set their Indian slaves to work and were soon producing cotton crops on widely spread
plantations. In the seventeenth century cotton was carried into Minas Geraes by the gold hunting
bandeirantes, but it was only cultivated in the most desultory manner and when there was
nothing else for the slaves to do. So complete indeed was disregard of all agricultural work that
actual famines occurred in 1697–98 and in 1700–01 on account of the abandonment of
plantations for gold-washing districts.

When the Marquis de Pombal practically ruled the destinies of Portugal good fortune led him to
take a shrewd interest in Brazil; especially interested in the comparatively new settlements at
Pará and Maranhão, and struck by the fine fibre exported from these northerly regions, he
decided upon the establishment of spinning and weaving mills. In 1750 the Marquis de Tavora
was given the task of engaging expert weavers for the colonies, and shortly afterwards the first
cotton-cloth factories were set up in Brazil. Pombal’s fatherly interest in weaving did not extend
to the south; these 225sections of the country should devote their time to mining and agriculture,
he thought, and finding that looms were being set up all along the coast and in the interior of
Minas—always a good cotton region—he passed a law in 1766 prohibiting cotton and silk
weaving. It had the desired effect of checking the development of any considerable commerce,
but did not prevent the use of hand looms in almost every farm, where a patch of cotton was as
much a part of the crop as a field of maize. In a relatorio of 1779 the Viceroy Luis de
Vasconcellos reported to Lisbon on the “independence of the people of Minas of European
goods, establishing looms and factories in their own fazendas, and making cloth with which they
clothe themselves and their families and slaves....”

In 1785 the Portuguese Government ordered the suppression of all factories in Brazil; they must
have been considerably advanced, despite the previous orders, if the decree abolishing
establishments for making “ribbons, laces of gold or silver velvets, satins, taffetas, bombazine,
printed calico, fustian,” etc., etc., meant anything. In spite of this the weaving of coarse cottons
managed to survive, perhaps with the connivance of sympathetic Viceroys, and repeated letters
emphasized the inconvenience of factories in Brazil: a carta regia of 1802 instructed the
Governor of Minas Geraes not to allow “anyone to present himself before him unless dressed in
materials manufactured in the Kingdom or the Asiatic dominions.”
The transference of the Portuguese monarchy to Brazil in 1808 changed all these ideas—which
helps to demonstrate the still burning need for all rulers, of whatever denomination, to take a
travelling course—and 226in a few years cotton threads and cloths were freed from duties, the
Prince Regent sent a master-weaver at his own expense to set up fabricas in the interior, and by
1820 the industry was thriving. Cotton growing was equally stimulated at this period by high
prices in England; in 1818 that country was not only buying raw cotton, but cotton cloth, from
Brazil.

With the development of the south of the United States in cotton production on a great scale a
shadow fell over the Brazilian industry. Unable to compete with the low prices at which North
America offered her bales in the early eighteen-forties the farmers of the southerly states of
Brazil checked their planting, and, coffee just then dawning upon them as a commercial
possibility, filled up the empty spaces in the fields with the beans of coffea arabica. North
Brazil, with its special cottons of long staple, kept on producing these varieties for home mills,
steadily at work, and for European export; a new incentive came with the Civil War of the
United States when Confederate cotton shipments were contraband and English spinners were at
their wits’ end for raw material, but prices sank with the declaration of peace.

Since the beginning of the present century Brazilian exports of, and prices received for, national
cotton have varied so remarkably that it is worth while glancing at the statistics; almost the
whole of the export of this raw cotton, and of cotton seed, went to England. If in addition to this
export we reckon about fifty thousand tons as the amount consumed by the factories of the
country, the whole production of Brazil can never have exceeded ninety thousand tons.

227
Year Tons Value in Gold Milreis
1902 32,137 10,701 contos (one conto equals 1000 milreis)
1903 28,235 11,766 „
1904 13,262 7,347 „
1905 24,081 10,291 „
1906 31,668 14,726 „
1907 38,036 15,418 „
1908 3,565 1,833 „
1909 9,968 5,261 „
1910 11,160 7,934 „
1911 14,647 8,714 „
1912 16,774 9,221 „
1913 37,423 20,513 „
1914 30,434 16,556 „
1915 5,223 2,551 „

Exports almost vanished, to 1000 tons, in 1916, not recovering fully until 1920, when 25,000
tons were shipped.
What measures are being taken in Brazil to develop cotton culture? First let us take into
consideration new governmental means of assisting the industry. When the drought of 1914–15
scorched up northern plantations the weavers found themselves paying higher prices inside
Brazil than the same national cotton was bringing in Liverpool. The Centro Industrial, a very
strong and useful body, asked the Government to hold an enquiry, and the also extremely
powerful Centro do Commercio e Industria of São Paulo made the suggestion that duties against
imported cotton should be remitted so that the mills could get cheap supplies of foreign material.
Remarking on the situation the Gazeta de Noticias of Rio said: “On one side we have the cotton
planting industry declaring 228that it will face certain extinction if the door is opened to foreign
raw material; on the other is the weaving industry declaring that it must shut its doors if it is not
permitted to buy from foreign markets!”

The Federal Government only temporarily remitted dues, believing that the situation would
remedy itself with the new crop—rain fell copiously at last in the scourged districts, and Ceará
alone foretold a cotton crop of twelve thousand tons for 1916—but prepared to consider
measures to open up larger areas of country to this culture. A project submitted to the Legislature
at the end of 1915 suggested the construction of good cart roads in cotton districts, and the
establishment of modern gins at convenient points, at the expense of the Government.

Already, three years ago, the Government had acquired the services of Professor Edward Green,
a cotton expert from the United States who has been working with the double object of
classifying and standardizing the best cottons for plantation in Brazil, and of noting the best
regions for such plantations. At the Conferencia Algodoeira (Cotton Conference) held in Rio
under the auspices of the Centro da Industria in June, 1916, Professor Green gave an address
dealing with some phases of his labours, and concluded by saying:

“After three years of observation and experiment in Brazil I am convinced that this country,
above any other, possesses excellent natural conditions for cotton production, and that the
development of this great national resource depends only upon the adoption of a few simple
measures:

“1.
The selection and standardization of superior 229types, and the production of great
quantities of selected seeds for distribution.
“2.
Introduction of simple, animal-drawn cultivators, with practical instruction on their use to
be given to large planters of cotton in the interior.
“3.
Stimulation by the Government of all activities related to the cotton industry, and
suspension for some years of all connected taxes and duties.

“Extensive propaganda in favor of cotton growing is being animated by the far-seeing and
incomparable activity of Dr. Miguel Calmon. If this work is continued in all parts of the country
where cotton is cultivated there is no doubt of success. The cotton production of Brazil will find
itself doubled if not quadrupled in a short time, and this country will take the high place in world
markets which is legitimately hers as the greatest exporter of high-class cotton.”
Both Federal and State Governments have brought technical experts from foreign countries to
help in the solution of Brazilian problems; the Directorship of the Jardim Botanico in Rio, where
a series of valuable experiments in tropical agriculture were carried out, was for some time in the
hands of an English expert, Dr. John Willis, who brought his knowledge of Ceylon and Malaysia
to bear upon Brazilian conditions; the work of the eminent Swiss, Dr. Emil Goeldi, on the
Amazon, succeeded by the labours of Dr. Jacques Huber, have been invaluable in regard to
classification of North Brazilian natural plants and their adaptation to commercial uses, as well
as the introduction of suitable tropical fruits, etc., from other regions. The Ministry of
Agriculture in Rio is the centre of much live work, 230and has had a series of excellent men at
its head. The brilliant Pedro de Toledo was neither the first nor the last of agricultural devotees in
this post.

The work of State Societies of Agriculture is more highly specialized, and cotton has its list of
societies just as coffee, cacao, sugar and tobacco have theirs. Many big cotton estate owners take
a keen interest in improving conditions of production, and have been during the last few years
definitely helped by the American expert already referred to and by a Texan cotton grower at the
head of demonstration farms operated by the Leopoldina Railway Company. One meets in Brazil
an unusually high percentage of finely educated men who are fazendeiros, who willingly leave
the gay cities of the coast to live in patriarchal authority upon interior farms having as their sole
connection with the outside world a narrow mule-track; they appear to have inherited the
affection for land of their own possession which sent the early Portuguese so far afield, and
which seldom seems to be mingled with any dislike of solitude. It is this feeling which scantily
populates the sertão with fazendas, far removed from any town, dotting the vast interior with
nucleos of independent life; it may be partly due to a strain of Indian ancestry, for it extends to
the upper reaches of the Amazon and its tributaries, lining, at infrequent intervals, the banks of
forest-bound rivers with palm-thatch huts, their foundations in the water, where families subsist
upon a handful of farinha, and fish caught in the flood below them, looking with unenvious eyes
at the passing boats of rubber collectors and apparently quite content with their withdrawal from
the world. To such a people, not markedly gregarious, the opening of great tracts 231of interior
is in accord with their instincts, and cultivation is but a matter of communication and transport.

The cotton country of Brazil needs expert growers and good roads or rail service; it will not lack
the work of the small native farmer.

There is a cotton cloth factory near Pernambuco which is an excellent example of a self-
contained industry in Brazil. Situated seven miles outside the mediæval port-city of Olinda,
whose narrow cobbled streets are lined with tiled and gabled houses reminiscent of Dutch
regimen, the estate covers forty-five square miles of pasture and woodland besides the area
directly occupied by the works and the village of employees; one edge borders on the sea,
fringed with coconuts, and there are two little ports where native barcaças bring their loads of
raw cotton and merchandise, at the mouths of two rivers flowing through the estate.

Here, on the warm coast of the northern promontory with its tropic vegetation and mestizo
population, a Brazilian company started a factory for spinning and weaving; it was not a marked
success until Herman Lundgren, an energetic man of Swedish birth, resident in Brazil since 1866
and later a naturalized Brazilian, took over the management of the property. He made an
arrangement by which the original owners were paid ten per cent on their investment, all farther
profits belonging to himself, and later on bought out the old stockholders; new machinery was
brought from Great Britain, technical workers imported from Manchester, and the scope of the
business enlarged so that today all processes for producing fine coloured cotton cloths are
performed 232on the estate—spinning, weaving, dyeing and colour-printing. When the writer
visited the factory in the early part of 1915 a shortage of dyestuffs was predicted and I
understand that since that time experiments have been successfully made with native vegetable
dyes, too long abandoned for the convenient aniline varieties.

The factory employs three thousand five hundred people, of whom seventy per cent are women
and children; the total population in the village is fifteen thousand. Over thirty-five thousand
dollars a month is paid in wages. The manager of the mills, an Englishman, spoke highly of the
Brazilian operatives: the company has never taken any measures to import other labour than that
of the district; the majority of the workmen’s dwellings are built and owned by the company, and
are rented out cheaply, while in some cases these modest cottages of sun-dried brick, thatched
with palm or covered with a zinc or tile roof, have been erected by the workmen themselves,
their only obligation to the company being the payment of ground rent of two to four milreis a
month, the palm-thatched house paying the lowest and the zinc-roofed the highest rate. The
company maintains a school, hospital and dispensary, free, for the villagers.

Apart from the mills the estate contains a dairy and stock farm—where some well-known
English horses occupy stables, apparently unperturbed by their transference to Brazilian tropics
—tile and brick factories, a bakery, blacksmith’s shop, and lumber yard. The company uses one
thousand tons of coal a month when it can be obtained, but curtailment of imports since the
outbreak of the European War has entailed a greater 233use of wood fuel. This is cut from the
matto on the estate, typical Brazilian woodland of great beauty, containing a marked variety of
different trees, but notable for its absence of animal life with the exception of insects and some
fine butterflies in the neighbourhood of streams and pools.

The estate produces no cotton, purchasing all of this raw material from Pernambuco and
Parahyba; one hundred and fifty bags weighing seventy-five kilos each are used daily, and the
monthly bill for cotton amounted to £35,000 or £40,000 even when the price of Brazilian cotton
was down to about eleven milreis an arroba (fifteen kilos), equal at the rate of exchange then
prevailing to about eight cents a pound United States currency; but towards the end of 1915
native cotton rose in Brazil to twenty-five and thirty cents a pound in consequence of the drought
in the North followed by crop failures, and factories all over the country suffered from the
shortage.

Pernambuco and other northern factories had an advantage in being nearer sources of supply, the
difference in freight enabling these mills to get raw material at a rate at least twenty per cent
below that paid by the importers of Rio and S. Paulo. From forty thousand pounds to fifty
thousand pounds a year is spent by the factory on drugs, colours and chemicals.

Production of cotton cloth averages one million, five hundred thousand metres a month, woven
on nine hundred and sixty looms; the cloth measures twenty-two to twenty-six inches in width
and has an immense variety, from heavy blue denim to fine flowered fabrics woven or printed in
brilliant colours, beloved by Brazilian working classes. Trains of mules pass daily along the road
from 234the factory, each animal carrying two bales of cotton cloth weighing seventy-five kilos
each; the whole of this output is sold in Brazil, distributed over half a score of different States by
shops established by the company. There are over eighty of these stores, selling cloth and also
ready made garments of simple make, in Pernambuco State alone, as well as others in Bahia,
Ceará, Parahyba, Rio, S. Paulo, Matto Grosso, etc.

HERVA MATTE

Herva matte, sometimes called “Paraguay tea,” is the leaf of a small tree belonging to the ilex
family. It is, botanically, ilex paraguayensis, and has much the appearance of a small,
particularly dense live-oak. It grows wild, and very thickly, in the south Brazilian State of
Paraná, the forests straying out into Matto Grosso, São Paulo, Santa Catharina, Rio Grande do
Sul, and over the borders of the Argentine; but Paraná is the great home of the little tree and of
the manufacture of the leaf into a commercial product. Its preferred habitat is from 1500 to 2000
feet above sea-level, and until recently it had never been cultivated successfully except by the
early Jesuit missionaries; but now Argentina announces her intention of fostering plantations of
matte, and the Brazilian exporters are more alarmed than were the rubber shippers of the
Amazon when they first heard of Wickham’s experiments.

Prepared in Brazil, matte has little sale in that country; only the states of the southern border
have learned to drink the infusion. Buyers and users of the leaf are, first, Argentinos and next
Paraguayanos, with several other South American countries taking smaller quantities; 235the
confirmed matte drinker rejects Indian teas and coffee with contempt, and there is undoubtedly
much to be said for this herb. It is tonic, is not accused of possessing nerve-attacking properties
to the same extent as tea or coffee, and has a delicate flavour: it has a good opportunity to prove
its qualities in world markets, now that a society has been formed in Paraná to defend and
advertise it. In the Argentine stock-raising districts every gaucho has his apparatus for making
the infusion, and is said to be able to work all day on this drink and a little bread.

The leaves are gathered for three or four months in the year, May or June until August; carried to
a central hearth, they are dried over fires, packed in bags and sent on mule-back to Ponta Grossa
or Curityba, and there carefully prepared for export. Mills and sieves of Brazilian invention
reduce the dried leaves to powder, divide it into qualities according to the fineness of the
reduction, and pack for export; Paranaguá is the matte port. Thousands of colonists and isolated
dwellers of interior Paraná depend upon matte for the basis of their living; the hervaes (matte
forests) are often seen together with the fantastic Paraná pine, a thick green growth below the tall
stems of this other tree characteristic of the landscape of southern Brazil. The Paraná pine,
besides its value as a yielder of excellent lumber, is noted for its product of pine kernels so large
that they often exceed good-sized chestnuts in bulk. They are to be seen in huge sacks on sale in
all the markets of South Brazil, are boiled like chestnuts and form a nutritious and excellent food.
They should be better known, but their use seems to be largely confined to the Italian population,
who have always had a predilection for pine 236kernels: when the Romans invaded Britain they
brought and planted pine trees of the nut-yielding variety.
Each matte herval is invaded in the picking season by local gatherers; the central fire is started,
the trees stripped of small branches; care is taken to prune them so that succeeding yields are not
injured; there is not a great variety of shrubs in the vicinity of the matte forests, and not much
cleaning has to be done. Brought down to the ports, the cost of prepared matte rarely exceeds six
cents: including freight and other costs it could be placed upon North American markets as it is
in European, at about eighteen to twenty cents a pound in normal times.

During the year 1915 Brazil exported her highest record of matte to date, 75,800 tons, but left
this figure far behind in 1919 and 1920, with over 90,000 tons. This was not such a good price as
that of 1913, when sixty-five thousand tons fetched 21,000 contos, at an average price of five
hundred and forty-two reis per kilo. The amount exported has gone up steadily since the
beginning of the century, when thirty-five to forty thousand tons was a fair total.

Argentina, the most important buyer of the “yerba,” has for some years imposed certain
restrictions upon the entry of Brazilian matte, insisting, as she is right to insist, on guarantees and
proofs of its purity: Brazil has conformed with wishes of the Argentine authorities. In April,
1915, the customs-houses of Buenos Aires were circularized by the Argentine Minister of
Finance, requesting tests which would have meant the opening and submitting to chemical
analysis of each package of 237matte. Compliance meant a very large addition to costs, as each
separate analysis meant an expenditure of at least ten Argentine pesos, or about four dollars; as a
result importation ceased and orders were countermanded. A month later restrictions were
modified, but one analysis of each consignment being obligatory; at the same time even more
rigid measures were taken to ensure the entry of nothing but unmixed leaves, the Argentine
Counsel of Hygiene urging the Government not to admit any matte which did not contain at least
seven per thousand of mateina or cafeina.

No such rules, meanwhile, have been imposed upon matte of Argentine origin or milling; the
product of the home mills is not free from suspicion of adulteration with other herbs, and the
Revista de Economia y Finanzas of Buenos Aires (July, 1916) wrote scathingly of the law which
“imposes analysis upon the foreign product, with the preservation of public health as object,
while the product of our mills, uninspected, may endanger it.” The root of the Argentine obstacle
really seems to be a new project for planting the tree on an extensive scale in the territory of
Misiones, bordering on the south Brazilian, matte-producing, states; the plan includes plantation
of thirty thousand hectares of land and the construction of a railway line. If success crowns this
enterprise Brazil will not immediately be forced to search for other consumers of the product of
her two hundred thousand square kilometers of matte forests, but in the course of a few years she
might find her industry seriously threatened. If the society which has taken up matte defence and
advertisement is only half as successful as that specializing in Brazilian coffee propaganda, matte
will find good markets north of the 238equator should those below it fail her. The following is
the analysis of matte, compared with green tea, black tea, and coffee:—

In 1000 parts.
Green Tea Black Tea Coffee Matte
Essential oil 7.90 6.00 0.41 0.01
Chlorophyll 22.20 18.14 13.66 62.00
Resin 22.20 36.40 13.66 20.69
Tannin 178.00 128.80 16.39 12.28
Theine or caffeine 4.30 4.60 2.66 2.50
Fibre & cellulose 175.80 283.20 174.83 180.00
Ash 85.60 54.40 25.61 38.10
Extract and colouring matter 464.00 390.00 270.67 238.83
960.00 921.54 517.89 554.41

Out of her total exports in 1915 of nearly seventy-six thousand tons, Brazil sent over fifty-eight
thousand to Argentina, fourteen thousand to Uruguay, and three thousand tons to Chile. In 1920,
seventy thousand tons were sold to the Argentine, eighteen thousand tons to Uruguay, and rather
more than three thousand to Chile, where sales of Oriental teas compete with the matte leaf.

SUGAR

Sugar production is one of the Brazilian industries which have waxed, waned, and with the
encouragement of high market prices abroad, has recently again forged ahead. As in the case of
cotton, sugar can be and is grown in the great majority of Brazilian states, from the mouth of the
Amazon down to the Laguna Mirim, but there are areas, chiefly on the central littoral, where
239soil and climate are so well suited to sugarcane that production from these regions is able to
compete with other world offerings. There was a time when Brazil was the chief source of sugar
supplies to Europe, but the industry suffered two great blows—one, the stimulation of cane-
growing in the British West Indies, and again the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, which
resulted in many instances in the abandonment of the plantations by a large part of the negro
population, crowding into the coast cities to enjoy new liberty.

Cane production has all the advantages of an ancient industry whose details have long been
reduced to an exact science. Its recorded history goes back to the fifth century, so that we can
reckon that there have been fourteen centuries of experiment in cane culture. A native of Bengal,
sugar was in cultivation in the fifth century along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates; the
conquering Moors took it into Spain in the eighth century, and during the following six or seven
centuries its cultivation on a limited scale proceeded on the shores of the Mediterranean. In the
fifteenth century when Portugal re-found and colonized Madeira and the Azores, sugarcane was
introduced into these islands, flourished there, and yielded sugar to the home market in Lisbon.
That it was an exotic luxury in Europe generally is proved by its price: a hundredweight sold in
London in 1842 fetched £55. Twenty-five years later the price had dropped to ten pounds for a
like quantity, but by that time larger supplies were coming in. After the discovery of the West
Indian Islands by Columbus cane was introduced into Hispaniola and Cuba by the Spanish
settlers, but cultivation was strongly discouraged by the home 240government, who chiefly
aimed at the stimulation of gold-mining. Brazil, whose gold-deposits were luckily not discovered
until the seventeenth century, became in contrast to New Spain an agricultural country from the
time when the first capitanias were allotted: she began shipping sugar in the visiting Portuguese
caravels in a few years after first settlement.

Thenceforth for over a century and a quarter Brazil became the main source of sugar supplies to
Europe; when placer gold and diamond-bearing gravels were found by the bandeirantes
everyone rushed to the General Mines taking slaves along, until the coast plantations were
denuded both of masters and labourers. Consequent languishing of sugar production made it
worth while for both England and France to develop cane growing in the West Indian isles which
they had seized from Spain. It was in 1662 that the British “Company of Royal Adventurers of
Africa” agreed to deliver three thousand slaves a year to the British West Indies, and sugar
production in Jamaica, Barbados, etc., began to attract wealthy planters: whole fleets of high-
prowed sailing ships came into Caribbean waters to take away sugar, rum and molasses in those
palmy days, enduring until Napoleon started the beet-sugar industry and Great Britain, not long
after, abolished the slave trade.

Europe only discovered her possession of a sweet tooth during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Before the great production of sugar from the New World began to be carried to Spain
and Portugal, and by them distributed at high prices and in small quantities to the rest of Europe,
the only sweetening known to the masses of the population was honey, and this was 241a luxury.
There was no taste for sweets until sweets became common. The real taste of the Middle Ages
was for spices; it is not generally realized today to what extent the food of Europe was at this
period saturated with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and other spices brought from the Orient. It was
for the “Spice Isles” that the early navigators searched the wide seas, spices that they ate with a
gusto almost incomprehensible today: they flavoured their beverages and scented their clothes
with spices.

The most flourishing centres of sugar production in Brazil are in the State of Rio de Janeiro,
where Campos is the focus of sugar deliveries, and Pernambuco, a thousand miles farther north;
São Paulo has also an increasing sugar industry, as may be seen from the following list of large
sugar mills; small factories, of which there are hundreds in Brazil chiefly turning out rapadura, a
brown sugar-brick, and cachaça, the native rum, are not included:—

Alagôas 9
Bahia 7
Maranhão 3
Minas Geraes 7
Parahyba do Norte 2
Pernambuco 46
Rio de Janeiro 31
Santa Catharina 2
São Paulo 20
Sergipe 15
Piauhy 1
Rio Grande do Norte 3

139

242On almost every cotton, coffee, tobacco or other fazenda in Brazil, besides those given over
to sugar production, one finds patches of the bright veridian green that demonstrates the presence
of sugar, grown and milled for home uses; altogether the production of sugar in Brazil must be
much larger than is shown by any statistics, and there does not exist any comprehensive estimate
of the total amount. A few years ago the charge could be made that Brazilian sugar-milling
methods were antiquated, extraction low because the machinery employed was inferior: but
whoever repeats this tale today has not seen any of the huge, scientifically managed estates and
mills of Pernambuco, the usinas of the country about Campos, where the sky-line is punctuated
by slim chimneys, or any of the fine modern equipments of São Paulo. One of the first good
mills that the writer saw in Brazil was at Piracicaba, in the interior of São Paulo, where an
excellent product was marketed by the employment of thoroughly up-to-date methods. Here the
installation of machinery is European, chiefly French, but there has been an increasing tendency
since the outbreak of war in Europe towards purchases of American equipment, perhaps
especially among the usinas of the northern promontory.

Exports of sugar from Brazil have fluctuated in an extraordinary manner since the beginning of
this century; swift drops in amounts sent abroad have nearly always spelt “drought,” but there
seems to have been a general tendency to decline until the stimulation of war prices helped the
industry, due partly to formidable competition from the Caribbean islands and coasts, and partly
to increased consumption in Brazil. A marked 243feature of the Brazilian sugar export lists is a
developing sale to Argentina; it has been recently stimulated by the failure of Argentine supplies,
but is also part of the symptomatic increase of interchange between the commercial South
American countries. Brazilian sugar exports, shipped in bags of sixty kilos weight, 1906 to 1920
in round numbers:—

1906 85,000 tons

1907 13,000 „
1908 32,000 „
1909 68,000 „
1910 59,000 „
1911 36,000 „
1912 4,800 „
1913 5,400 „
1914 32,000 „
1915 59,000 „
1916 54,000,000 „
1917 138,000,000 „
1918 116,000,000 „
1919 69,000,000 „
1920 109,000,000 „

The price has ranged during this period from two hundred and twenty-five reis per kilo paid for
the short crop of 1904, down to one hundred and eight reis paid in 1906 when the crop was large;
from that low point it climbed upwards, fluctuating about one hundred and sixty to one hundred
and eighty reis from 1907 to 1913, fixed exchange making this price the equivalent of about
three and a half to four cents a kilo, or something like a cent and a quarter to a cent and three-
quarters per pound. In 1914, with war prices encouraging the 244sugar market, the price rose to
two hundred and twelve reis a kilo, and in 1915 to two hundred and forty-four reis, a figure
exceeded enormously in the post-war boom of 1919–20.
The average yield of sugarcane per hectare in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo is fifty tons, or let us
say something over twenty tons an acre; this does not compare with Caribbean coast yields,
where eighty or ninety tons an acre is obtained from lands impregnated with volcanic ash, and
fields are to be seen which have not been re-planted for a dozen years. Brazilian soils, chiefly
composed of drifts of disintegrated granite, oxidized by the sun to a brilliant red tint, are
sometimes very rich, but also are frequently just good honest soils that cannot stand abuse
without exhaustion following; with proper rotation of crops these lands will yield generously, but
it is scarcely surprising that, in regions where sugar has been almost continuously cultivated for a
couple of centuries, the cane crop per acre is comparatively low.

Pernambuco, for instance, counts her cane cultivation from the year 1534, when the first
engenho (sugar mill), piously named Nossa Senhora de Ajuda, was established near the
settlement at Olinda.

Brazilians are large consumers of sugar; the internal consumption has been calculated at three
hundred thousand tons a year, or some eighty to ninety pounds a head of the population, and,
with the exception of fine sweets imported, chiefly from France, all of the sugar used in Brazil is
nationally produced. The sugar growing and refining industry is in an exceedingly healthy
condition, is one of the important national resources, and has shown marked revival during the
last two years.
Carioca Cotton Mill, Rio de Janeiro.

Catende Sugar Mill, Pernambuco.

245

TOBACCO

The use of tobacco in Brazil dates back an unknown number of centuries: the natives smoked the
leaf, both in the form of rolled cigars and also in small quantities in wooden pipes, made in the
fashion which Europe subsequently adopted. The first European to make any record of this habit
was that painstaking Frenchman, André Thevet, who came to Rio de Janeiro with Villegaignon’s
unfortunate expedition in November, 1555; he says that the native name for the plant was
“betun” or “petum,” and the drawing in his book (La Cosmographie Universelle) identifies it
with Nicotiana tabacum. In the Amazonian regions both men and women smoked tobacco as a
recognized form of enjoyment, and its effects were so much appreciated by another traveller,
Piso, that he declared it to be one of the three American plants which had no equal in the Old
World for beneficial uses—coca, tobacco, and the root of mandioca. Tobacco-smoking by
American natives had first been noticed by the crew of Columbus in 1492.

During the latter half of the sixteenth century Europeans began to take to the use of tobacco, the
Spanish colonies sending it home from the West Indian Islands and the Portuguese from Brazil;
it was not until about 1600 that it was seriously cultivated for export in the Brazilian capitanias,
and when experiments were made with this object it was found that Bahia yielded the best
product, although that of Pernambuco was also 246good, and the plant produced freely all along
the littoral, from Amazonas to the lagoons of Rio Grande do Sul. Tobacco became during
colonial days one of the important exports of Brazil, together with dyewoods and sugar.

Brazil marks her extensive cultivation of tobacco from about 1850, after her ports had been
thrown open to world commerce and the flags of all lands were seen in her ports. In 1860 she
exported 4,609 tons; in 1870, 13,276 tons and in 1873, nearly 17,000 tons, of which over 14,500
tons came from Bahia. By the year 1886 Brazilian exportation had risen to 23,000 tons, the value
was over 15,000,000 francs (or more than $3,000,000) and a part of this to the value of
3,500,000 francs, “was returned to us made up into so-called Havana cigars,” remarks Almeida.
“It was not fashionable to smoke any tobacco or cigars other than of the Havana kind in Brazil
fifteen years ago.”

Now ideas have changed: Brazil realizes the value of her own product, and Bahia has no
hesitation in challenging Vuelta Abajo to a comparison. Soils of the two regions are similar in
qualities. Farther north, the Brazilian fumo has a stronger, less delicate flavour, and is largely
consumed at home; cigarettes of Pará, Amazonas, Parahyba, Pernambuco, Matto Grosso, Minas,
and many other states are manufactured in large quantities, and sold cheaply; very good Pará
cigarettes made of the black local tobacco sell at ten for a “tostão”—a fraction over two cents.

By the end of the century Brazilian tobacco production had grown to some forty thousand tons,
largely the result of ready markets in Germany, which practically absorbed the whole of this
export until the outbreak 247of the European War, and the adoption of North American seeds
and methods of cultivation. The output suffers fluctuations due to climatic conditions, as will be
seen from inspection of the following figures; it will be noticed that prices have on the whole a
tendency to rise:

Year Tons Total Value in Gold Milreis Price per Kilo in Paper Milreis
1905 20,390 7,335 contos 636 reis
1910 34,149 14,453 „ 714 „
1915 27,096 10,328 „ 835 „
1920 30,561 1200 „

In calculating prices it is well to bear in mind that the gold milreis is always worth twenty-seven
English pence, while, although fixed between 1906 and 1914 at sixteen pence, the value of the
paper milreis fluctuates. During 1915 it was worth an average of a fraction over twelve pence, so
that the price of tobacco—eight hundred and thirty-five reis a kilo—may be considered as about
eighteen cents a kilo, or a little over seven American cents per pound. While, as we have seen,
thirty thousand tons of tobacco is exported each year from Brazil, enough remains in the country
to supply ninety-six per cent of the internal consumption; cigars, tobacco and cigarettes are
consumed in the country to the value of 40,622 contos, importations being worth only 1,500
contos of this amount.

Every state in Brazil has its large or small tobacco factories, but the great manufacturing region
is that of São Felix, just across the bay from São Salvador (Bahia) city. Accessible to the
factories established here are 248the finest tobacco regions: the product is excellent in flavour
and well prepared for a discriminating market. Organizers of the manufacturing industry, as well
as shippers to Europe, are largely German; German also is the big cigar factory of the South, that
of Poock in Rio Grande do Sul, whose product goes all over Brazil.

Since the beginning of the European War the absence of German and Austrian shipping
movement has paralyzed tobacco sales, and as this item forms about thirty per cent of Bahia’s
exports it was necessary to seek unimpeded sales channels. Negotiations were opened with the
Regie Française, the great French tobacco-buying organization, and the packing, quality,
fermentation and other conditions studied with reference to sales.

CEREALS

Wheat growing is only possible on a commercial scale in the south of Brazil where temperature
and climate are not unlike those of the European lands of origin of this cereal. At present Rio
Grande is the only great wheat producing state, although Paraná has a budding industry; the great
Italian firm of Matarazzo has recently acquired large areas of land in that state with the object of
growing wheat and establishing a flour mill.

Rio Grande, which owes the major part of its opening-up to the German settlers who emigrated
there about the middle of the nineteenth century, already grows half enough wheat to satisfy the
internal needs of the State, for although she still imports 361,000 barrels of flour, and 236,000
bushels of wheat (equal to another 24947,000 barrels) yet she also grows enough wheat to yield
407,000 barrels of native flour. She has, it is calculated, over 83,000 hectares of land under
wheat, employs 29,000 field hands, and has over a thousand grain mills. Many of these are
equipped with out-of-date machinery, and are small, but there are others fitted with good modern
systems producing fine flour.

Two of the best wheat producing municipalities are Alfredo Chaves and Caxias, each of which
have over four thousand hectares under wheat and produce an average of six thousand tons of
this grain; the first municipality has fifty-one and the second sixty-seven mills. To show the
“riograndense” growth in wheat production:

1909 15,250 tons

1910 31,267 „
1912 52,332 „
1915 55,000 „

Santa Catharina is a cereal State, but does not today produce notable quantities; São Paulo, the
high interior of Rio de Janeiro, and the hills of Minas, are all suitable; fine wheat, barley and oats
are often seen in the vicinity of European colonies. But Brazilian production is not yet within
measurable distance of coping with internal demands, and as a result wheat, with wheat-flour,
accounts for one-fifth of Brazil’s total import values. The bulk of the grain imported comes from
the River Plate.

Linked with the agricultural production of cereals is the flour-milling industry, which dates from
the time when wheat entered Brazil free of duty while wheat-flour paid thirty reis a kilo: this was
the condition of 250the tariff until December, 1899, by which time two large mills had been
established in Rio de Janeiro. In January of the following year imported wheat was taxed for the
first time, ten reis a kilo, while the duty on flour was reduced to twenty-five reis; national milling
profits suffered correspondingly.

In 1906 other alterations were made in the tariff as regards flour from the United States, in
addition to certain manufactured articles; it was suggested to Brazil that the United States was a
good customer for Paulista coffee and Amazonian rubber, and that she expected “most favoured
nation” treatment in return: a tax of three American cents per kilo against coffee was indicated as
a short way with objectors. Brazil yielded, giving the United States a twenty per cent reduction
on flour import duties, as well as for condensed milk, manufactures of rubber, clocks, dyes,
varnishes, typewriters, ice-boxes, pianos, scales and wind-mills. Four years later the preferential
tariff was extended to dried fruit, cement, school and office furniture, and in 1911 the rebate on
flour entries was changed to thirty per cent.

As a result American sales of the goods indicated have increased very largely, although sales of
rubber and coffee have remained, on Brazil’s part, about the same for the last seven or eight
years; her more markedly larger shipments to North America are cacao and hides. But American
flour imports into Brazil have increased from a little over twenty-four thousand tons in 1906 to
nearly sixty thousand tons in 1920, with rises in other articles equally pleasant for the northern
manufacturer—cement sales, for instance, increased from one hundred and twenty tons in 1908
to over 25176,000 tons in 1920; but in 1921 Germany, selling 30% below her rivals, captured
this trade. Reduction of taxes on American flour is actively opposed from two points; the first is
the group of flour mills operating in the country, and the second in the sister republic of
Argentina who also has flour to sell.

The flour mills in Brazil of commercial importance are eleven in number: the Moinho
Fluminense and the Rio de Janeiro Flour Mills, in the city of Rio; Moinho Santa Cruz, across the
bay in Nictheroy; Grandes Moinhos Gambas and Moinho Matarazzo, in São Paulo city; Moinho
Santista, in Santos; there are three modern mills in Rio Grande State, at Pelotas, Porto Alegre,
and Rio Grande City; Paraná has two, at Paranaguá and Antonia.[14]

The great cereal of Brazil is that wonderful plant developed by the aborigines of the Americas,
maize: it is commonly known as milho in Brazil. Only recently has the wild plant, mother of all
the different kinds of maize in the world, been identified—a proof of the long culture which
brought it to the perfection which the first European conquerors encountered; yet such was the
hardihood of this cereal that thirty years after the Conquest it had spread all over the warm parts
of Europe and was thriving in Africa and Asia.

252It is, with mandioca, the great food of all South and Central America and Mexico, grows
under almost any conditions, apparently, and while the seed is seldom carefully selected,
strongly marked varieties of prolific habit are found in Brazil, the red, white and yellow all
yielding well. It is found in patches outside every little hut, and in enormous fields in Central
Brazil. In spite of the large importation of wheat nowadays to satisfy the more luxurious tastes of
the cities, Brazil could not live without maize.

Rye is grown by the Russians of the southern colonies, and the south also produces a limited
quantity of oats and barley.

FIBRES

Among the fibres of Brazil which are offered extensive markets is the wonderful paina, known
in European markets as kapok, which is thirty-four times lighter than water and fourteen times
lighter than cork. Produced chiefly in the Orient, its qualities were many years ago appreciated
by German manufacturers who were until recently the largest purchasers of the fibre, using it for
life-belts, mattresses, etc. Today an unsatisfied demand for kapok comes from the Société
Industrielle et Commerciale du Kapok of Paris and London, which is said to expect enormous
calls after the close of the war, when rehabilitated Belgium and northern France will need
pillows, mattresses, coverlets, and quantities of other things with the qualities of lightness,
warmth, elasticity and impermeability possessed by this renowned fibre. At present world
supplies come from Java (best fibre, cleanest, best 253packed), British India, an inferior grade,
as is also that of Central Africa and Senegal; a few years ago, at the suggestion of Germans
interested in Venezuelan railways, the kapok tree was introduced there; but when the cotton was
sent to Europe it was rejected on account of its condition “the greater part of the bales containing
stones, refuse, etc., which sometimes amounted to thirty per cent of the total weight; thus, in
spite of the fine quality of Venezuelan kapok, French importers were obliged to cease
purchases,”—a lesson for careless exporters.
Many parts of Brazil display this beautiful tree. When the writer was first in Petropolis, in bright
May weather, the avenues of that mountain city were gay with the large bright pink flowers of
this grey-trunked, spreading exotic. Later, when the bolls ripen, the fibre is collected, sold by the
kilo over many counters throughout the country, and used locally for stuffing pillows and
cushions.

The price paid by France for paina fibre is about one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty
francs per hundred kilos of good-grade material: she imposes no duties against its entry. Brazil
has many good fibres, but their extensive industrial use is as yet limited to aramina, of which
coffee bags are made in S. Paulo, a flourishing industry, and the pita which is used by the
Indians of Amazonas to make hammocks. These are woven with great art, interspersed along the
edges with delicate feathers of gay-coloured Amazonian birds.

Fibre production in a scientific manner and on a commercial scale is only in its infancy in Brazil,
but has recently shown interesting development. There are numbers of fine fibres native to the
country, yielded 254not only by a large number of palms, one of which supplies the piassava
exported for broom-making, but also by many plants of the aloe tribe. Some of these produce
fibres equal in commercial value to the famous henequen (sisal) of Yucatan, upon which the
rope-making industries of the United States so largely depend.

Banana fibre is used by the lace-makers of the north for the production of a curious, stiff, shiny
lace of fairly intricate workmanship. The best specimens which I possess of this lace were
bought at Maceió, but the great home of the lacemaker is Ceará. She usually works with linen or
cotton threads, and is to be seen at every cottage door, with her pillow bristling like those of the
Devonshire lace-makers, with scores of pins, while she throws the myriad bobbins to and fro,
working her pattern on the pins.

Some of the lace produced is quite beautiful, of extreme fineness and intricacy, some of the most
prized being the labyrintho, with its darned-in pattern of heavier, silky thread, among the fine
filaments of the background. Lace-making is one of the small industries of Brazil which are little
known, but deserve a better market.

CACAO

Cacao culture and preparation is the great absorbing industry of southern Bahia, where soil and
climate, particularly along a couple of river valleys, combine to render the pretty little cacao tree
fruitful. Not even coffee presents a more charming sight than a good cocoa plantation ready for
harvest, the sun filtering through 255the light branches, and these, as well as the trunk thickly
clustered with the big heavy red or yellow pods, looking something like elongated melons
attached, almost stemless, to the strongest parts of the tree. Methods in use on many native
plantations in Brazil are fairly primitive, and it is the exception to see the elaborate machinery
for fermenting, washing, and drying such as is common in Trinidad; but the cacao produced is
good, has a ready sale in a market which never seems to have too much cocoa and chocolate, and
has made remarkably good prices since the European War began. Bahia is the great producing
state, but Maranhão, Amazonas and Pará also send contributions to the export lists; the chief
Bahian centres of production are Ilhéos and Itabuna, which send two-thirds of the crop, the rest
coming from Cannavieiras and Belmonte primarily. The groves run inland for more than two
hundred miles along the river valleys, full of the red triturated paste which is the base of
Brazilian soil.

The cacao year is reckoned from May the first to April the thirtieth, and there are two gathering
seasons: the safra proper begins in September and goes on until April, while the summer crop,
the temperão, begins in May and has a less important yield. Practically, picking goes on all the
year.

Cacao is native to the Americas, but its first cultivation and export from Bahia appears to date no
earlier than about 1834, when there are records of shipments of 447 sacks of sixty kilos each. In
1840 the export was nearly 2,000 sacks, and in 1850 had risen to more than 5,000 sacks. In 1915
Bahia shipped about 750,000 sacks, as a result of the enthusiastic planting which 256has gone on
in this favourable region for the last twenty years.

Until the war broke out the average price for six years for Brazilian cacao was about 725 reis a
kilo—about seven cents a pound. It was at this price that Brazil sold an average of thirty-two
thousand tons. In 1915 the price soared to 1$248 a kilo, or about twelve cents a pound, and
Brazil with the biggest crop then on record exported 44,980 tons, a total exceeded in each of the
following five years, 1919 showing exports of 93,000 tons, at 1$500 per kilo.

Cacao is a very good business, because there is seldom a surplus in world markets; a demand
exists for every pound, and the populations of great centres seem to consume it in increasing
quantities; it is a valuable food, against which as yet no analytical chemist has laid one of the
charges that seem designed to warn us from most things that are agreeable to eat and drink.

Anyone accustomed to warm climates, with a little capital to invest, and able and willing to wait
three or four years for his first returns, could do worse than to take up cacao planting in Brazil.

Agricultural methods in Brazil are in many regions quite primitive. When wild land is taken up,
it is denuded by the axe of its big trees, and the small scrub disposed of by burning the land over.
Frequently the next process is little more than that of making holes in the ground with a stick,
dropping in seed, and waiting for it to come up: a fertile land, Brazil gets her crops with a
minimum of trouble. That is all very well for the little owner of a small property, but it has
already given way in more advanced districts to sound agricultural 257methods. Modern
scientific agricultural implements of American and European make are commonly seen in the
centre and south, but in the extreme north and the deep interior they are more rare. There is an
excellent market for small, light hand ploughs, harrows and cultivators, for in some parts of the
country, such as interior Rio, the land in the bottoms of valleys is very good, has been neglected
because only coffee, planted on the hilltops, has pre-occupied the small farmer, but there is not
sufficient flat space for the use of large motor or animal operated machinery. A campaign of
agricultural instruction has been inaugurated for some years by the Department of Agriculture,
some good statistics and maps and literature sent out, but perhaps less theory and more practical
instruction is needed. A recent writer in the Estado de S. Paulo remarked upon this, rather
caustically: “... instructions for the culture of squashes—plough the ground with a plough with a
disc of such a number, harrow it with such or such a harrow, drill it with such or such a drill;
afterwards fertilize it with so many tons of phosphate of lime, so many of potash, and a few kilos
of powdered gold; cultivate it with such a cultivator, harvest the crop with such and such
methods, and take it to market in a certain kind of motor-truck, et cetera, this ‘etcetera’ meaning
that the farmer must hand over his farm to his creditors and go to hunt a job as sanitary
inspector....”

Other countries have also suffered from a plethora of agricultural theory, but there is plenty of
room for instruction of a practical character and several good agricultural schools in Brazil,
notably that at Piracicaba, São Paulo, are leading the way.

258

BRAZILIAN FRUITS

There are many fine fruits in Brazil, unrecognized abroad, which may some day, with
refrigerating spaces in outgoing vessels multiplied, find a way to international tables; there is
already a pineapple export to Europe, arriving in time for Christmas, and Brazil’s sweet bananas
are shipped to the Plate. 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. There is room for a huge industry in growing and shipping in this direction, and some
of the planters of California, trembling of nights when the frosts come and smudges have to be
burnt—sometimes in vain, would do well to transfer their skill and energy to a land where frosts
are unknown, land is cheap, and the best oranges known are produced without any great care or
science.

MINING

Brazil was for more than a hundred years after the discovery of placer deposits in the interior the
source of important gold exports; altogether she is estimated to have yielded gold worth more
than a hundred million pounds sterling, but her fame diminished with the exhaustion of the gold-
bearing river sands. It was easy 259enough to wash out gold grains with the bateia, but when it
became necessary to seek mother lodes and to use machinery, native capital and technical skill
were lacking. Two gold-mining companies are working today in Brazil, both British owned and
operated, and both in the State of Minas Geraes. One, at Morro Velho, property of the S. João del
Rey Mining Company, is worked at a depth of a mile and a quarter, pays dividends regularly,
and is a standing tribute to British energy and skill: it is a magnificent social organization as well
as an engineering triumph.

The second company of importance using modern equipment is that of Passagem, close to the
old capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto; it is excellently operated, but has not had equal good
fortune with the Morro Velho mine. In 1916 Brazil’s gold exports, in bars, weighed 4,564,523
grams, were worth about £480,000, and went entirely to England, but Brazil subsequently
forbade gold exports, and now takes over all the product.
A certain amount of Brazilian gold is absorbed internally every year by the excellent native
goldsmiths, for the fabrication of special jewellery objects, but no estimate of the value is
obtainable.

Until diamonds were found in South Africa Brazil was the cradle of the most important
diamonds put on foreign markets; the stones are still sought by native garimpeiros, mostly, in the
interior of Minas and Bahia, and from the grutas of the latter State are obtained the finest white
diamonds known. But they have practically disappeared from export lists together with the black
carbonados, even more valuable, for a reason commented upon by the Diario Official of Bahia,
discussing 1915 trade: “If diamonds and carbonados have been, 260since the war, sent to Europe
or North America, their exportation, which is for the most part unknown, has been realized by
the habitual processes of smuggling.” Brazil is the main source of these “carbonados,” black
diamonds of great hardness and therefore value, used industrially.

The precious stones openly shipped from all Brazil during 1915 were worth only about one
hundred and seventy-six contos of reis (say forty-four thousand dollars), of which about fifty-
five per cent went to the United States and the rest to France. During 1916 the export of precious
and semi-precious Brazilian stones to North America has been greatly stimulated by the access
of luxury-purchasing which has coincided with the accumulation of war profits, and out of
American purchases of jewels from abroad at the rate of a million dollars a week Brazil has her
share. 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.

The lovely sea-blue agua-marinhas, with exquisite transparency and lustre, the soft green
tourmalinas, the pink and golden topazes and purple amethysts are all found in great quantities in
the Brazilian interior: many are native cut, and the wheel of the lapidary using 261beautiful
coloured stones may be seen at work in Bello Horizonte, Rio, Bahia, and São Paulo.

If half that geologists have said of Brazil is true, this country is destined to become one of the
greatest mining regions of the Americas; it has an extraordinary variety of minerals, but their
location in the interior where little transportation exists, added to the restraining influences of
archaic mining laws, has checked enterprise. Before the European War began plans were well
under way for development of important iron mines in Minas Geraes by an English company, but
work is in abeyance at present. There has been, however, a marked increase in exports of high-
grade manganese, chiefly from Minas, chiefly shipped away in the newly operating line of
freight steamers owned by the United States Steel Corporation, which bring manufactured
products to Brazil. Out of the total of more than three hundred thousand tons of this ore exported
from Brazil in 1915, over two hundred and sixty-six thousand tons were sent to the United
States, the price paid being over two and a half million dollars; Great Britain also took ten
thousand tons, but Germany and Belgium, former customers for this ore, were eliminated from
the lists.
During 1916 production, mainly from Minas deposits, rose to over five hundred thousand tons,
again increasing to five hundred and thirty-three thousand tons in 1917; after this time depression
was experienced, due in great measure to lessened demands from the United States using home-
produced low-grade ores for steel hardening. Post-war prospects of development of the great
Itabira iron deposits suggest iron and steel industries within Brazil.

262Large manganese deposits also occur in the neighbourhood of Nazareth, on the mainland side
of the Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bahia State), situated conveniently for shipment; its export was
reduced to practically nothing from this point during 1914 and 1915, probably for the same
reason that shipments of another famous Brazilian mineral, monazite sand, vanished about the
same time from Bahian lists. This reason was the imposition of strangulating export taxes,
amounting to about twenty-two per cent of the value of the mineral. Manganese deposits are
known to exist, in addition to the beds in Bahia and Minas, in Matto Grosso, Santa Catharina,
Paraná and Amazonas; the total quantity available is estimated at one hundred million tons.

Monazite sands lie all along the southerly shores of Bahia, extending into Espirito Santo; their
peculiar glow and lustre was first noticed by an Englishman, John Gordon, who had samples
examined and found that they contained thorium, used in making incandescent gas mantles; he
was in the shipping business in Brazil, and had no difficulty in thenceforth sending large
quantities of the precious sands abroad, as ballast; the story goes that only by an accident was the
fact revealed to the authorities that the sands were valuable above the ballast of most vessels,
after some years. Duties were put on, and eventually exports slumped. The largest amount
officially sent abroad in one year was 2,114 tons, 1908, with a value of 609 contos of reis. In
1915 only 439 tons were exported, all to the United States.

These three meagre items, precious stones, manganese and monazite sands, complete the 1915
official mining exports of a great mineral country. Probably increases 263will be shown for the
year 1916, for, in addition to manganese increases, there has been great stimulation of coal
mining in the States of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina and Paraná. More than one Brazilian
railway, exasperated at the prices demanded for foreign coal, has been using native coal and
helping in its production, and during the latter part of 1916 experimental shipments were made to
the Argentine. Results are said to be good, but a little caution must be used before serious claims
are made concerning the existence of very extensive deposits of fine hard steam coal. In any case
the production of useful coal is a blessing to the east coast of South America, devoid as this
region has been up to the present of any source of reliable carvão de pedra; every ton has been
imported, chiefly from Wales but latterly from North America. Chile, on the other side of the
Andes, has been mining coal for years, but the quality is not satisfactory for all purposes, and
supplies have been supplemented from Australia in normal times.

Brazil has, it is known, important deposits of nickel, copper, lead, mica, platinum, wolfram, and
many other minerals, but there has been no real attempt at operations, and until prospecting is
systematically undertaken and money put into good equipment, Brazil cannot take her place as a
great mineral producing country. She has the minerals, but she needs roads to get them out, and
favourable laws to encourage mining development, as well as abolition of strangulating taxes.
With intelligent assistance, Brazil’s manganese should be able at the close of the European War
to compete with that of Russia, and her monazite with that of Travancore (India), aside from the
other rich deposits.

264

BRAZILIAN MANUFACTURES

There is much controversy in Brazil on the subject of national manufactures. I have heard
extremists declare roundly that Brazil ought not to manufacture anything at all, because each
mill-hand is one more person taken away from the fields to which all Brazilian attention should
be given.

“Brazil is an agricultural country,” a cotton planter said to the writer. “She cannot legitimately
compete with the manufactured products of great industrial countries because the price of living
is too high here. To obtain large revenues from the import taxes which are the Federal
Government’s source of support we have heavy duties against large classes of goods entering the
country; the barrier has been so high that it has been worth while for factories to be started here,
sometimes making things from material produced in the country, which is not bad policy when
we have enough labour, but often making goods every separate item of which is imported, an
absurdity.”

He went on to say that there is a considerable manufacture of matches in Brazil, but that the
igniting chemicals, the little sticks, and the boxes were all imported; nothing was done but the
mere putting together. “It is only remunerative because the tax on imported matches is so high,
and in many districts owing to want of communication the match factory has a monopoly of local
trade—a purely artificial condition.” This fazendeiro was equally opposed to the silk and velvet
factories of Petropolis, declaring that “every item, raw silk, colours, machinery, even the skilled
weavers, are imported” and that until Brazil produces national silk—a beginning has been made
—she should not have silk factories.
Coffee-loading equipment at the port of Santos, State of São Paulo.

Sugar lands In Pernambuco.

265This view was that of the agriculturist who sees a menace to labour supplies in the growing
manufactures of Brazil: I give it for what it is worth, as an interesting view point with force in
some of the argument. But there are industries in Brazil which the agriculturist will admit to be
legitimate in themselves and helpful to himself in that they tend to raise prices for his raw
products. Of this class the most shining example is the list of cotton mills. They are already so
active that the national supply of raw cotton is not sufficient for their needs, demand being so
acute in 1919 that the price in Brazil rose to forty cents a pound. The output is sold in Brazil,
supplying over eighty per cent of the fabrics used, with a surplus for export since 1918.

It is not generally recognized to what extent Brazilian manufactures have developed. The great
industrial region is Rio de Janeiro. Her industrial advance has been made possible in this
direction, as in agriculture, by the influx of sturdy Italians, Portuguese and Spanish workers.

At the same time the manufacturing section is not confined to S. Paulo; it is notably active in
Minas and Rio, especially where electric power derived from waterfalls is employed, and in
Bahia and Pernambuco where tobacco and sugar create legitimate home industries, and where
there is a sufficiency of native and negro labour, the latter an inheritance from slavery days.

The total value of the products of Brazilian factories 266is about 2,000,000 contos of reis, equal
at twelve pence exchange to £100,000,000 or in U. S. currency, $500,000,000 mais ou menos.
This is a larger sum than the value of Brazil’s exported agricultural and forestal products, which
was about 1,811,000 contos in 1919, and 1,464,000 contos in 1920.

This calculation, however, is not quite fair because it does not take into consideration the
agricultural produce consumed in the country; there are no figures available on this subject.

In a review of commerce published in May, 1916, the Jornal do Commercio said that out of the
ninety-four classes of Brazilian manufacture, eighty were free from internal taxes (the “imposto
do consumo”) while fourteen were subject to tax, as well as to foreign competition.

It was demonstrated that in these fourteen classes Brazilian manufactures fell below fifty per cent
of the total consumption in only one instance, that of pharmaceutical specialties. The most
important items are these, in round numbers:

Brazilian-made Imported
Woven fabrics (chiefly cotton, but some silk and wool) 450,000 contos 47,300 contos 82
Beverages (mineral waters, beer, wine, spirits) 101,300 contos 47,640 contos 68
Footwear (leather shoes and boots, and alpagartas) 150,225 contos 2,425 contos 97
Prepared tobacco, cigarettes and cigars 39,000 contos 1,565 contos 96
Hats 29,000 contos 3,800 contos 86
Matches 18,000 contos 4 contos 99.9
Conserves 13,300 contos 9,800 contos 58
Pharmaceutical specialties 11,700 contos 15,780 contos 43

267In 1921 the number of home-made goods paying imposts rose to 21, and the value to well
over one million contos, and includes, besides those detailed above, vinegar, walking sticks, salt,
candles, perfumeries (of which Brazil makes sixty per cent of the consumption) and playing-
cards.

Among the large class of manufactures free from internal taxes are the important items of cotton
thread, jute products (rope, cord and coffee bags) the products of ironworks, potteries, furniture
factories; goldsmiths and jewel-workers, soap makers, paper and paper-bag factories, biscuit and
bottle, shirt, mirror, trunk, ink, pipe, pin, and window-glass makers; but all of these pay a
contribution to their State or municipality or both, appearing in revenue lists under “Industrias e
Profissões.”

In the city of São Paulo this tax upon industries and professions, the latter list embracing
bankers, lawyers, barbers, shoe-shiners, hotel-keepers, doctors, newspaper sellers and so on with
true democratic impartiality, brings in over forty per cent of the municipal income; it is now
worth some three thousand five hundred contos a year, or let us say nine hundred thousand
dollars, the cotton factories paying the biggest item, twelve thousand dollars, while shoe
factories, jute mills, potteries, jewellers, furniture makers and metal works each pay about eight
thousand dollars.

It is plain that manufacturers do not have things all their own way in Brazil, and must be
prepared for fairly heavy taxes, but one does not hear the same complaints about petty taxation
for every trifle as in the Argentine; on the other hand, the mill owner has not to face cut-throat
competition as in older manufacturing 268countries, is able to get an excellent price for his
products, is able to buy land at inexpensive rates and to obtain comparatively cheap labour. As
soon as a district becomes thickly sown with factory chimneys prices of land and labour
automatically rise, of course; this natural law has operated already in the now densely populated
and built over suburbs of São Paulo, Braz and Moóca, and is, under one’s eyes, transforming the
windy upland flats of Ypiranga. A year or two ago much of this area was red clay swamp, with a
cottage here and there and a few Italian market gardens producing vegetables for the city
dwellers, and land could have been bought for ten milreis an acre or less; today it is worth from
two hundred to five hundred milreis; the wet lands have been filled in, an enormous undertaking,
rows of workmen’s houses extend for miles to the crest of the hill where the Monument stands
commemorating the Grito da Independencia, and from its summit one has a view that is mottled
with factory smoke and punctuated with tall chimneys. To see this and to watch the crowds of
pretty chattering Italian girls pouring out of Braz and Moóca factories at noon or evening is to
obtain a revelation of the newer South America. It is no longer a land of sugar and brazil-wood
only and although the agriculturist may shake his head over the lack of hands on the farm,
manufacture in Brazil is a live, energetic phase of her modern development. São Paulo City was
employing, by the end of 1921, over twenty-five thousand horsepower of electrical energy in her
factories.
The fabric-weaving factories in all Brazil, including cloths of cotton, jute, linen, silk and wool,
were 303 in 269number in 1914, employing 75,000 workpeople and capital totalling over
368,000 contos of reis; in 1920 they had increased to 328 including 242 cotton mills which alone
employed 109,000 hands. The premier producer of cotton cloth in 1920, in values, was Rio de
Janeiro (Federal District) with an output worth 102,000 contos; next came S. Paulo State, 92,000
contos; then Minas Geraes, 91,000; Rio de Janeiro State, 46,000; Bahia, 32,000; Pernambuco,
21,000; Alagôas, 16,000; Sergipe, 12,000; Maranhão, 11,000; Rio Grande do Sul, 9,000; Ceará,
3,000; and Piauhy, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraná, Parahyba and Espirito Santo, about 1,200
contos each. The States absent from cloth manufacturing returns are the great forestal territories
of the extreme north, and those of the vast interior uplands, where conditions are not greatly
changed from the time prior to the Portuguese discovery so far as development is concerned.

In numbers of mills São Paulo again comes first with seventy-eight mills making cloths: fifty-
five of these weave cotton alone, leaving a higher proportion of fabrics made from other
materials than in sister States; generally speaking cotton cloths occupy the greatest share of
capital and labour, as for example in Minas, where sixty fabricas de tecidos operate, and out of
the total value of the production, 23,500 contos, cotton accounts for over 22,600 contos. With a
larger number of cotton-cloth mills at work than S. Paulo, but with production worth not much
more than one-fourth, it is clear that factories are very much smaller in the interior State;
nevertheless, she is able to pride herself upon a thriving industry, occupying nearly nine
thousand people, twenty-five thousand contos of capital, and using 270ten thousand tons of raw
cotton. In common with the other weaver States of the Brazilian Union, Minas ships her cloths to
less industrially developed regions: in this connection some light is shed upon the ramifications
of finance cum industry by the President of the Sociedade Mineira da Agricultura (Minas Society
of Agriculture), Dr. Daniel de Carvalho, in an address at the Cotton Conference held in Rio in
June, 1916. Stating that the Minas export of cotton cloth (to other States) was nearly 28,000,000
metres in 1915, he showed that, at an average price of four hundred reis (eight cents) a metre, the
total value was more than eleven thousand contos: but in the official statistics the value of
exported cotton cloth appeared as only 3,893 contos. “This anomaly is an example of the
regimen of fiction in which we live, from the taxation point of view. The Minas legislator votes
for high and sometimes excessive taxes,—and the Government in a fatherly manner corrects the
excess in calculations of ad valorem percentages, accepting a benign interpretation of
merchandise values. Instead of products appearing with exaggerated values we find on the
contrary that most estimates are well below the real amount, as in the case of manganese....” The
cure for this deliberate lessening of values, which certainly does Brazil poor service, would be,
said Dr. Carvalho, an all-round diminution of tribute, together with a rigorous application of the
law.

In the Federal District the number of weaving mills is thirty-five, several clustering in the
mountain valleys of Petropolis and deriving power from waterfalls; the State of Rio has twenty-
seven; Santo Catharina, fifteen; Bahia and Maranhão have thirteen each; Rio Grande 271do Sul,
twelve; Ceará and Alagôas, ten each; Pernambuco, nine; Paraná and Sergipe, eight each; Espirito
Santo, three; Rio Grande do Norte, Piauhy and Parahyba, one each.

The largest employer of labour in weaving mills is S. Paulo, with (1920) over thirty thousand
hands; the next is the Federal District with about twelve thousand; third comes Minas with over
eight thousand. São Paulo is also the greatest consumer of raw cotton, using thirteen thousand
tons; the Federal District uses eleven thousand tons and the State of Rio nearly six thousand tons,
Minas using, as we saw above, about five thousand.

At the end of 1915 when, in spite of great demands upon the national mills consequent upon
checked importations of cotton cloth several had to reduce their staff on account of shortage of
raw cotton, the Centro Industrial addressed a letter to the President of the Republic in which the
plight of the manufacturers was displayed. A cotton famine in the North had reduced the national
supply, and raised the price beyond precedent, while importations are always minute in Brazil
owing to the heavy duty of about six cents per pound against it. The signatories of the letter
explain that the cotton cloth industry never calls for less than forty-five thousand tons[15] of raw
cotton produced on national soil, and that this amount was made up in 1913 into cloth worth over
162,000 contos; that, with the exception of aniline dyes, which cost about 2,000 contos a year, no
other prime material enters into the Brazilian cotton Industry.

272“The time is long past when cotton yarns were imported on a great scale for weaving. Now,
our numerous factories have created in their vast and modern mills a perfect industrial cycle
from spinning to printing,” so that the present import of yarns is worth only 1,800 contos, and the
value of cotton cloths brought from abroad less than 17,000 contos (1914 figures).

At the same time Brazil’s export of raw cotton from the Northern States of fine long staple,
usually practically all sent to England, diminished until returns for 1915 show only 5,223 tons
against over 37,000 tons in 1913 and 30,000 in 1914, but this restriction did not make up the
shortage following the drought. The Centro Industrial asked for a governmental enquiry into
cotton conditions; in the middle of 1916 the Conference was held in Rio, samples of cotton, etc.,
displayed, and, after a collection of facts by a questionnaire sent to all weaving mills, expositions
of the highest interest were made by officials of the government, technical experts, and cotton
growers. Reference is made to this valuable conference under “Cotton,” but the manufacturing
notes of these pages may include the name of Miguel Calmon, Chemical Director of the
Companhia Industrial do Brasil, popularly known as the “Bangú” factory, who gave an address
on the use of native vegetable dyes; optimistic as regards tints drawn from Brazilian forests,
Senhor Calmon spoke with appreciation of the “urucú,” a dye producing hues ranging from
yellow to deep red, as well as many other better known colouring matters. There is already a
very busy dye factory in Minas, the Fabrica de Tinta Machado, using native vegetable bases,
and much is expected in S. Paulo from dyes made by the use of “Inglotina,” 273obtained from
mangrove leaves: a factory has recently been established at Cubatão.

It was at the same conference that Dr. Costa Pinto gave details of the threads spun in Brazil;
counting in English measurement, Brazilian mills spin from No. 2 to No. 100 thread. From No.
30 upward a long staple cotton is needed, and only a small proportion of native-grown fibres are
suitable, although there is plenty of short fibre for the coarser weaves.

Brazilian manufacturing already depends considerably upon the water power accessible,
especially in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas. There is enough hydraulic force available in
Brazil to turn the wheels of the world but the majority of these wonderful cascades are scarcely
known by name, and many were not charted in the interior of Matto Grosso and Amazonas until
the work of the Rondon Commission opened great tracts of those unknown lands. It is not
possible here to do more than mention one or two of the most important falls. The Maribondo, in
the Triangulo Mineiro, has an estimated force of six hundred thousand horse power;
Urubupunga, on the Paraná river, has some 450,000 horse power; Iguassú has 14,000,000, four
times as much as Niagara; and the force of the Sete Quedas, or Guayra Falls, on the Paraná near
the Paraguay boundary, is calculated at 80,000,000 horse power. The Light and Power
companies of Rio, São Paulo, Campinas, Petropolis, and other cities obtain their force from falls,
hundreds of little townships in the central interior sparkle with electric lights, run factories and
public utilities as a result of a nearby source of water power.

274Allusion has before been made to the variety of Brazilian soils and climates which result in
her possession of several important and utterly diverse industries; the list is so long that many
interesting embryo industries, or others of local or internal importance only, can only claim space
for passing mention. Among these is the wine-making industry of the far south, where European
colonists cultivate grapes and have created quite a notable business in the production of fairly
light red wines. These are shipped to many other parts of the country, are sold inexpensively in
Rio and other cities, and while they lack the mellow tone of imported wines, they are sound,
good, and popular.

Salt extraction in Rio Grande do Norte is another busy industry, and here is the chief source of
Brazil’s native salt; it is exported from the ports of Macáu and Mossoró. Also in the north are the
famous lace-makers, whose yards of fine rendas, made on a pillow with scores of bobbins,
would not disgrace Malta; the big, thickly woven white hammocks of Ceará are justly prized all
over Brazil, and both lace and hammocks should form the base of an export business. In
Maranhão, where the babassú palm grows luxuriantly, a local industry extracts the fine oil from
the kernel hidden in a stony shell, and experimental exports have occurred during the past year;
the babassú is but one of the valuable nuts of the Brazilian north. One, the “Brazil nut”[16] of
commerce, has of course been exported from the Amazon for nearly a century, and is a
considerable revenue yielder to Pará and Amazonas states, but the sapucaia, of the same family
but larger and sweeter, is rarer, less known, and fetches much higher prices in sophisticated
world markets.
275In Parahyba State there is at least one considerable coconut oil extracting factory, on a sandy
spit south of Parahyba city; several thousand people are said to be employed in this industry and
the product is shipped as far south as Rio: in spite of the immense quantity of coconuts on the
littoral of the northern promontory there is no copra or fibre industry yet established, apparently
because the native consumption of the nut leaves little surplus for the one, and interest is lacking
in the other.

276

CHAPTER VI
FINANCE
Brazilian Currency

In common with other young countries whose gold reserves are insufficient to back the paper
currency used to carry on the ordinary business of life within her borders, Brazil has been and
still is faced with difficulties in regard to exchange, i. e., the gold value of her paper and its
relation to the face value of that paper. Exchange in Brazil is the measure of the paper milreis
(one thousand reis) with English money: this standard is the official one as a result of the
preponderance of English finance.

The par value of the Brazilian milreis is twenty-seven pence (fifty-four cents), but at the end of
1916 it was worth 12 pence, rose to 18 in early 1920, and later sank below 8 pence. In 1889 the
milreis was actually above par by a fraction of a penny, but later on great fluctuations took place,
almost invariably as the result of the issue of large quantities of paper money, which, unbacked
by gold, are regarded as of diminishing value in comparison with the gold-backed currency of
other countries.

The present rate of exchange, which is a recovery from the first panicky drop of paper here, as in
many other parts of the world on the outbreak of the European War, is below a rate which the
efforts of Brazilian financial men succeeded in preserving for eight years 277by the
establishment of the Caixa de Conversão; continuance of exchange at a lowered level is probably
partly the result of the issue of extensive amounts of inconvertible paper into circulation for
budgetary purposes since the middle of 1914, and partly on account of the heavy demand for
bills of exchange on London, which began to have their effect from the time of the Balkan
trouble of 1913. The drop would without doubt have been much sharper were it not for three
causes of strength: the first is the unprecedentedly large trade balance in favour of Brazil in
1915, amounting to nearly £28,000,000 ($140,000,000); the second is the Funding Loan which
the Federal Government succeeded in making with its European creditors in the latter part of
1914 and which prevented the outflow of other large sums in gold; and, third, the strong gold
reserves of the Caixa de Conversão. It is true that these reserves have been drawn upon until they
now stand at less than one-fifth of their level at the beginning of 1913, but without that stream of
gold and its strengthening effect on circulation it is reasonable to suppose that exchange would
have suffered to a greater extent.

The Caixa de Conversão, which I will henceforth call the Conversion Office, is Brazil’s concrete
effort to fix a rate of exchange; it was excellent in conception and performed its function
admirably until unforeseen world conditions overpowered its operation. After the establishment
of a Republic in Brazil large issues of paper were for the first time put into circulation, with the
accompaniment of successive falls in exchange; the proclamation of the overthrow of the Empire
found Brazil with not more than 199,000 contos in paper, but 278eight years later the amount
had risen to nearly 790,000 and Brazil was obliged to suspend interest on her debt to Europe. A
Funding Loan of ten million pounds sterling was arranged with Rothschild’s, which had the
effect of checking the fall in the value of the milreis, then (1897–98) down to eight pence or nine
pence, and even touching the threatening level of six pence; the arrangement included
destruction of the debased paper in considerable quantities, and as this work was accomplished
exchange steadily rose until in another ten years’ time, 1908, outstanding inconvertible paper
amounted to less than 650,000 contos, and the value of the milreis was sixteen pence. But by this
time the Conversion Office was in operation, thanks largely to the efforts of President Affonso
Penna; this office in 1906 began receiving deposits of gold and issuing against them convertible
paper bills having the fixed exchange value of fifteen pence; these bills always equalling the
amount of gold in the Conversion Office had the value of actual gold; they differ in appearance
from the ordinary paper currency, and as they always command a five per cent premium there
was created a tendency to hoard them—a tendency which cannot occur in the case of the bills of
the similar Conversion Office of Argentina, which exactly resemble the ordinary bank bills.

By the end of 1909 the unbacked, inconvertible paper currency of Brazil was about 628,000
contos, while the convertible bills of the Conversion Office amounted to over 225,000 contos,
with an equivalent amount of gold on deposit there; in 1910 it was found possible to raise the
official value of the milreis to the point that the money market indicated, sixteen pence, and at
this rate of exchange all the paper in the country 279stood until the outbreak of the European
War. At the same time that the exchange rate was officially raised a rule was put into operation
by which all foreign coins were received by the Conversion Office at rates based on their mint
value, excepting English sterling which was still accepted at its exchange value.

It is likely that had neither the Balkan nor the great European wars happened Brazil might have
been able to raise again the official value of the milreis farther towards par; at the end of 1912
and beginning of 1913 the gold-backed paper amounted to over 406,000 contos of reis, and the
unbacked was only 607,000 contos. In spite of the accumulation of heavy debts Brazil was in
such a flourishing condition that she was able to show convertible currency amounting to two-
thirds of the value of the inconvertible, as against one-sixth in 1907–8. Today, with eighty per
cent of the gold of the early 1914 highwater mark gone from the Caixa, the convertible currency
is but one-tenth of the inconvertible, a matter for regret, but things are undoubtedly in a much
better condition than had the Conversion Office not existed. Suspension of conversion was
ordered when deposits were reduced to £5,005,000.

Since the middle of 1914 the Brazilian Government has been obliged to issue nearly 400,000
contos of new inconvertible paper; it has not actually added more than about 100,000 contos to
the total paper currency, since at the same time a shrinkage in the convertible element has been
proceeding. An emergency issue of 250,000 contos was made in the autumn of 1914 and another
150,000 was authorized in August, 1915. During the same period of stress the internal floating
debt was added to by the issue of Treasury Bills to the nominal 280value of about 250,000
contos: a curious and instructive situation arose from the employment of these special Bills.
The Government, called upon for currency by national banks which were embarrassed by lack of
paper owing to the financial crise, lent them sums from the emergency issue, charging two and a
half per cent interest. Next, pressed for payment by creditors many of whom were merchants
supplying the various governmental departments, and the emergency issue being insufficient for
the purpose in all cases, recourse was had to Treasury bills; as these are not legal tender the
merchants were not altogether pleased, and in some cases refused to accept the bills and had to
wait longer.

The creditor who did accept them found himself with paper in his possession which could not be
passed over the counter or paid into a checking account at his bank, and his only recourse was to
sell the bills for what they would fetch, bearing the loss between their face value and market
price. Although the bills bear interest at five and six per cent, almost the only buyers were the
banks which had borrowed money of the Emergency issue, for in the meantime the Government
agreed to accept the Bills as repayment of these sums, in a “curso libre,” or (limited) legal tender.
[17]
The price of the Treasury bills was always below par, and the writer saw them quoted in
Brazilian newspapers as low as seventy-six. Buying at this or higher prices the bankers were able
to present them to the Government at their face value in payment for currency advances, and
were thus in the fortunate position of making profits on borrowed money. Promptly labelled
281“sabinas” in this country where everything has a nickname, the Treasury Bills roused a storm
of discussion in the press. Totals of bonds (apolicies) and paper money issued from August 1915
to October 1916 amounted to nearly 550,000 contos.

In late 1916, the total currency of the Republic stood as regards paper money at
1,551,122:650$500, over a million contos being inconvertible. It may be useful here to explain
the manner in which Brazilian money is counted. It is, like the Spanish from which most
American systems are derived, very simple, based as it is on the decimal plan. The theoretical
single rei or real does not exist, the smallest coin now consisting of the nickel one hundred reis.
[18]

There is also a coin of two hundred reis, which pays a car fare or buys the Jornal do Commercio,
and 400 reis, and a silver 500 reis. The silver milreis is what it says it is, one thousand reis, and
any sum reckoned in milreis and below a thousand of them is written with the figures first,
followed by the “dollar” sign; thus four hundred milreis is written 400$000.

One thousand milreis (a million reis) is a conto, the colon sign being written immediately after it.
Six contos is written 6:000$000. The present exchange value of the conto is a little over fifty
pounds sterling.

The following figures, extracted from reckonings made by the Brazilian Review, show some of
the variations in paper currency:

282
December, 1889 195.485:538$
„ 1894 367.358:625$
„ 1899 733.727:153$
„ 1904 673.739:908$
After the establishment of the Conversion Office a new element, convertible paper, was added:

Inconvertible Convertible Total

1907 643.531:727$ 100.032:700$ 743.564:427$
1912 607.025:525$ 406.035:800$ 1.013.061:325$
1914 822.496:018$ 157.786:930$ 980.282:948$
1916 1.060.562:720$ 94.559:930$ 1.155.122:650$

Issues of paper money during war years greatly increased this currency, but against it the
Government held, in 1921, nearly 63 million contos of gold, in the Treasury and Conversion
Office. Besides this amount of paper there is the coin circulation of nickel, and of silver in half-
milreis, milreis, and multiples.

It is an excellent coinage, of good design, well made and convenient, that minted since the
Republic bearing republican devices, the date of inauguration of the new administrative plan, etc.
But now and again a handful of change contains a coin bearing the bearded head of Dom Pedro
II, for it is but twenty-seven years since the Empire was ended. A curious superstition exists
among some Brazilians with regard to these coins; received, they are never passed on, but
carefully put away in some drawer: “it is not good to spend the Emperor,” they will tell you,
handling his image with kindliness.

The six million pounds sterling below which the gold reserves of the Conversion Office have not
been allowed to sink, and to which it has been possible to add little, 283back the large amounts
of convertible paper, and, although a greatly shrunken sum, it has its effect in steadying
exchange: another factor in preventing farther breaks, in spite of the seventy per cent increase in
inconvertible paper, is the earnestness with which the Federal Government and the people of
Brazil are insisting upon a vigorous solution of the problem of the foreign debt. 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.

More than once a fall of exchange in Brazil has, by an anomaly, actually saved industries from
something near bankruptcy. This is readily understood when it is realized that exporters of such
products as rubber and coffee, cacao and hides, selling in the markets of London, Paris, Hamburg
or New York, are paid in gold, while they pay their day labourers in paper. To the Brazilian
interior it is of little interest that the bankers of Rio say that it takes another milreis paper to
purchase a gold pound sterling; the country markets do not reflect such nuances, unless, indeed,
a fall should be heavy and continued in which case it must in course of time react upon the whole
country. But a temporary depression does not affect the amount of black beans or mandioca that
can be bought with a milreis, and neither the 284rubber collector of the Upper Amazon or the
more sophisticated worker upon a fazenda of coffee or cattle will demand a rise in wages
because exchange goes down for a time. To the exporter the fraction of a milreis makes all the
difference between prosperity and ruin, and both rubber and coffee have benefited thus by
temporary low rates of exchange; the present crisis has certainly been smoothed to the
agriculturist, the producer and exporter, of Brazil, by the fall in exchange since the middle of
1914, the paper receipts of the country showing marked inflation due to the larger number of
milreis bought by the foreign gold paid for these products. Low prices received abroad for coffee
and rubber are thus compensated, and when, as has happened since the war began, prices have
been better than had been predicted. It is not to be wondered at that there is a feeling of
prosperity in Brazil and that money is abundant among certain classes in spite of administrative
difficulties.

The people who really suffer from fallen exchange are, besides the governments owing sums
abroad which must be paid in gold, the importing houses which have bought in gold and must
sell in depreciated paper, and which cannot always adjust paper prices to fit the monetary
market; the transportation companies, too, whose rates are fixed now find themselves with paper
in hand of a lowered value abroad; it is true that their obligations to employees are paid in paper,
but since most carrying companies are owned or leased in Europe, and dividends must be paid in
gold, earnings are very much reduced when large quantities of additional paper are needed to buy
bills on London. Every railway, port company, street-car line and lighting and power company
which derives its capital from outside Brazil has seen its dividends cut down during the last two
years even if earnings have been larger and expenses reduced.
Ministry of War, Rio de Janeiro

Avenida Nazareth Belem (Pará)

285Large foreign debts have of course a depressing effect upon exchange in the long run, but at
the time when the loans have been made there has almost always been a rise corresponding to the
influx of gold; this effect was a marked cause of wild ups and downs of exchange in the palmiest
days of the present century. I have frequently asked bankers in Brazil if they would like to see an
absolutely stable rate of exchange: more than once the answer has been Yes, and the examples of
the stabilized countries of the world quoted as showing that real financial strength can only be
obtained with a firmly gold-backed currency. 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.

Investment in Brazil

Investment in Brazil from other countries has been of three chief kinds: blood, brains, and
money. The investment in blood came during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
almost exclusively from Portugal—with a forcibly introduced negro element 286from Africa at
the same time—while during the nineteenth century colonies were introduced of a remarkably
wide variety of peoples; the investment in brains came so far as technical skill is concerned
almost directly as a result of the great investment of the third element, money, which began soon
after the erection of the monarchy in Brazil in 1808, flowed steadily for eighty years, and
increased to a golden torrent after the establishment of the republic in 1889.

Nearly the whole of the investment of manhood, skill, and gold came from Europe. Brazil’s debt
to other parts of the world is small. The African slave contributed more towards the opening-up
of Brazil than any other race, and it is almost impossible to conceive of a flourishing Brazil
without him during at least the first three centuries after Portuguese possession; the Asiatic only
came here in noticeable numbers since the beginning of the present century, and the Oriental is
not a strong element. North America has done remarkably little for Brazil. With the exception of
a few technically skilled individuals, and the ill-fated little colonies which sought a home here
after the Civil War in the United States there has been practically no investment in personality
until within the last few years, when branches of American businesses have sent resident
employees to Brazil: investment in money is still in its infancy so far as Government or State
loans[19] are concerned, development work in railways, docks, harbours, or city improvements,
and it is only within the last few years that North American money has 287made timid entry into
Brazil for the establishment of industries. The opening of branches of North American financial
establishments in Brazil dates only from 1915, and the capital so far employed is insignificant in
comparison with that of the powerful European banks, established in South America for a couple
of generations.
No Brazilian securities were, up to the end of 1916, listed upon the New York Stock Exchange,
for the simple reason that there were practically no North American investments in South
American securities; but since the war, changes in the world’s finance have induced a lively
interest.

The British investment in Brazilian securities, apart from many enterprises and businesses of a
private nature, were reckoned at the commencement of 1916 at £226,719,052, or the equivalent
of about $1,133,595,000. The French investment is estimated at Fr. 1,500,000,000 or some
$300,000,000, and that of Belgium, with considerable railway interests, at about half this sum;
Germany and Portugal also hold a certain quantity of Brazilian securities.

The following are the most important securities represented by the British investment in Brazil;
the list shows that it was this money, more than any other element, which contributed to the
opening-up of Brazil in the nineteenth century, giving her railways, public utilities, and helping
to operate a number of industries. There was no philanthropy about this stream of bright pounds
sterling. South American investments were expected to return a better rate of interest than did
similar securities in Great Britain, and frequently results justified the hope. The average return on
288British investments in South America, which altogether total about £1,050,000,000 (say
$5,250,000,000) in 1913 was four and seven-tenths per cent; this average dropped to three and
one-half in the first year of the European War, a showing which very many profit-earning
corporations in other regions of the world would have been glad to equal in that critical time.

BRITISH INVESTMENTS IN BRAZIL

Railways

Amount invested, 1916 Name

£605,569 Brazil Great Southern
£341,000 Brazil North Eastern
$57,835,200 Brazil Railways, 5 classes[20]
£4,187,650 Great Western of Brazil, 4 classes
£15,893,429 Leopoldina, 6 classes
£2,600,000 Madeira-Mamoré
£4,000,000 Mogyana Sul-Mineira
£100,000 Quarahim International Bridge
£6,000,000 São Paulo (to Santos)
£3,175,000 Sorocabana
£900,000 Southern São Paulo

Public Utilities

£1,154,700 Port of Pará

£115,800 Cantareira Water Co. (S. Paulo)
£1,321,900 City of Santos Improvements, 4 classes
289£2,003,000 City of S. Paulo Improvements
£1,200,000 Manáos Harbour and Manáos Improvements
£349,000 Pará Improvements
£1,761,875 Rio de Janeiro City Improvements, 4 classes
£1,423,400 Central Bahia Railway Trust, A and B
£275,000 S. Paulo Gas, 2 classes
£2,571,871 Rio Claro Ry. and Investment, 2 classes
£527,800 Amazon Telegraph, 2 classes
£91,000 Pernambuco Waterworks, 2 classes
£596,000 Manáos Tramways
£1,384,449 Pará Electric, 4 classes
$110,361,400 Brazilian Traction, Light and Power, 2 classes
$1,400,000 Jardim Botanico Tramways
$28,013,500 Rio de Janeiro Tramways, Light and Power, 2 classes
$6,821,917 S. Paulo Tramways, Light and Power, 2 classes
$2,000,000 S. Paulo Electric

(The five last mentioned companies are registered in Canada, and the securities are thus issued in
dollars, although the stock was largely held in Great Britain and Canada, prior to the European
War.)

Industrial Companies

£1,182,400 Dumont Coffee Estates, 3 classes

£120,000 S. Paulo Coffee Estates
£150,000 Agua Santa Coffee Co.
£646,265 S. Juan del Rey Mining
£643,601 Rio de Janeiro Flour Mills
£100,154 North Brazilian Sugar
£100,000 Mappin and Webb (Rio and S. Paulo)
£850,000 Brazilian Warrant Co.

At the same time the British share in the total foreign debts of the Federal, State and Municipal
governments 290are estimated at about £150,000,000 out of aggregate obligations of some
£180,000,000. These debts are treated in more detail on another page.

There are very many enterprises carried on with British capital which do not figure upon the
Stock Exchange, or are branches of businesses which do not differentiate the capital employed in
Brazil. Included in one or other of these classes are the shoe factories belonging to Clarke
(Glasgow) in São Paulo; the cotton-spinning mills of Coats, also heir of Scotch skill; several
cotton cloth mills, as the Carioca in Rio, and others in Petropolis and Campos; sugar factories in
Pernambuco, etc. Included also in money investments should be counted the eight and a half
million pounds of paid-up capital of the three British banks, the British Bank of South America,
the London and Brazilian and the London and River Plate, which total with their branches to
twenty-four establishments. It is impossible to say what part of the huge shipping investment
serving Brazil should be included, but it is a highly important element and quite the greatest
developing factor in Brazilian commerce; the Royal Mail is the great popular passenger and
freight line, while Lamport & Holt, Booth, Harrison, the Prince, Johnson, and other smaller lines
do a big Brazilian business.

Among firms doing energetic work and with large capital invested are the two great coal firms,
Wilson’s and Cory’s, with their depots for Welsh coal, their fleets of lighters, repair equipment,
salvage departments and stevedoring; old-established commercial firms such as Stevenson’s and
Duder’s in Bahia, chiefly occupied with cacao export—the latter in addition to 291other
activities maintains a fleet of modern whaling boats, and a factory for refining whale-oil; there
are the “dry goods” stores of Sloper’s series; the new house of Mappin; the Brack firm in
Pernambuco; all these and a score of other classes are not only commercial developers but in a
greater or smaller degree employers of Brazilian labour. There are British cattle breeders, sugar
and cotton growers, owners of coffee and cacao estates, operators of ironworks, foundries,
schools, bookshops, oil-depots, and many other enterprises. The total British investment of
money in Brazil cannot be under £300,000,000.

The external debts of the Brazilian States and Municipalities have varied very little since 1913–
14. Loans became difficult to obtain from the beginning of Balkan troubles, while since the
outbreak of the great European War there have been no additions to cash advances and in only a
few cases has there been substantial reduction of debts. On the contrary, most debtor States and
cities found it necessary to make funding arrangements by which specie payments were
suspended for a number of years—measures which gave temporary relief, but seriously increase
the amount of money to be paid annually when the funding period comes to an end.

Certain states, as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná (paid up until the autumn of 1917), Espirito
Santo, and the Federal District, have made gallant efforts to avoid piling up debt in this way, and
by severe economy have continued to pay interest on their foreign obligations. The sacrifice has
not been small, for with depressed exchange it has taken an unusually large number of paper
milreis to buy sterling, and at a time when it has 292not been easy to collect even paper
revenues. The effort is all the more creditable.

With the worst part of the 1921 crisis past, state finances have been materially eased by calls for
Brazilian products at enhanced prices, and there is a perceptible restoration of confidence, at the
end of 1922. In some districts the post-war boom proved an undisguised blessing, bringing
profits that could not have been looked for under normal conditions: coffee, hides, rubber, cacao,
frozen meat, sugar and manganese, have all brought stimulated prices, and many home
industries, such as coal mining and cotton spinning and weaving, have been greatly encouraged.

In round numbers the external debts of the separate states of the Brazilian Union appear to
amount to about forty-seven million pounds, with the municipalities adding another twelve or
thirteen million pounds.
The British interest in these loans is largely dominant, but important sums of French money have
also been invested. Brazil’s direct debt to France includes £10,400,000 for three loans with
which the Bahia, Goyaz, and Corumbá railways were constructed; there are also state debts, that
of the State of Pará being held by Meyer Frères of Paris, while the Société Marseillaise holds the
bonds of the big Amazonas debt. Part of São Paulo’s debt is owed to the Société Générale, and
the State of Espirito Santo owes nearly two million pounds to the Banque Française et Italienne,
as well as large sums about which a dispute rages, advanced by the French Hypothecary Bank
established at the port of Victoria.

There is a good deal of French money sunk in the Madeira-Mamoré railway, one of the Farquhar
undertakings 293which cost the equivalent of more than six million pounds sterling, fifteen
hundred livres, is said to need much reconstruction already (opened to traffic in 1912), and does
no more than pay its way. French bondholders also hold part of Minas Geraes debt, and of that of
Rio de Janeiro. French engineers, operating with French money, built several of the existing
railways, notably the Auxiliaire de Chemins de Fer au Brésil with 1,400 miles of track; it was a
French firm, the Compagnie Française de Rio Grande do Sul, formed in Paris in 1906, which put
one hundred and fifty million francs into the port works of that southerly city, opened to shipping
in November, 1916. French companies also began the port works of Pernambuco, checked by
money paralysis after 1914, and constructed the new harbour facilities of Bahia.

When the much-discussed “Missão Baudin” came to Brazil in 1915, it was with the object of
investigating the condition of the properties in which French money was concerned, and the
chief member of the party was also credited with an effort to induce the Brazilian Government to
guarantee the rather clouded State obligations to French bondholders.

German investment in Brazil is, as regards money, not of great importance; it is largely confined
to the loans made by the Dresdner Bank, and to capital expenditures in the southern states,
including the construction there of a couple of small railways. There has, however, been great
investment of blood and energy, there are many strong German commercial houses and retail
stores in all districts, and to Germany was due the first granting of long and easy credit facilities
to Brazil. Germans have been largely interested in the coffee 294and rubber businesses. The
Brasilianische Bank für Deutschland operates with a capital of fifteen million marks, and the
Banco Alemão Transatlantico is another strong German financial house.

This summing up of European investment in Brazil, incomplete as it is, serves to demonstrate the
extent to which Brazil has been opened up by Europeans. The European has asked for Brazilian
raw products, brought ships to carry them, built ports for the ships to lie in and railroads to
freight the products to the ports; has sold manufactured goods and lent Brazil the money with
which to pay for them, and established banks for financial operations connected with the
business created. Millions of hardy and industrious people have gone to live in Brazil and to
bring the land into cultivation, to educate their children as Brazilians and help in the mental
progress of the country.

When, therefore, some of the less thoughtful journals of the United States turned their eyes
towards South America at the outbreak of the European War and protested loudly that this
country was not getting her “share” of commerce, it was rather as if the cuckoo complained that
she was not getting her share of the robin’s nest. To accuse Europe of monopolizing Brazilian
trade is like accusing water of monopolizing the river. Brazil, in fact, like the whole of the
Americas, had no trade until Europe created it by calls for natural products, supply of
transportation means, and loans of money for development work.

Today the situation is changed. It was inevitably changing as North America herself became
during the last fifty years herself a caller for raw products, and began to take great quantities of
Brazilian coffee and 295rubber, drugs and hides. Her sales to Brazil, despite the drawback of the
shipping triangle, have been increasing for some time along certain highly specialized lines, but
sales and purchases are not sufficient to create a permanent link between countries, especially
when conducted through the medium of a third person as freighter and banker. The European
War brought about as no other awakening process perhaps could have done, a realization of the
new duty of the United States to South America: it is part of her inheritance from Europe. It is
the work that lies to her hand: if she will do it, there is no one better fitted at the present time; if
she will not she loses an extraordinary chance for both service—and profit.

She must not think only of buying and selling, and when she is occupied with this trading she
must remember that to her as to South America, sales of North American goods are less
important than purchases of South American raw materials. It would not matter very much to the
United States if she did not sell anything to Brazil: the probability is that more money has been
spent on making sales, so far, than the profits amount to. 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.

296Apart from trading there is a great need for more investment in Brazil, for more opening of
great spaces, planting of fields, lumbering, road-building, mining, cattle-raising. There is space
for twenty million people in the cool temperate zones alone, excluding tropical areas. Is the
United States ready to take up the task which Brazil cannot perform alone, however seriously she
attacks her problems? Is she prepared to devote to this work blood, brains and money?

Entry of North American interests into Brazil has been steadily increasing for the last ten years,
and was hastened after the outbreak of the European War; there has been noticeable since then
much more energy on the part of individuals and small firms. Before 1914 the bulk of United
States work done in Brazil was part of the international campaign of such big firms as Standard
Oil or the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Oil has its rivals in other companies, also with
depots on the coast, but the Singer machine has almost a South American monopoly;
locomotives, cars, elevators, most of the typewriters, electrical equipment, and quantities of
agricultural machinery, are sold by American houses with branches in Brazil. Agricultural,
printing and shoe machinery of United States origin also seems to make good sales.
In 1915 the National City Bank of New York opened branches in Santos, Rio and S. Paulo; the
United States Steel Corporation started a line of freight steamers, and was followed by a number
of new lines.

The two great Light and Power companies of Rio and S. Paulo are Canadian, but some of the
capital, equipment and personnel are from the U. S.; one of the two existing packing-houses is
Chicagoan in capital, 297equipment and personnel. Several of the allied enterprises of the Brazil
Railways Company are American managed and equipped, as the lumber mills at Tres Barras and
the cattle company, as well as part of the transportation lines. The Brazil Railways is the largest
American-registered company in Brazil, but is rather an example of how not to do things in
South America, for although a few interests, as those cited above, are doing well, the company as
a whole is in the hands of a receiver. The time is probably past when money could be obtained in
Europe by persons registering a company in a second country to spend it in a third, and what is
most needed now is continued and genuine development work actually financed from North
America.

Most of the United States firms with agencies in Brazil are sellers, but among the purchasers are
several coffee-importing houses and, with the eclipse of German traders, the greatest rubber
dealers, while the past year has seen American agents coming to Brazil to increase takings of
manganese, precious stones and hides.

The State Debts

The figures given below are in round numbers only, and are without the additions which the
Funding loans entail; all sums are in pounds sterling:

State External Debt

Alagôas £ 500,000
Amazonas 3,000,000
Bahia 3,875,000
Ceará 600,000
298Espirito Santo 1,160,000
Maranhão 720,000
Minas Geraes 6,800,000
Pará 2,040,000
Paraná 2,200,000
Pernambuco 2,370,000
Rio de Janeiro 3,000,000
Rio Grande do Norte 350,000
Santa Catharina 220,000
São Paulo 20,350,000

The States of Goyaz, Matto Grosso, Parahyba, Piauhy, Rio Grande do Sul and Sergipe have no
external debts.
The Funding Loan arranged by the State of Pará adds another £1,070,000 to her debt; the
Funding Loan of Minas Geraes adds £600,000 and that of Amazonas, £850,000.

The external debts of Brazilian municipalities, also borrowers from Europe, are about as follows,
round numbers again being used:

Federal District of Rio de Janeiro £4,395,000

Manáos (Amazonas) 214,000
Belem do Pará 750,000
plus Funding Loan 88,500
Recife (Pernambuco) 400,000
Bahia 2,000,000
São Paulo 750,000
Santos 1,000,000
plus Funding Loan 118,000
Other municipalities in S. Paulo State 685,000
Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul) 600,000
Pelotas (Rio Grande do Sul) 600,000
Bello Horizonte 216,000
299

Federal Debts

On the outbreak of war in Europe in August, 1914, the foreign debts of the Federal Government
of the United States of Brazil amounted to something over £102,000,000. President Wencesláo
Braz inherited obligations which had been enhanced by about £30,000,000 during the previous
four-year régime of Marechal Hermes da Fonseca. Brazil’s reputation as a good world customer
had long permitted her to borrow freely, often paying old debts or interest with new loans, and
piling up deficits as the most facile solution of economic complications.

The world shock of 1914 brought exchange down with a run, and, although it recovered from the
first fall, it was soon evident that Brazilian credit could not bring it back to its old level, and that
the financial burden of the country, its obligation to pay foreign debts, would be rendered still
more onerous by this depression; it would take just so many more milreis, with Federal receipts
perilously lessened by the stoppage of imports, to buy pounds sterling, than in normal times.

Brazil asked her foreign creditors for relief, obtained a Funding Loan by which payments on
interest and amortization were suspended until October, 1917. As the specie payments called for
by the foreign debt would have needed about £5,200,000 in both 1915 and 1916, a burden was
lightened, for the time, which the increased balances of trade during the intervening period have
also helped to lift. But between 1914 and 1918 the Foreign Debt was increased by nearly
£12,000,000 of accumulated interest, and the sums 300required for annual service were more
difficult to find after the depreciation of the milreis in 1920. In 1920 the total nominal Foreign
Debt was £120,400,000, plus 325,000,000 francs. Later, Brazil borrowed a few millions from the
United States, and in early 1922 again borrowed successfully in London. The internal debt, at the
beginning of 1921, amounted to over one million contos. It will be seen from the following list
that while nearly £12,000,000 came from France yet the great bulk of the borrowed sums came
from England originally: a considerable proportion of the original sums—apparently about forty
per cent—were destined to the construction or acquisition of railways and port works in the
Republic.

BRAZIL’S EXTERNAL STERLING DEBT, DECEMBER 31st, 1920

Sterling
Loan— £ s. d.
1883 4,599,600 0 0
1888 6,297,300 0 0
1889 19,837,000 0 0
1895 7,442,000 0 0
1898 (Funding) 8,613,717
1901 (Recision) 16,619,320 0 0
1903 (Port Works, Rio de Janeiro) 8,500,000 0 0
1908 4,000,000 0 0
1910 10,000,000 0 0
1911 (Port Works, Rio de Janeiro) 4,500,000 0 0
Ceará Railways, 1911 2,400,000 0 0
Lloyd Braziliero, 1906–1911 2,100,000 0 0
Loan—
1913 11,000,000 0 0
1914 (Funding) 14,502,396
Total nominal 120,411,334 0 0
301
Franc Debt
1908–1909—Loan for the construction of the Itapura to Corumbá Railway 100,000,000
1909—Loan for the Port Works at Pernambuco 40,000,000
1910—Loan for the construction of the Goyaz Railway 100,000,000
1911—Loan for the construction of the Viação Bahiana network of railways 60,000,000
1916—Goyaz Railway loan, responsibility for which was assumed by the
25,000,0000
Government by Decree No. 12,183 of August 30th, 1916
Fr
Total nominal
325,000,000

This would be an exceedingly heavy debt if Brazil were an old, exploited, filled up country with
no spare lands and her natural resources tapped; Brazil’s reason for hopefulness lies in her youth,
the vast undeveloped land and mineral resources of her patrimony, her good credit among the
nations, and the sincerity with which her statesmen are attacking the task of resuming interest
payments.
Brazil has a big income, but it needs to be increased before she can pay her debts without a
strain; the President has repeatedly declared his firm intention to sustain payments at whatever
sacrifice, and has recently called the States into conference with a view to devising new methods
of raising revenue. In the Budget estimates of the Federal Government for 1921 revenue was
reckoned at 102,000 contos gold (milreis = twenty-seven pence) and 624,761 contos paper
(probably a fraction over twelve pence); expenditure at the same time was calculated at 75,680
gold and 711,640 paper contos, including in the gold payments the service of the foreign debt.

302The Federal Government’s chief revenues are derived from import taxes, impartially placed
upon entries into all the States; income of the States is mainly derived from export dues, while
municipalities get revenues from imposts upon professions and industries, and manage
sometimes to get a share in export dues. The Acre Territory, purchased by the Brazilian
Government from Bolivia in 1903, is the only part of Brazil paying export as well as import dues
to the Federal authorities, this contribution coming from rubber.

To help raise new revenues, impostos do consumo (excise) have been increased on articles
consumed in the country, the addition to the burden of the retailer and the consumer himself
raising some outcry, as has also the suggestion to put on railway freight imposts. The States,
exporting larger quantities of goods than normally, are not so badly placed as the Federal
Government, but that they look upon the matter of raising income from produce exported with
different eyes in different parts of the republic is shown by a look at some of the export tax
figures for 1922; these figures are not constant, as the pauta is frequently changed by the
officials of exporting points in response to conditions in international markets:

Coffee, the premier export of Brazil, pays to S. Paulo an export tax of 9 per cent, plus five francs
a bag for Valorization service; in Minas it pays 8½, plus five francs a bag, used for
administrative purposes; Bahia coffee pays 10 per cent of its value, Pernambuco 4.8, Paraná 30
per cent, Santa Catharina 8, Espirito Santo 12½.

Cacao pays in Bahia 14 per cent of its value; in Amazonas 5 per cent; in Pará 5 per cent; in
Maranhão 4 per cent.
Fishing Boats of North Brazil.
Rocks at Guarujá, near Santos.
Bertioga, the Old Entrance to Santos.
Cantareira Water Supply, São Paulo.

303Sugar pays in Pernambuco, the principal producing state, 8 per cent, with additional charges
bringing this to nearly 10 per cent for interstate, and 12 per cent for foreign, exports; in Bahia, 4
per cent; Alagôas, 7.8; Paraná, 4.4; Rio sugar pays 2½ to the State and 2 per cent to the
municipality of Campos.

Rubber pays 15 per cent of its value in Amazonas, or half of the amount paid in the palmy days
of the industry; Pará charges 18 per cent; the Acre, 6 per cent; Matto Grosso, 10 per cent.
Cotton pays 11 per cent in Pernambuco, nearly 12 in Alagôas, 8 per cent in Bahia.

Hides pay 20 per cent in Amazonas; Maranhão, two cents a kilo; Pernambuco, 18 per cent;
Alagôas, 13 per cent; Bahia, 15 per cent; Paraná, and Santa Catharina, 10 per cent; Rio Grande
do Sul, 10.5; Matto Grosso, 6 per cent.

Tobacco pays a variety of dues, ranging from 12 per cent in Bahia, the chief exporting point, to 4
per cent in Pernambuco and the southern States.

Matte pays 3.6 in Rio Grande, 46 reis a kilo in Paraná and 20 reis a kilo in Santa Catharina.

Frozen meat, a new industry, escaped taxation until September, 1916, when Rio put on a tax of
about one-hundredth of an American cent per pound, a delicately weighted burden, which a
vigorous industry can stand perfectly well if it is not multiplied too much.

Principal Banks in Brazil

Certain strong banks, as the three of British origin (London and Brazilian, London and River
Plate, and the British Bank of South America), have branches or 304agencies at several places,
the two first possessing establishments in every important town; the National City Bank of New
York has three Brazilian branches (Santos, Rio and S. Paulo); the French-Italian Banque
Française et Italienne and the (French) Crédit Foncier have several branches besides the
establishments in Rio and S. Paulo, as also have the (German) Banco Alemão Transatlantico,
Brasilienische Bank für Deutschland, and the Sudamericanische, the (Spanish) Banco Español
del Rio de la Plata, and the (Portuguese) Banco Nacional Ultramarino, and the (Italian-Belgian)
Italo-Belge.

The Banco do Brasil is the strongest Brazilian bank, with headquarters in Rio and many
branches. In addition to the houses spreading all over Brazil each State has its own banking firms
established in the capital. In banking power the Federal Capital, Rio de Janeiro stands first, with
a capital of nearly 46,000 contos of reis; S. Paulo is next, with banking capital of over 13,000
contos; Rio Grande do Sul comes third, with over 11,000 contos, Minas Geraes following,
succeeded by Bahia and Pernambuco, Pará and Amazonas.

The chief banks of Rio, in addition to the three British, one American, and other foreign banks
above mentioned, as well as the Banco do Brazil, are the Banco Commercial do Rio de Janeiro;
the Banco do Commercio; Banco do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Mercantil do Rio de Janeiro; and
the Lavoura e Commercio do Brasil. São Paulo, besides the foreign establishments, has the
Commercial do Estado de S. Paulo; Banco do Commercio e Industria de S. Paulo; Banco de S.
Paulo; Banco de Credito Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado de 305S. Paulo; the Banco de
Construcções e Reservas, and the União de S. Paulo.

Among the local banks doing excellent service are the Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado de
Minas Geraes (headquarters in Bello Horizonte); the Provincia do Rio Grande do Sul; Banco do
Porto Alegre; the Banco do Recife (Pernambuco); the Commercial do Pará; Credito
Hypothecario e Agricola do Estado da Bahia; Banco do Ceará; Banco do Maranhão; but many
other places also have comparatively small banks, and in addition there are many private “Casas
bancarias”—financial houses—strongly entrenched, doing sound and useful work.

306

CHAPTER VII
THE WORLD’S HORTICULTURAL AND MEDICINAL
DEBT TO BRAZIL
Loudon, the English horticultural authority, says in his Encyclopædia of Gardening (1835) that
“some of the finest flowers of British gardens are natives of South America, especially annuals.”
He mentions the dahlia—by the obsolete name of Georgina; the Marvel of Peru (Mirabilia) the
Calceolaria and the Schizanthus, adding that “beautiful shrubs are not less numerous, but they
are generally inmates of greenhouses.”

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. Practically nothing is
known of early attempts to introduce Brazilian plants, for they were failures, and failures they
remained for two and a half centuries after South America was discovered. The science of botany
and art of gardening were alike in primitive stages until the latter part of the eighteenth century,
and, whilst South American plants were known by their local names, means for their successful
307transportation had not been found; nor, in the rare cases of their surviving long journeys by
sailing boat, was successful cultivation of these exotics known. If, as is possible, there are yet in
herbariums in Portugal any plants which the early colonists sent home, no printed record of them
seems to exist.

It was not until the second decade of the nineteenth century that any serious attempts were made
to reveal to the world the richness of Brazilian flora, and only within recent years that anything
like a comprehensive account of it has been published: as far back as 1648 Willem Piso and
Georg Marcgrav published in Amsterdam a large folio volume containing spirited woodcuts
carefully coloured by hand of Brazilian flowers, shrubs, fishes, birds, reptiles, etc., but this was a
natural history rather than a botanical book. Both these pioneers are commemorated in Pisonia
and Marcgravia, species of which are still in cultivation.

In 1820 three scientific works dealing with Brazilian flora appeared. Mikan’s Delectus floræ ...
brasiliensis was issued in Vienna: Raddi’s Di alcune specie nuove del Brasile and his Quarante
piante nuove de Brasile, were issued in quarto volumes in Modena. Four years later St. Hilaire
published in Paris his Histoire des Plantes of Brazil and Paraguay; between 1827 and 1831 J. E.
Pohl’s Plantarum Brasilæ icones appeared in two folio volumes in Vienna. Other floras of
Brazil, notably that of Martius, 1837–40, came out at intervals, and by the end of the century the
plant life of Brazil was well covered by scientific publications.
So far as Great Britain is concerned, and it may be taken as a criterion of Europe generally, the
most comprehensive 308record of sources and dates of the introduction of South American
plants is Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus, first published in 1830. It enumerates something like
thirty thousand species, exotic and otherwise. As the importation of South American plants was
only in its infancy at that time many hundreds of flowers, now familiar in gardens and hothouses,
are not recorded, but the book is reasonably complete up to the time of publication. Most of the
more important introduced aliens, before and after the date of Loudon’s great work, may be
found described and illustrated in the Botanical Magazine of London (issued monthly from 1787
to the present time), while others are dealt with in Loddiges’ Botanical Cabinet, 1818–24, and in
many other of the quantity of horticultural publications appearing in Europe during the first half
of the nineteenth century—notably in Nicholson’s Dictionary of Gardening and in the revised
edition of Johnson’s Gardener’s Dictionary, bringing the record to the end of the nineteenth
century.

Whilst many European botanists, such as Langsdorff, Burchell, Lhotsky and others had, during
the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, explored certain parts of Brazil, nothing was of
more importance to general knowledge of the plant-treasures of the country than the work
accomplished by a Scotch botanist, Dr. George Gardner, afterwards Superintendent of the
Botanical Gardens of Ceylon. His Travels in the Interior of Brazil during 1836–41 is a record of
high merit, not only on account of its contribution to Brazilian botany and natural history, but
because it is a faithful and genial picture of life and conditions in the 309interior of Brazil three-
quarters of a century ago. The amazing richness and beauty of Brazilian flora had never before
been revealed to Europeans as through Gardner’s book and his collections of thousands of
specimens; it is extraordinary that these fascinating Travels should have remained out of print.

Of all the groups of plants introduced to the rest of the world from the southerly countries of the
New World, orchids easily rank first, as the most precious, the most varied and beautiful, and the
most costly: the first brought to England came from the East and West Indies. Epidendrum
cochleatum found its way from Jamaica to England and was flowered for the first time in 1787;
another species of the same lovely family, Epidendrum fragrans, came also from Jamaica in
1778 but was not flowered until 1788. In 1794 fifteen species of epiphytal orchids were at Kew,
chiefly brought from the West Indies by Admiral Bligh, and for many years these islands, and
India, were the main sources of orchid importation. But in 1793 a species of Oncidium was
introduced to England from Panama: in 1811 another came from Montevideo, and by 1818
Brazil had begun to contribute species of the same genus. In 1825 Loddiges of Hackney,
London, had in cultivation some eighty-four species of orchids from South America and the East,
and by 1830 the Royal Horticultural Society of London had collectors in various parts of Brazil,
hunting for rare plants.

Many beautiful orchids were sent home by business men residing in South America; for instance,
William Cattley of Barnet, who died in 1832, and whose name is commemorated by the noble
Cattleya, established an extensive correspondence with business men living 310abroad for the
purposes of obtaining new and rare orchids, and through his efforts came many fine specimens,
chiefly from Brazil. The earliest Brazilian Cattleya to reach Europe was C. Loddigesii, 1815, but
the most famous and most protean species of all C. Cabiata, reached Europe in 1818, and others
of the same genus came in rapid succession from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica,
Guatemala and the Argentine. Many beautiful Brazilian orchids were sent by William Harrison,
a merchant living in Rio de Janeiro during the thirties and forties of last century, to his brother
Richard in Liverpool, whose residence at Aigburth was in those days a Mecca to which orchid
lovers paid annual pilgrimages.

To introduce these plants was one thing; to cultivate them successfully was quite another.
Hooker once declared that for more than half a century England was “the grave of tropical
orchids” and that those surviving did so in spite of, rather than on account of, the treatment they
received. Each grower had his special system, mostly wrong: it was not until after repeated and
costly failures that orchid importing and growing became a success, and that success only
became general about 1850.

The debt of other countries to Brazil and indeed all tropical America for ferns and cacti is also
great. The Canna and its ally Marcanta may be traced in England as far back as 1730; the
Begonias and the Gesnera date from 1816–18, whilst the favourite Abutilon, introduced in 1837,
is today hardy in many parts of Europe. The Gloxinia, arriving from South America a century
earlier, has developed possibilities undreamt-of by earlier horticulturists, and the same may be
said of the Fuchsia, brought from Mexico and Chile, 1823–25. The most popular South
American shrub is the Escallonia macrantha, introduced from the island of Chiloe (Alexander
Selkirk’s retreat) in 1848; it has for many years been a favourite hedge plant in the county of
Cornwall, where it thrives in pink profusion.
On the Madeira River, Amazonas; rapids at Tres Irmãos.

Victoria Regia lilies near Manáos.

311The Calceolaria is another early nineteenth century alien from South America; so too is the
Dahlia: sixty years ago whole nurseries were given over to the culture and hybridization of this
flower, and an entire literature appeared on the subject. Its popularity has somewhat waned, but
on the other hand the most gorgeous of greenhouse climbers, Bignonia, was never more
treasured than it is today. Brazil, and other adjacent countries, has given us also many species of
such genera as Achimenes, Alstromeria, Anthurium, Aristolochia, Caladium, Calathea, Hibiscus,
Iponoea (the Evening Primrose), and hundreds of other beautiful plants.

Among plants introduced and cultivated abroad for other reasons than their loveliness are the
pineapple (Anana sativa) which reached Europe as early as 1690; coconuts were carried from
Brazil a century ago; and the Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), which was probably first taken to
Portugal by very early navigators, finds its first mention in England in the 1830 edition of
Lindley’s Natural System of Botany; he speaks of the “Souari ... or Brazil nuts of the shop, the
kernel of which is one of the most delicious fruits of the nut kind.”

Brazil’s gifts to the pharmacopeias of the world have also been very valuable. Discovery, or
rather publication in Europe of the medicinal properties of many 312Brazilian plants is due to
Piso, author with Marcgrav (“een geboren Duitscher”) of the work De Medicina Brasiliensi, etc.,
of 1648, already mentioned. This monumental publication was undertaken under the patronage
of Count John Maurice of Nassau, Governor of North Brazil during the period of Dutch
occupation, a far-seeing man whose portraits are to be seen in the public galleries of Amsterdam
and Brussels. Nearly all the Brazilian plants with notable medicinal properties are fully described
and illustrated in this book: among them, and perhaps the best known, is Ipecacuanha, obtained
from the root of Cephalis ipecacuanha, native to the damp shady forests of Brazil. This drug was
first mentioned in an account of Brazil given by a Portuguese friar in Purchas’s Pilgrimes, 1625,
where it is called Ipecaya, so that it is clear that Piso, although the first to bring the drug to the
notice of European medical men, was not the discoverer of its qualities. In England the famous
physician John Pechey was the first savant to bring ipecacuanha to general notice in his
Observations made upon the Brasilian root called Ipepocoanha, issued in 1682; a few years later
it was firmly established in European medicine. In 1686, says A. C. Wootton (Chronicles of
Pharmacy, 1910) Louis XIV bought from Jean Adrien Helvetius the secret of a medicine with
which a number of remarkable cures had been performed; Helvetius, whose patronymic was
Schweitzer, was the son of a Dutch quack, and he not only made his own fortune out of
ipecacuanha (the royal gift alone was a thousand louis d’or) but got the appointment of Inspector
General of the hospitals of Flanders and court physician to the Duke of Orleans.

Another famous drug from Brazil is the Balsam of 313Capevi (or Copaiba—Copaiva), the sap of
Copaifera officinalis, a genus of the leguminous order of plants; it was described by Piso; is
mentioned in Edward Cooke’s Voyage to the South Sea and round the World, published in 1712,
and first made its appearance in English gardens in 1774, having previously figured in Jacquin’s
Stirpium Americanarum Historia, 1763.
Jaborandi, obtained from the dried leaflets of Pilocarpus pennatifolius, was described by Piso
and Marcgrav: like the two mentioned above, this drug was well known to the native tribes of
Brazil and employed by the pagés or medicine men; it received its first serious notice in recent
times in the Diccionario de Medicina published by Dr. T. J. H. Langgard in Rio de Janeiro in
1865. The plant reached English gardens three years later, but its properties do not seem to have
been recognized in Europe until 1874, when a Brazilian scientist, Dr. Coutinho, sent some leaves
to M. Rabutau, the eminent pharmacist of Paris, who tested it and declared it to be as valuable as
quinine as a febrifuge and sudorific.

Guaraná (Paullinia sorbilis, Mart.) is a tonic widely used in Brazil and Peru, which has recently
been making its way into favour in Europe, France taking the drug readily. It is obtained from
seeds, and a paste made which hardens into such a consistency that it can only be powdered by a
grater; this powder is dissolved in cold water and taken as a tonic and digestive. One of Brazil’s
bottled mineral waters is also made with Guaraná added, and the pink-tinted, rather acrid drink is
quite agreeable.

The Brazilian interior, and particularly Amazonas, is so rich in medicinal herbs, seeds and roots,
that it 314would take pages to give their names, and as they are not popularly known, the reader
would not be greatly enlightened, but the Quassia (Quassia amara, Linn.) has international fame;
Jalap (Piptostegia Pisonis) is an old acquaintance. Many drugs have local names as the Lagryma
da Nossa Senhora (Tear of Our Lady), a diuretic; the Melão de São Caetano (S. Caetano’s
Melon), whose little fruit of the cucumber class is a medicine, whose stalks furnish a fine fibre,
and whose leaves contain potash. There is at least one remarkable astringent, the Cipó Caboclo
(Davallia rugosa); Cambará is a much-used base for pectoral syrups; the Batata de Purga and the
Purga do Pastor are used all over Brazil; many of the Rubiaceae are used as febrifuges; there are
numbers of tonics, as the Laranjeira do Matto (Forest Orange) and the Páo Parahyba and Páo
Pereira. Andiroba oil is used to make a skin soap, and also to light the family lamp in northerly
states; the Sapucainha (Carpotroche brasiliensis) tree yields a nut containing fifty per cent of oil
used locally for rheumatism in Minas, Rio and Espirito Santo; and the Pinhão de Purga’s seeds
furnish an oil said to be convertible into gas.

Besides the well-known Vanilla, there is known one fine flavouring and scenting plant, the Páo
precioso, one of the Lauraceae; its bark and seeds are sweetly perfumed and it is much used by
local chemists.

Brazil could if necessary ship excellent mineral waters abroad. There is an import of bottled
waters into Brazil, but they have rivals in the national waters, chiefly found in Minas Geraes and
there bottled by Brazilian companies. Perhaps the most popular are 315Caxambú and Salutaris,
but there are others. The chief points of origin are at Aguas Virtuosas, Caxambú, Lambary,
Cambuquira, São Lourenço, and the recently opened wells at Araxá.

Altogether the natural gifts of Brazil in minerals and plants are such that not only does she
supply the basis for many home-made remedies but also ships drugs abroad; were her resources
better investigated and quantities developed she could greatly increase her position as a supplier
of medicines to international markets.
316

CHAPTER VIII
BRAZIL’S EXTERIOR COMMERCE
Studying the commerce of Brazil with the rest of the world, following the remarkable variations
in amount of export of certain articles, and the no less remarkable fluctuation in price of others,
one comes at last to the conclusion that Brazilian trade has never had a normal year. Almost
every twelve months has seen changes taking place which are not the result, in most cases, of the
growth, to be expected, along definite lines; influences unforeseen have more than once knocked
the bottom out of certain prosperous businesses, production has been affected by remote causes,
or stimulated by others as little to be normally reckoned upon. The history of Brazilian exterior
commerce, which is largely the history of her exports since purchases depend upon income,
shows some of the most sensational transferences of prosperity from one region and industry to
another, oddest appearances and disappearances of industries, falls and rises of prices, in
commercial records.

To realize something of this it is only necessary to think of the dominance of the northern
promontory, in colonial days, when sugar was the great Brazilian staple together with dyewood,
and of the total disappearance of the latter—until the last year—from consideration; of the once-
feverish gold industry, which 317shipped over a thousand tons of the refined metal in its hey-
day, employing an army of people, and which has now vanished, with the exception of the
operations of two British-owned companies; of the obliteration of Brazil’s fame as a diamond
producer after the discovery of the blue-clay deposits of Kimberley; of the rise of the once-
neglected and uncolonized south to the position of “leader” section of the country with its
enormous coffee production, built up during the last forty years; of the phenomena of the rubber
export of the extreme north, as well as the new developments in Brazilian business appearing on
the horizon, great in potentiality, during the war period, and which may bring Brazil into the
front rank of countries exporting chilled beef and producing manganese ore. Few countries on
the active list have seen such revolutions in industry; they have been largely due to the variety of
Brazilian regions, and they will in all probability be repeated while Brazil opens her great
expanses of virgin prairies, forests, and mineral-saturated hills.

The following figures show that between 1915 and 1920, Brazil’s exterior commerce was nearly
equal in value to that of the previous ten years:

Relation of
Ten-year Total Importation Total Exportation Average Value of
Imports to
Period Values Values Milreis in Pence
Exports
1846–1855 737,720 contos 691,740 contos 106.6% 27 ¹⁄₁₆
1856–1865 1,228,171 „ 1,225,563 „ 100.2% 26 ⁹⁄₃₂
1866–1875 1,551,630 „ 1,902,331 „ 81.5% 21 ⁹⁄₁₆
1876–1885 1,768,564 „ 1,969,515 „ 89.8% 19 ³¹⁄₃₂
1886–1895 3,267,650 „ 4,073,764 „ 80.2% 18 ³⁄₁₆
1896–1905 4,856,634 „ 7,324,009 „ 66.3% 11 ³⁵⁄₆₄
1906–1915 6,331,487 „ 8,115,492 „ 78 % 14 ³⁹⁄₆₄
1916–
6,063,000 „ 7,397,300 „ 81.5% 13 ¹¹⁄₂₅
1920[21]

318These figures show one or two points clearly—first, the vitality of Brazil, for as one industry
has waned another has waxed, exportation values steadily showing increases in spite of the
caprices of fortune; it is also plain that for the last fifty years Brazil has exported more than she
has imported. In war years, this excess of exports was very much more accentuated, but,
although this balance is useful in helping to steady exchange, to pay debts abroad, and to put
money into shippers’ and producers’ pockets, it has the effect, when imports are greatly
curtailed, of starving the Federal Government, whose revenues are mainly dependent upon
import taxes.

The famous “nine principal articles” of Brazilian export were coffee, cotton, sugar, rubber,
cacao, hides (of cattle), skins (of goats and sheep), tobacco, and matte (“Paraguay tea”) up to
1916. Other items which displayed marked rises up to 1918 were lard, rice, Brazil nuts, carnauba
wax, manganese ore, precious and semi-precious stones, and chilled or frozen beef. Prosperity
over all Brazil depends much more upon volume and variety of goods exported than upon prices,
for while soaring values put large profits into the hands of the few, great volumes of products
mean employment for the field labourer or collector, for transportation companies, and a host of
intermediaries. In addition to increased prices, the actual volume of Brazilian exports was larger
in the five years 1916–1920, rising from seven million tons in 1911–1915 to nearly ten million
tons. This prosperity was due to war calls, several new items appearing on the 1916–20 lists on
page 319.

319
1915 1914 1913 1912 1911
Coffee 17,061,000 11,270,000 13,267,000 12,080,000 11,258,000 bags
Matte 75,885 59,354 65,415 62,880 61,834 tons
Rubber 35,165 33,531 36,232 42,286 36,547 „
Sugar 59,074 31,860 5,367 4,772 36,208 „
Cacao 44,980 40,767 29,759 30,492 34,994 „
Hides 38,324 31,442 35,075 36,255 31,832 „
Tobacco 27,096 26,980 29,388 24,706 18,489 „
Cotton 5,228 30,434 37,424 16,774 14,650 „
Skins 4,578 2,487 3,232 3,189 2,798 „

1920 1919 1918 1917 1916

Coffee 11,525,000 12,963,000 7,433,000 10,606,000 13,039,000 bags
Matte 90,686 90,200 72,781 65,431 76,777 metric tons
Rubber 22,876 32,213 22,211 31,590 28,865 „
Sugar 109,141 69,429 115,634 138,159 54,438 „
Cacao 54,419 62,584 41,865 55,622 43,720 „
Tobacco (leaf) 30,562 42,575 29,011 25,282 21,021 „
Cotton (raw) 24,696 12,153 2,594 5,941 1,071 „
Cotton seed 23,564 22,649 42 22,882 11,762 „
Rice 134,554 28,423 27,916 44,639 1,315 „
Mandioca Flour 8,660 21,834 65,322 18,745 5,370 „
Beans 23,000 58,607 70,914 93,536 45,817 „
Brazil Nuts 9,279 24,998 6,750 16,057 9,882 „
Hard Woods 125,394 103,824 179,799 64,264 82,816 „
Manganese 453,737 205,725 393,388 532,855 503,130 „
Meat 63,600 54,094 60,509 66,452 33,661 „
Lard 11,166 20,028 13,270 10,235 3 „
Hides 37,265 56,788 45,584 39,912 53,511 „
Tinned Meat 1,649 25,398 17,223 6,552 856 „
Skins 3,966 5,166 2,215 3,046 3,840 „

The preponderance today of São Paulo as a producer state is shown by her shipment values—
465,212 contos out of the total exports, or about forty-six per cent of Brazilian sales. Next in
values come the sales of Minas Geraes, worth 221,000 contos, and Rio de Janeiro state, with
about 176,000 contos; Bahia is fourth, with exports worth over 102,000 contos; Pará and
Amazonas follow with about 70,000 and 64,000 contos respectively; Paraná, 33,565 contos;
Espirito Santo, nearly 30,000; and Pernambuco, with 22,600 contos, are next, followed by Ceará,
shipping nearly 32019,000 contos’ worth of goods, to Rio Grande do Sul, with sales worth
almost 16,000 contos; the only other state shipping over 10,000 contos’ worth of goods is
Maranhão.

The United States has been for many years the greatest single purchaser of Brazilian materials,
generally taking rather more than one-third of all exports, Europe taking nearly all the rest, with
South America also buying an appreciable share, amounting to about five per cent of the total.
The coffee trade is that in which the United States is most largely concerned: for the last six
years Brazilian exports of coffee have averaged over fourteen million bags, and of this the
United States has been taking about one-third, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands accounting
for another third, France taking from one to two million bags, and the rest of Europe absorbing
the remainder. The United States, purchaser of a billion dollars of tropical and sub-tropical
products in 1915–16, is an eager taker of Brazilian hides and skins, an export markedly
stimulated since the European War began, important shipments coming from Rio Grande do Sul
among other cattle states; she has, during the last two years, apparently been able to receive
larger quantities of all Brazilian products, and perhaps the most salutary trend, for both the
United States and Brazil, has been in the great quantities of raw materials taken by the northern
country. These materials are the breath of life to the manufactures, and nothing is better for
Brazil than increased volumes of such exports.

During 1915 the United States bought, reckoning in dollars, nearly $107,000,000 of Brazil’s total
exports of over $255,000,000, while Great Britain took 321$31,000,000, France $29,000,000,
Sweden $23,000,000 (chiefly coffee, and, in view of the disappearance of direct sales to
Germany, in all probability transferred to the Central Powers), and the Netherlands $16,000,000;
sales to the Argentine were nearly $13,000,000, while Uruguay took about four and a half
million dollars’ worth of goods. Apparently, trading between Brazil and her South American
neighbours on the same side of the Andes has been greatly increased during 1916, Argentina
buying unprecedented amounts of sugar, as well as maintaining her imports of matte. During
1915, the total sales of Argentina to Brazil were worth over 89,000 contos, or something like
$22,000,000, of which nearly $20,000,000 were accounted for by wheat and wheat flour. At the
same time Brazil sold to the Argentine 42,226 contos’ worth (say $10,560,000) of goods, of
which nearly 70 per cent was accounted for by matte sales, with 15 per cent of tobacco.

Brazilian imports show important changes in places of origin since the European War; formerly
Great Britain was by far the greatest seller to this country, supplying nearly a third of the total
goods purchased. In 1911 the order in importance of countries selling to Brazil were Great
Britain, Germany, the United States, France, Argentina, Portugal, Belgium; in 1912 and 1913 the
same order was maintained, but with Germany increasing her sales at a greater rate than Great
Britain, while the United States also showed gains.

In 1914, with the outbreak of war, England still retained her top place, but with reduced values,
while the United States drew second, Germany third and the Argentine fourth. In 1915, the
United States sold 322more goods than any other country, and Great Britain came second,
maintaining her command of the market in cotton piece goods in a remarkable manner, and
holding over half of the coal sales in the latter item until 1916, when United States’ sales
replaced the Welsh coal, whose export was then prohibited. Development of South Brazilian coal
fields also helped to supply the home market to an increasing degree. During 1921–2 Britain
recaptured much of her coal sales, and the share of the United States fell almost to pre-war
conditions, from top place (81%) in 1920.

In U. S. currency, Brazil imported nearly $146,000,000 worth of goods in 1915, the United
States selling about $47,000,000, England nearly $32,000,000 worth, while Germany’s former
average of fifty-two millions was reduced to two. Many of these changes were due to the
abnormal war situation, and while it could not be expected that the United States would retain an
advantage due to the elimination of competitors, she was still the greatest supplier of goods in
1920, selling over twice as much as her nearest rival, Britain, or goods worth $52,000,000, in
comparison with Britain’s $25,000,000. The European countries organized for overseas trading
are making strenuous and determined efforts to regain the commerce built up by the
transportation lines and development work financed from Europe; although they awaited the end
of the war to renew these efforts. Probably the best recommendation of the United States to a
large share in Brazilian imports lies not in commissions and reunions, but in her extensive
purchases of Brazilian raw material.

Broadly speaking, nearly sixty per cent of Brazilian 323imports are manufactured goods. Large
quantities of machinery, steel rails, locomotives, etc., are usually imported every year for the
construction work needed in a vast and young country. Over twenty-four per cent of the total
purchases are of foodstuffs with wheat and wheat-flour largely preponderant: last year one-fifth
of the total imports of Brazil were credited to these two items. About ten per cent of Brazilian
purchase money is paid for coal. Financial stringency due to abnormal conditions has cut down
Brazilian imports in a salutary manner—and fortunately for Brazilian merchants and retailers,
stores were at the outbreak of hostilities largely overstocked by the unprecedentedly large
purchases of 1913, when $326,000,000 was paid for imports.

As a result of big sales and reduced buying, Brazil in 1915 had a trade balance in her favour of
about 440,000 contos of reis (exports 1,022,634 contos and imports 582,996 contos) the
equivalent of nearly $140,000,000 in United States currency. This balance appears to have
largely remained abroad to help meet Brazilian indebtedness, and helped to steady exchange.
This surplus of export values dropped well below 400,000 contos in 1916 and 1917, and to
148,000 in 1918, but rose to the unprecedented height of 845,000 in 1919, when the milreis
soared to the rather inconvenient exchange value of 18 pence. The years 1920 and 1921
witnessed adverse balances of trade, with the milreis fallen below 8 pence, 1922 showing trade
recoveries practically to pre-war values. Brazil has weathered many a storm commercially and
industrially because the world needs her raw material; she has every reason for confidence in the
future.

324
State Capital Area Sq. Kilometers Population
Alagôas Maceió 58,500 785,000
Amazonas Manáos 1,895,000 390,000
Bahia São Salvador 427,000 2,500,000
Ceará Fortaleza 104,250 1,000,000
Rio de Janeiro
Federal District 1,116 1,200,000
(São Sebastião)
Espirito Santo Victoria 45,000 400,000
Goyaz Goyaz 747,000 300,000
Maranhão São Luiz 460,000 500,000
Matto Grosso Cuyabá 1,379,000 245,000
Minas Geraes Bello Horizonte 575,000 4,500,000
Pará Belem 1,150,000 660,000
Parahyba Parahyba 75,000 600,000
Paraná Curityba 250,000 500,000
Pernambuco Recife 128,400 2,100,000
Piauhy Therezina 301,800 425,000
Rio de Janeiro Nictheroy 69,000 1,300,000
Rio Grande do Norte Natal 57,500 410,000
Rio Grande do Sul Porto Alegre 236,500 1,500,000
Santa Catharina Florianopolis 43,535 450,000
São Paulo São Paulo 290,876 3,000,000
Sergipe Aracajú 39,090 450,000
Acre Territory 191,000 100,000

The Territory of Acre was legally acquired from Bolivia by the Government of Brazil in 1903
but had been populated and the rubber reserves worked by Brazilian seringueiros for at least ten
years previously. Their entry into Bolivian lands was the cause of much friction until the final
settlement by the payment by Brazil of £2,000,000 for this rich area.

325
BRAZILIAN TERMS
Alagôano: native of Alagôas. Native of Amazonas State, amazonense. Native of Bahia, bahiano;
of Ceará, cearense; of Espirito Santo, espirito-saniense; of Goyaz, goyano; of Maranhão,
maranhense; of Matto Grosso, matto-grossense; of Minas Geraes, mineiro; of Pará, paraense; of
Paraná, paranaense; of Piauhy, piauhyense; of Parahyba, parahybano; of Pernambuco,
pernambucano; of São Paulo, paulista; of Santa Catharina, catharinense; of Rio Grande do
Norte and Rio Grande do Sul, riograndense do norte, or riograndense do sul; of Sergipe,
sergipano. A native of the north is a nortista; of the south, a sulista; of Brazil, in general,
brasileiro.

Aviador: properly, aviator, but has special meaning on the Amazon; is applied to the dealer who
supplies the seringaes with outfit and food for the season, and who purchases the rubber crop.
The aviado is the customer of the aviador.

Bateia: bowl for washing out placer gold.

Borracha: any kind of rubber in Brazilian; the term goma is also sometimes used, but applied
only to latex of hevea brasiliensis.

Braços: lit. “arms,” that is, labourers; hands.

Cabotagem: Brazilian navigation, whether coastal or riverine.

Caipira: countryman from the south—“hayseed.” The equivalent type from the north is a matuto.

Capoeira: second growth of vegetation after land has been cleared. Also applied to kind of
basket made of native grass; also to the Brazilian equivalent to jiu-jit-su; genuine capoeira adepts
have remarkable muscular control. The term capoeira is also applied to a certain dance.

Capim: grass (plural, capins) of different kinds, as capim gordura, capim panasco, capim sertão,
etc.

Carioca: native of Rio de Janeiro City—from the Carioca fountain, once fashionable centre of
city.

Carreiro: by-path of the interior.

Colono: labourer imported, whether from another country or a sister State.

326Conto: (of reis); one thousand milreis, or 1,000,000 reis. In paper, worth normally over £66,
but since European War value fluctuates about £50, or say $250.

Engenho: sugar mill.

Estrada de Ferro: railroad; Rede ferroviario, railway system, lit. “net” of railways.
Fazenda: in South, any farm or estate of coffee, cacao, cattle, etc.; in north more exclusively
applied to cattle farm. Fazendeiro, farmer or estate owner.

Fallencia: failure, bankruptcy.

Farinha: flour. — de mandioca, of two kinds “white” and “yellow,” made from root of one of
the Euphorbias.

Feijão: beans, red, black or white, universal Brazilian food; feijoada, special dish made with
beans, dried meat, pepper, mandioca flour, etc.

Flagellados: lit. “the scourged,” applied to people from the northern drought districts.

Fluminense: native of Rio de Janeiro State, from Lat. flumen, river; Portuguese discoverers
thought Rio Bay mouth of a river, and so named it “River of January.” There is no river, but the
name remains, and the fluminenses are proud to call themselves “river folk.”

Frigorifico: cold storage, properly; applied to packing-houses also.

Gaiola: properly, cage; also applied to small open boats traversing Amazonian fluvial network.

Garimpeiros: diamond hunters of Brazilian interior.

Herva: lit. herb: applied to the leaf of ilex paraguayensis, known in Brazil as herva matte and in
Spanish America as yerba maté. Herval, forest of trees from which leaf is obtained: pl. hervaes.

Matadouro: slaughterhouse.

Matto: wild Brazilian woodland: matteiro, expert forester.

Modinha: Brazilian folk-song: term fado also used.

Parecer: lit. opinion; generally applied to views given upon public matters by eminent men.

Paroara: person going from another district to work in the Amazon rubber country.

Pauta: rate of export tax; changed frequently in response to international market prices for such
Braz. goods as cacao, rubber, tobacco, sugar, etc.

327Patrão: owner or manager of estate or business.

Pelle: ball of rubber made by seringueiros.

Praieiro: one who lives by the praia, or shore.

Rebanho: stock of animals, herd or flock.

Regatão: row-boats of petty traders upon Amazonian waterways.

Resaca: violent wave-movement, often seen in Rio and Recife, when a receding meets an
oncoming wave and water is thrown up; resacas along the Rio sea-front often throw spray sixty
feet into the air.

Romaria: pilgrimage made by religious-minded to the places where there are churches
containing images of special devotion.

Safra: time of harvest; the crop yield is the colheita.

Seringa: gum of hevea brasiliensis; seringueira, rubber tree; seringueiro, man who collects
rubber; seringal, rubber district in forest—pl. seringaes.

Serra: mountain range; serro, small hill. (Montanha, mountain.)

Sertão: Brazilian interior; pl. sertões. Sertanejo, sertanista, one who dwells in the sertão.

Tropa: troop—generally of mules, used for cargo carrying in interior of central and northern
states; term also used in original sense of military regiment or battalion; tropeiro, the conductor
of a troop of cargo mules or other animals.

Vaqueiro: (from vaca, cow)—employee specially employed upon stock-breeding estates.

Compare with gaucho, the cowboy of the South.
328

MAP OF BRAZIL

Adapted from the Railway Map arranged by Dr. Miguel Calmon for the Brazilian Government

[Click on map for higher resolution.]

329

INDEX
 A
 A. B. C. Treaty, 120–122.
 Acre Territory, 194, 204, 324.
 Affonso Penna, 81;
o colony, 71.
 Agricultural methods, 256, 257.
 Agua-marinhas, 260.
 Aguas Virtuosas, 315.
 Alagôas, 39, 151, 271, 297, 324.
 Alagoinhas, 150.
 Albuquerque, Jeronymo, 37.
 Alcobaça, 155.
 Alto da Serra, 130.
 Alves, Rodrigues, 81, 106, 174.
 Amazonas, State, 180–234, 297, 313, 319.
 Amazon river, 161, 162;
o basin, 3, 73;
o rubber industry, 180–234;
o Navigation company, 161.
 Anchieta, José de, 22.
 Apartaçao do gado, 85.
 Aracajú, 150, 151, 324.
 Araguary, 141.
 Araguaya, 155.
 Aramina fibre, 253.
 Arantes, Dr. Altino, 70, 139;
o also see footnote to p. 144.
 Araxá, 315.
 Area of States, 324.
 Argentina, 5;
o railways, 135, 138, 158;
o sugar, 243;
o trade with Brazil, 321.
 Atalaia, 151.
 Automobile roads, 127, 128.
 Auxiliaire railway, 137.
 Avenida Paulista, 67, 127.
 Avenida Rio Branco, 105.
 Aviador, 198, 199.
 B
 Babassú, 274.
 Bacharel, Bacharelismo, 83.
 Baependy, Visconde de, 61.
 Bahia, city (São Salvador), settlement, 18, 19;
o captaincy-general, 36;
o Dutch seizure, 38, 39, 40, 44;
o Dom João, 50;
o negroes, 82;
o churches, 91;
o tobacco, 247.
 Bahia, State, colonies, 60, 61;
o mule troops, 86;
o roads, 128;
o railroads, 130, 150;
o coffee, 178;
o debt, 297;
o tobacco, 245, 246, 247;
o cacao industry, 254–256;
o oranges, 258;
o mines, 259, 260, 262;
o factories, 265, 270;
o exports, 319.
 Banco do Brasil, 51.
 Bandeiras, 25–33.
 Bangú factory, 272.
 Banks, foreign and Brazilian, 303–305;
o British, capital, 290;
o National City, 296.
 Barbosa, Ruy, 99, 106.
 Barra, 32.
 Barra do Córdoba, 153.
 Barreiros, 151.
 Barretos, packing-house at, 140, 211, 212.
 Bartholomeu Bueno da Silva, 32.
 Belem (Pará), 153, 298.
o See Pará.
 Bello Horizonte, 141, 144, 261, 298.
 Bem Fica, 147.
 Berrogain & Cia, 207.
 Berwind Coal Co., 165, 296, 322.
 Betun or petum (tobacco), 245.
 Bicho, 87, 88.
 330Bilac, Olavo, 99, 100.
 Blumenau of Brunswick, Herr, 58;
o town, 138.
 Bolivia, railway links, 135.
 Bom Successo, 70.
 Borba Gato, 31.
 Borda do Campo, 22.
 Brack, 291.
 Braganza, 153.
 Branco river, 159, 202.
 Braz Cubas, 22.
 Braz, Dr. Wencesláo, 54, 156.
 Braz (suburb of S. Paulo), 268.
 Brazil, discovery of, 11–14;
o name, 15;
o capitanias, 17, 18, 19;
o export of tobacco, 247;
o nuts, 274, 311.
 Brazil Railway Co., 137, 142, 143, 297.
 Brazil-wood, 15, 20, 41, 46.
 British investment, 287–290.
 Bureau in Paris, 103, 175.
 C
 Cabedello, 152.
 Caboclo, 4.
 Cabotagem, 123, 150.
 Cabral, Captain, 14.
 Cacao, culture and export, 254–258.
 Cacequy, 137.
 Cachaça, 241.
 Cachoeiras (Itapemirim), 146.
 Caeté, 48.
 Cai-Uby, 23.
 Caixa de Conversão, 172, 277, 278, 279.
 Cajazeiras, 153.
 Calmon, Dr. Miguel, 193, 229, 272.
 Cametá, 48.
 Caminho do Padre José, 125.
 Camocim, 152.
 Campinas, 141, 273.
 Campos, 146, 147, 241, 290.
 Campos Salles colony, 69.
 Cananea, 64.
 Cannavieiras, 64.
 Cantareira Tramway, 139;
o ferries, 147.
 Cape St. Augustine, 11.
 Capitanias, 17, 18, 19, 36.
 Caracú cattle, 217, 218.
 Caramarú, 18; town, 140.
 Caravellas, 149, 159.
 Carbonados (diamonds), 259.
 Cardoso de Almeida, 158.
 Careta, 85.
 Carioca cotton mill, 290.
 Carnauba wax, 152, 318.
 Carvalho, Dr. Daniel de, 270.
 Castilloa elastica, 182, 202, 203.
 Catalão, 141.
 Cattle, 40;
o introduction, 208;
o industry, 209–219.
 Cattley, William, 309.
 Caxambú, 315.
 Caxias, 153, 155, 249.
 Ceará, capitania of, 19, 86;
o droughts in, 152;
o railways, 152;
o labour from, 184, 197, 198;
o cattle, 218;
o lace, 254, 274;
o factories, 271;
o debt, 297;
o exports, 319;
o area, 324.
 Central Railway, 141, 144, 145, 146, 261.
 Centro Industrial, 227, 271, 272.
 Cereals, 248–252.
 Chaves, Alfredo, colony of, 249.
 Cincinato Braga, 217.
 Ciudad Real, 23, 24, 28.
 Clarke’s shoe factories, 290.
 Class distinctions, 79, 80.
 Climate, contrasts, 4;
o variety of soil and climate, 6;
o suited to immigrants, 73;
o effect on roads, 128, 216, 217, 248, 274.
 331Coal, used, 146;
o mining, 263.
 Coats’ cotton mill, 290.
 Coconut oil factory, 275.
 Coelho, Duarte, 14, 15, 20.
 Coffee drinking, 88.
 Coffee industry, 167–180;
o coffee exports, 175.
 Colonization, Ch. 2, p. 56.
 Columbus, 13.
 Commerce, exterior, 316.
 Commerciantes, 81.
 Companhia de Viação S. Paulo-Matto Grossi, 136.
 Companhia do Commercio do Brazil, 42.
 Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril, 140.
 Comtists, 91.
 Conde d’Eu railway, 151.
 Conference, 228, 270.
 Conquista, 149.
 Conspiracy of Minas, 49.
 Copaiva, (Copahyba), 39, 313.
 Corcovado, 4.
 Correia de Sá, 44.
 Corsairs, 35.
 Corumbá, railway to, 135, 136.
 Cory Coal Co., 165, 290, 322.
 Cotton, raw, export of, 226, 227;
o weaving, 268–273;
o industry, 219–234.
 Court of Cartago, 121, 122.
 Couto de Magalhães, 108.
 Cozinha bahiana, 108.
 Cratheus, 152.
 Cruz, Dr. Oswaldo, 106, 195.
 Cubatão, old road to, 126;
o dye factory, 273.
 Curityba, 68, 127, 133, 139, 235.
 Curralinho, 144.
 Currency, system, 281, 282.
 Curvello, 144.
 Cuyabá, 33, 46, 159, 160, 324.
 D
 Defesa da Borracha, 193, 206.
 Diamantina, 33, 144.
 Diamonds, 259, 317.
 Dois Irmãos Mountains, 117.
 Dom João, 50.
 Dom Pedro I, 51.
 Dom Pedro II, 52, 53.
 Dona Anna Pimentel, 208.
 Donatarios, 19, 44.
 Dona Thereza (colony in Pará), 58.
 Drugs, 311, 314.
 Duarte Coelho, 14, 15, 20.
 Duder, 290.
 Dumont coffee estates, 168.
 Dutch, seizure of coast, 35;
 o West India Co., 38;
o establishment in Pernambuco, 38–41;
o result of occupation, 42.
 Dutra, Dr. Firma, 136.
 Dyes, 272, 273.
 E
 Education, 115–118.
 Electric power, Paulo Affonso falls, 155;
o used for manufacturing, 265, 270;
o falls available, 273.
 Elpidio de Salles, 157.
 Emancipated colonies, 71.
 Emboabas, Guerra dos, 47.
 Empire established, 52;
o abolished, 53.
 Engenho Novo, 60.
 Entradas, 24, 25.
 Erechim, 72.
 Esperanza, Porto, 136.
 Espirito Santo State, mines, 30;
o early history, 36, 43;
o colonies, 60, 61, 62, 71;
o railroads, 148, 149;
o coffee, 178;
o monazite sands, 262;
o factories, 271;
o debt, 291, 292.
 Estação da Luz, 131.
 332Estacio de Sá, 44.
 Estrella, 62, 63.
 Euclydes da Cunha, 193.
 Export taxes of States, 302, 303.
 External debts of States and Cities, 291, 292.
 F
 Fabrica da Pedra, 155.
 Fabric-weaving mills in all Brazil, 268–269.
 Factories in São Paulo, 265, 267, 268, 269.
 Falls in exchange, 283, 284.
 Farquhar, interests, 142–144, 162, 173.
 Federal debts, 299, 300, 301.
 Federal District, 270, 271, 291, 298.
 Federal revenues, 302.
 Feijó, Father Diogo, 52, 129.
 Feira dos bizerros, 85.
 Fernando Noronha, 15.
 Fernão Dias, 29, 30, 31.
 Festas, 92, 93.
 Fibres, 252, 253, 254.
 Fibres used by natives, 110.
 Finance, 276.
 Finger of God, 4.
 Florianopolis, 6, 324.
 Folklore, 92, 108.
 Formosa, 145.
 Fortaleza, 6, 152, 324.
 France Antarctique, 43.
 French investment, 286, 292, 293;
o early settlements, 17, 37, 38.
 French trade, 321.
 Frey Tiburcio, 101.
 Frontin, 145, 159.
 Fruits, 258.
 Funilense Railway, 139.
 Future colonization, 73, 74, 75.
 G
 Garanhuns, 151.
 Gardner, Dr. George, 308, 309.
 Gavião Peixoto, 69.
 “General Mines,” 124.
 German investment, 293.
 Germans, colonization, 57–62;
o influence and language, 117, 118.
 Goeldi, Dr. Emil, 229.
 Gold mines, discovery, 30, 32, 33, 45, 46.
 Gold mines in operation, 259.
 Gonçalves, Dias, 100.
 Good manners, Brazilian, 76, 77.
 Goodyear Tire Co., 206.
 Gordon, John, 262.
 Goyana tribes, 29.
 Goyaz, 2, 26, 27, 32, 44, 73, 141, 160, 161, 324.
 Goytacazes, Capitania, 48.
 Graciosa road, 127.
 Granja, 152.
 Grão Pará, 44.
 Grass lands, 214, 215, 216.
 Great Western of Brazil railway, 130, 149, 151, 152.
 Green, Dr. Edward, 222, 228.
 “Green Sea of Darkness,” 12.
 Guanabara, Alcindo, 193;
o Bay, 126.
 Guaraná, 313.
 Guarany nucleo, 72.
 Guayará, 24.
 Guayra falls, 273.
 Gymnasio Anglo-Brazileiro, 117.
 H
 Hamburg, “Colonizing Union of,” 59.
 Hammocks, 253.
 Hansa, 138.
 Henry, the Navigator, 12.
 333Herkmann, Elias, 39.
 Herva matte outlet, 133;
o industry, 234–238.
 Hevea brasiliensis, 181;
o seeds taken by Wickham, 188;
o varieties, 194.
 Hide exports, 218, 219.
 Highroads, 124–129.
 Horsemanship, skill in, 86.
 Huber, Dr. Jacques, 229.
 Huguenots, 43, 44.
 I
 Icelanders, 62.
 Iguape, 63, 64;
o footnote on 140.
 Iguassú falls, 273.
 Iguatú, 152.
 Ilha de Johannes, 48.
 Ilhéos, 6, 43, 48, 149.
 Imbatuba, 138.
 Immigration table, 72;
o See colonization;
o effect on Brazilian society, 78, 79.
 Imperial road to Petropolis, 126.
 Imports, 322, 323.
 Imposto do Consumo, 266.
 Independence, 52.
 Indians, 109–113.
 Inglotina, 272.
 Inheritance of French ideas, 77.
 Investment, 285.
 Ipecacuanha, 39, 312.
 Iquitos, 162.
 Iron deposits, 261.
 Isabel, Princess, 53, 80.
 Itabira (iron), 261.
 Itacoatiara, 162.
 Itajahy, 63.
 Italian immigrants, 66, 67.
 Itamaracá, 41, 48.
 Itanhaen, footnote on, 140.
 Itapemirim, 146.
 Itapura, 135, 137, 162.
 Itatiaya, mountain, 3.
 Itú, College at, 49.
 Ivahy, 71.
 J
 Jaborandi, 39, 313.
 “Jacaré Assu”, 62.
 Japanese colony in São Paulo, 70, 71.
 Jaraguá, 151.
 Jardim Botanico, 229.
 Jatobá, 155.
 Jesuino Marcondes colony, 71.
 Jesuits, 22–25, 28, 33, 34, 48, 111;
o old Jesuit road, 125, 126.
 João Alfredo, 81.
 João Pinheiro, 72.
 Joazeiro, railway to, 130;
o steamboats touching at, 144.
 Joinville (Dona Francesca) 58, 59, 138.
 Jornal do Commercio, 9, 101, 102, 103.
 Jorge Tibiriça colony, 69.
 José do Patrocinio, 108.
 Juiz da Fora, 125.
 Jupiá, 137.
 Juquiá, 64.
 K
 Kapok (paina), 252, 253.
 L
 Labour, origin and locality, 82.
 Lace-making, 254, 274.
 Lagôa dos Patos, 117, 137, 163.
 Laguna Mirim, 238.
 Lambary, 315.
 Land for immigrants, 73.
 Langgard, Dr. T. J. H., 313.
 Lauro Muller colony, 138.
 Leopoldina Railway, 130, 146, 147.
 334Light and Power companies, 273, 296.
 Literature, 97, 98, 99.
 Lloyd Brasileiro, 162, 163, 164.
 Loddiges, 309.
 Lotteries, public, 87.
 Lundgren, 231.
 M
 Macahé, 146.
 Macáu, 274.
 Macedo, J. M. de, 79, 98, 99.
 Maceió, 6, 151.
 Mackenzie College, 116.
 Madeira-Mamoré, 136, 142, 154, 292, 293.
 Maize (milho), 251, 252.
 Malho, journal, 83.
 Mamelucos, 18, 25.
 Manáos, 3, 6, 105, 159, 162, 185, 186, 187, 192, 197, 201–2, 298.
 Mandioca, 84, 252.
 Mangabeira, 182, 185.
 Manganese, 261, 262, 317, 318.
 Mangrove, dye from, 272.
 Maniçoba rubber, 152, 182.
 Mantiqueira mountains, 3.
 Manufactures, 264–275.
 Mappin, 289, 290.
 Maranhão, 33, 37, 42, 44, 48, 49, 60, 86;
o railways, 153;
o coffee, 178;
o factories, 270;
o babassú nuts, 274.
 Marcgrav, 39, 307, 313.
 Maribondo falls, 273.
 Martim Affonso, 18, 21.
 Martinho Prado colony, 70.
 Martius, 3, 307.
 Matarazzo, 248.
 Match industry, 264.
 Matte (Herva), 68, 234–238, 318.
 Matto Grosso, 2;
o first entries, 26, 27;
o captaincy, 44;
o sertões, 78;
o railways, 135, 139, 160, 161;
o export taxes, 303.
 Medicinal plants, 311–314.
 Mem de Sá, 23, 43.
 Mercantile Marine, 166.
 Mestizos, 82.
 Métayer system, 61.
 Milho, (maize), 251, 252.
 Mills, flour, 251;
o sugar, 241;
o fabric-weaving, founded in Pará and Maranhão, 224;
o in Minas, 225;
o Petropolis, 264;
o S. Paulo, 265–8;
o all Brazil, 268–272;
o cotton mill near Pernambuco, 231–233.
 Minas Geraes, products, 6;
o early foundations, 26, 30, 44, 47;
o colonization, 71;
o roads, 127;
o coffee and cotton, 178;
o cattle lands, 216, 218;
o cotton weaving, 225;
o iron deposits, 148, 161;
o gold mines, 259;
o factories, 269, 271;
o debt, 298;
o exports, 319.
 Mucury, 59.
 N
 Nabuco, Joaquim, 106.
 Nassau, Prince John Maurice of, 39.
 Natal, 152, 324.
 Native races, 109–114.
 Navigação Bahiana, 150, 162.
 Nazareth, 150, 162.
 Negroes, first introduced, 37, 82;
o slavery abolished, 53;
o eminent men, 108, 109.
 Negro river, 159, 185, 202.
 Newspapers, 101–105.
 Nictheroy, 147, 324.
 Nine principal export articles, 318, 319.
 Nossa Senhora d’O, 60.
 Nova Europa, 69.
 Nova Friburgo, 57, 147.
 Nova Lusitania, 20.
 335Nova Odessa, 68.
 Nova Veneza, 69.
 Novels, 98, 99.
 Nucleos, 58–72.
 O
 Obidos, 162.
 Ojeda, Alonzo de, 13.
 Olinda, 38, 91, 231, 244.
 Oliveira, Alberto de, 100.
 Oranges of Bahia, 258.
 Orchids, 309, 310.
 Orgão mountains, 4.
 Orellana, 16.
 Osasco, packing plant, 143, 211, 212.
 Ouro Preto, 46, 124, 259.
 P
 Packing-houses, 210–212.
 Pagés, 111, 112.
 Paina (kapok fibre), 252–3.
 Paper money in circulation, 281, 282.
 Pará City (Belem); foundation, 19;
o settlements, 37;
o Jesuits, 48;
o newspapers, 105;
o schools, 116;
o shipping, 162;
o coffee, 178;
o modern works, 185;
o rubber, 192, 197, 201;
o debt, 298.
 Parahyba, 41, 241, 271.
 Paranaguá, 133.
 Paranápanema river, 140.
 Paraná river, 23, 27, 124, 126, 136, 162.
 Paraná State, immigrants, 62, 68, 71;
o land, 73;
o matte forests, 133;
o railways, 138, 139;
o pine forests, 235;
o coal, 263;
o factories, 271;
o debts, 291;
o exports, 319.
 Pará State, 4;
o Portuguese colonies, 60;
o imports, 196;
o nut export, 274;
o debt, 298;
o exports, 319.
 Paraty, 138.
 Parceria system, 61.
 Parnahyba river, 155.
 Pastures, 215, 216, 218.
 Patronato Agricola, 67, 169.
 Paulista, Railway, 140.
 Paulo Affonso falls, 124;
o railway line, 155.
 Pauta, (export tax rate), 203.
 Peçanha, 60.
 Pedra Preta, 152.
 Pelotas, 298.
 Pernambuco, 17, 19, 20, 128, 129, 137, 241, 319;
o Dutch control, 38–41;
o land, 73;
o labour, 82;
o tropeiros, 86;
o churches, 91;
o industries, 265, 271;
o cotton cloth factory, 230–232;
o sugar, 244.
 Petropolis, 58, 126, 127, 147, 264, 270, 273, 290.
 Piassava, fibre, 254.
 Piauhy, 153, 155, 241, 271, 324.
 Pineapples, 258, 311.
 Pinto, Dr. Costa, 273.
 Pinzon, 11.
 Piquery River, 23.
 Piracicaba, school, 63, 64;
o sugar mill, 217, 242;
o agricultural college, 257.
 Piranhas, 155.
 Pirapora, 144, 145.
 Piso, 39, 307, 312, 313.
 Pita, fibre, 253.
 Plantation rubber, first experiments, 189, 190, 191;
o tax on, 204.
 Plants sent to Europe from Brazil, 306–314.
 Poets, Brazilian, 99, 100.
 Pombal, Marquis of, 45, 47, 48, 224.
 Ponta da Areia, 149.
 Ponta Grossa, 138, 139.
 Population, 55;
o separate states, 324.
 336Porto Alegre, 6, 298, 324.
 Porto Seguro, 14, 48;
o Visconde de (Varnhagen, historian), 47, 106.
 Ports opened to world commerce, 50;
o modern port works, 54.
 Pottery, Marajó, 109, 110.
 Prado, Conselheiro Antonio, 140.
 Praia Formosa, 147.
 Press, 100–105;
o first established, 50.
 Putz, Theodore, 207.
 Q
 Quedas, Sete, 273.
 Queimados, 130.
 Queiros, Luis de, 19.
 R
 Railroads, construction, 129;
o Great Western, 130, 151, 152;
o S. Paulo Railway, 131–133;
o Paranaguá, 133;
o links with other republics, 135, 136;
o Northwestern, 135, 136;
o Rio Grande, 137;
o Santa Catharina, 139;
o in S. Paulo, 139–141;
o Minas, 144;
o from Rio, 146, 147;
o Espirito Santo, 148, 149;
o Bahia, 149, 150;
o Sergipe, 150;
o Pernambuco, 151, 152;
o other northern States, 152, 153;
o Pará, 153;
o Madeira-Mamoré, 154;
o lines passing falls, 154, 155;
o operation systems, 156, 157;
o Federal and private control, 157, 158;
o railways projected, 159–161.
 Raiz da Serra, 130.
 Ramalho, João, 18, 21.
 Rapadura, 241.
 Raposo, Antonio, 27–29.
 Recife, 105, 151, 298.
 Religion, 89–92.
 República de Piritinim, 58.
 Republic inaugurated, 53.
 Ribeiro, João, 27, 28.
 Riberão Preto, 141.
 Rio Branco, Barão de, 119;
o Visconde de, 81, 106.
 Rio de Janeiro city, 4, 5, 6, 43, 44, 50, 51, 54, 76, 85, 97, 104, 127, 137, 260.
 Rio de Janeiro State, 60;
 o sugar growing, 244;
o factories, 265.
 Rio Grande do Norte, 41, 86, 241, 271, 298.
 Rio Grande do Sul, Spanish in, 25, 47;
o colonization, 72;
o land, 73;
o wine, 88;
o Germans, 117, 118;
o railways, 137, 138;
o docks, 138;
o pastures, 141;
o tobacco, 246, 248;
o wheat, 248–251;
o coal, 263;
o exports, 320;
o Rio Grande city, 137.
 Rio Negro, colony in Paraná, 58, 138, 139;
o Negro River, 159, 185, 202.
 Rio Pardo colony, 62.
 Rocha Pombo, 26.
 Romero, Sylvio, 107, 108.
 Roncador, 141.
 Rondon, Colonel Candido, 48, 106, 112, 129, 273.
 Rodrigues, José Carlos, 106.
 Rua do Ouvidor, 105.
 Rubber, 180–208;
o table of prices, 188;
o world’s crop, 205;
o factories, 206, 207.
 Russian settlers, 68, 72;
o carters of Paraná, 129.
 S
 Sabará mines, 31.
 Sabaúna, 70.
 Salt industry, 274.
 Salto Grande, line to, 136.
 Salutaris, 315.
 Sampaio, historian, 26.
 Santa Anna do Livramento, 141.
 337Santa Barbara, 64, 65.
 Santa Catharina, land, 73;
o roads, 128;
o railways, 138, 141;
o cereals, 249;
o coal mines, 263;
o factories, 270;
 o debt, 298.
 Santa Isabel, colony, 58.
 Santarem, 64, 159, 162.
 Santo André, 22, 23.
 Santos, 133.
 São Bernardo, 22, 70.
 São Felix, 150, 247.
 São Francisco, river, gold-miners’ route, 46, 124;
o projected railway, 129;
o railway passing falls, 155.
 São João del Rey mine, 259.
 São Leopoldo, colony, 57.
 São Lourenço, 315.
 São Luis, 153.
 São Luiz, 324.
 São Paulo, City, 6;
o settlement, 18, 19, 23, 28, 29, 32, 34;
o wealth, 67;
o social life, 97;
o newspapers, 104;
o schools, 115, 116, 117;
o Pure Coffee Company, 179;
o railroads, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137, 141, 145;
o factories, 265, 267, 268, 269.
 São Paulo State, 5, 6;
o early history, 18, 19, 21–35, 44, 46;
o colonization system, 68–71;
o education, 115–117;
o coffee industry, 168–180;
o sugar, 244;
o manufacturing taxes, 267;
o industries, 269–273;
o debts, 291, 298;
o exports, 319.
 São Pedro de Alcantara, 57.
 São Salvador (Bahia), 149.
 São Sebastião (Rio de Janeiro), 44, 149.
 São Vicente, settlement, 18, 22;
o sacking, 35, 43, 48.
 Sapucaia nuts, 274.
 Schmidt, Francisco, 168.
 Schools and Colleges, 116, 117.
 Semi-precious stones, 260.
 Sergipe, 150, 241, 269, 271, 324.
 Seringueiro, cost of outfit, 197.
 Serra Doirada, 32.
 Serra do Mar, 125, 126, 128, 130–133.
 Serrinha, 139.
 Serro Frio, 30.
 Sertanejo, 84, 85.
 Sertanistas, 28.
 Sertão, 25.
 Sete Lagôas, 144.
 Sete Quedas, 273.
 Shipping, 161–166.
 Silk industry, 264.
 Silva, 60.
 Sinimbú, 60, 63.
 Skins, export, 318, 319.
 Sloper, 291.
 Solis, 16.
 Sorocabana, railway, 136, 139.
 Souza, Eloy de, 192, 195, 199;
o Affonso de, 18, 21.
 Spanish rule, 35, 36.
 Stage, 100.
 State Debts, 297, 298.
 States, shares in export trade, 319, 320;
o area and population, 324.
 Steamship lines, 164, 165;
o British, 290.
 Stevenson, 290.
 St. John’s Day observances, 92.
 Sugar, 238–245;
o mills, 241;
o export, 243.
 Sumidouro mines, 29, 30.
 Swiss settlers, 56.
 T
 Tamoyo Indians, 21, 43.
 Tapajoz river, 64, 159, 162, 188.
 Taunay, Visconde de, 98.
 Taxes upon industries, 267.
 338Terms, Brazilian, 325–327.
 “Terra dos Papagaios”, 15.
 Thereza Christina railway, 144.
 Therezina, 324.
 Theodore Wille & Co., 172.
 Theophilo Ottoni, 61;
o town, 149.
 Thevet, André, 245.
 Thomé de Souza, 34, 43.
 Tibagy, 29.
 Tibiriça, 18, 23, 136, 162.
 Tieté river, 124.
 Tijuca, 4.
 Tiradentes, 50.
 Tobacco, 245–248;
o export, 246;
o price, 247.
 Tocantins, 155, 162.
 Toledo, Pedro de, 230.
 Tombu, 29, 30.
 Trade, ten-year periods, 317;
o balance, 323.
 Transportation, 123–166.
 Travellers in Brazil, 3.
 Treasury Bills, 279, 280.
 Treaty of Tordesillas, 12.
 Tres Barras lumber mills, 138.
 Tres Forquilhas, 57.
 Triangle of Minas, 128, 218, 273.
 Tropeiro, 86, 87.
 Tupan, 111.
 Tupi-Guarani tribes, 109.
 U
 Uberaba, 141, 218.
 United States Immigrants, 63, 64.
 United States interests, 294–297.
 U. S. purchases from Brazil, 320.
 U. S. Steel Corporation, 261.
 Uricury nuts, 201.
 339Urubupunga falls, 273.
 Urucú dye, 272.
 Uruguay link with Brazil, 135.
 V
 Valorization of Coffee, 171–174.
 Vergueiro family, 61.
 Vespucci, 13, 14.
 Viação Bahiana, 158.
 Viçosa, 151.
 Victoria, 147, 148.
 Villa Americana, 63.
 Villa Rica, 46.
 Villegaignon, 43.
 W
 Wars, 119.
 Waterfalls, power used or available, 265, 273.
  Weaving industry, 268–271.
 Wheat production, 249.
 Wickham, 180, 188, 189.
 Wileman, 121;
o Review, 9.
 Willekens, Admiral, 38.
 Willis, Dr. John, 229.
 Wilson Coal Co., 165, 290, 322.
 Wine, national, 88, 89, 274.
 Women, position and education of, 94, 97.
 Writers, 98–100.
 X
 Xarque, 209.
 Y
 Ypiranga, 52, 268.
 Z
 Zé Povo, 84.
 Zebu cattle, 217.

Printed in the United States of America.

1. Martim Affonso’s capitania, then the most southern part of Portuguese territory, had one
hundred leagues of coastline, with headquarters at S. Vicente; next came Santo Amaro
(Itamaracá) and Parahyba do Sul (present Rio de Janeiro State); Espirito Santo; Porto Seguro;
Ilhéos, stretching up to the south of the Bahia; Bahia itself, running from the Bay to the mouth of
the S. Francisco river; Pernambuco; Maranhão, divided into 3 captaincies of which two, totalling
150 leagues, went to João de Barros, the third, of 75 leagues, to Fernão Alvares de Andrade;
most northerly came Ceará.

2. Calculation of the Brazilian historian Theodoro Sampaio.

3. Brazilian historians differ as to dates, but Southey says that the first discovery of gold in Matto
Grosso was made in 1734 by Antonio Fernandez de Abreu.

4. Portugal swallowed her loss without much protest, there was no serious excitement in Brazil,
and the Portuguese troops stationed in Brazil were shipped home without violence from more
than one district.

5. Bought by the Rio Jornal do Commercio company at end of 1916 and now published as the
Jornal do Commercio de São Paulo.

6. There is another railroad running off from Santos. It does not attempt the Serra, but follows
the flat coast to Itanhaen port, and then turns a few miles inland, passing Prainha, until junction
is effected with the Iguape river. Boats sail down from this point to Iguape port, notable as the
scene of settlement of Japanese rice growers a few years ago.

7. The Continental Products Company: capital and personnel came from the Sulzberger house in
Chicago.

8. Message of Dr. Altino Arantes to the S. Paulo Legislature, July 14, 1916:

“Foreign capital flowed here in search of convenient employment, but, instead of being destined
to new enterprises in the development of the great latent wealth of our State, it was localized in
railways already prosperous, whose income and control are by way of being totally alienated,
with grave prejudice and serious threats to the future of our State....

“It would be, in truth, blamable want of foresight to allow what is our own to pass to strange
hands, when we created it at the cost of our best efforts, constituting thus the most worthy
exemplification of our industry and our energy.”

9. Government: South of Pernambuco, Pernambuco Central, Paulo Affonso.

English: Conde d’Eu, Recife and São Francisco, Central Alagôas, Natal and Nova Cruz. The
Conde d’Eu dated from 1857.

10. For details of extreme interest in this connection, see A Madeira-Mamoré by Julio Nogueira,
printed by the Jornal do Commercio press of Rio in 1913, and A Crise da Borracha, by Eloy de
Souza, printed by the Imprensa Nacional, Rio, in 1915.

11. 32 to 36 milreis for the first year and 40 afterwards, for Type Seven beans.

12. Alqueire = 40 litres: Farinha = flour (of mandioca).

13. Professor Green says that he found one of these tree cottons in Rio Grande do Norte, of the
Mocó variety, sixteen years old and still yielding beautiful cotton.

14. In 1915 Brazil imported 805,000 barrels of American flour, 56% of the total and 605,000
barrels from the Argentine, or 41%, the remaining 4% coming from Uruguay; at the same time
she imported 14,000,000 bushels of wheat, of which nearly 12,000,000 came from Argentina and
about 2,000,000 from the United States. This wheat, at five bushels to the barrel, made another
2,750,000 barrels of flour, and the total Brazilian consumption may be reckoned at about
4,200,000 barrels of wheat-flour of foreign, plus 407,000 of native, origin. The c. i. f. price of
United States flour in Brazil in 1915 averaged $7.49 a barrel, while Argentine was able to deliver
hers, c. i. f., for $5.28.

15. Dr. Costa Pinto reckons over 58,500 tons; he counts 49,648 looms and 1,464,218 spindles,
each spindle taking 40 kilos of cotton annually.

16. Bertholettia excelsa.

17. Refusal to accept its own paper would of course have had the immediate effect of
dangerously depressing all Government issues.

18. There are in existence small copper coins, relics of the day long past when less than a
hundred reis would buy something, but they are not in circulation because they have no
purchasing power. The post office sometimes presents them as change for some fraction of 100
reis, and the recipient usually puts them into the hand of the first mendicante encountered
outside.

19. Since 1916 half a dozen Federal or State loans have been made to Brazil, successfully floated
by New York financial houses.

20. Brazil Railways securities are listed in dollars because the company which bought up or
leased a number of European-constructed enterprises, was, although financed entirely with
French, Belgian and British money, registered in the State of Maine.

21. Five years.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
between 15,000,000 “Foreign” and 10,000 between 15,000,000 “Foreign” and
166
Brazilian 10,000,000 Brazilian
million pounds sterling, fifteen hundred million pounds sterling, fifteen hundred
293
lives, is said to livres, is said to

 Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

 Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.

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