There is one train up from Santos to Sao Paulo at dawn and one after business hours. A coffee merchant has extended the courtesy of the club-car which daily brings and returns the bankers and merchants of this busy but sickly port. Half the men in this car are Brazilian, some of pure Portuguese descent, others with strains of African or Indian blood; the remainder are German, English and American. The journey takes two hours and a half, so they proceed to play poker, with a few exceptions, who prefer chess or cribbage, or have a big "home mail." They are all too accustomed to these beautiful mountains to look out of the windows as you do, except to count coffee cars and estimate to-morrow's receipts. You see many air-plants lodged among the trees with spikes of pink blossoms, which look like hyacinths at a little distance. Close by you would think the hyacinth much prettier and like its fragrance better. The tropical forest is an impenetrable thicket. You see the face of it only. A car going up the mountain must be attached to a cable weighted at the other end by a balancing car going down the parallel track. In this way passengers and thousands of carl of coffee are transported by three successive, long, steep inclines. At the top you wait until all the cars of your train are cabled up; the train is joined and starts for Sao Paulo, over level, open country.
Judging from the din of porters and carriages at the station, Sao Paulo is very much alive. The hotel is in the midst of stores. You are taken to a suite of two huge rooms and asked a great price. You had said you wanted one room. Argument ensues. The rooms belong together. You affirm that you will have but one. There is no access to the farther room but through yours; would you afflict the hotel? You persist in taking the one, and at night hear voices in the other and know the owners found their resting-place by some other door than yours. That was only a white lie. That's nothing!
After dinner you rest in an Austrian bentwood chair (the universally prized furniture, with no upholstery for insects and dampness, nor joints which come unglued), and read your lesson; for in traveling one reads all the available literature about the place one is visiting. It is little in English you have found about the city of Sao Paulo. You know it is now the educational center of all Brazil: that it is more than three hundred years old, with 200,000 people; that it has furnished two Presidents for the new republic, and many statesmen; that it has a charming mingling of tropical and temperate climates: that England, France and Germany have the import business rather than the United States.
Coming down on the steamer you became deeply interested in all you heard of it. A nobleman, who shared his Emperor's banishment ten years ago when the republic began, was making a brief visit to his old home. One day he said very sadly to some American people of Brazilian experience: "What do you think of my country since the republic?" The gentlemen replied: "It has improved in many ways." The Count said: "You are republicans, of course; yet is not my country very different from yours?" "Yes, because there has been no education of the common people, and they have not been accustomed to self-control." Then an outline of what American missionary schools are trying to do for all grades, "gentle and simple," in this city, was given, to his great surprise.[5]
[5]See Appendix.
Here are items you find in your reading:
"Less than thirty years ago it was common for men to lock their wives and daughters securely in the upper story when they went to business, or if absent for any length of time to deliver them to a convent for safekeeping. No respectable woman could go alone on the streets of any of the large towns.
"The story of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba is the story of Brazil and all countries where Rome has held undisturbed sway. In the seventeen and one-half millions of Roman Catholic Brazilians there is 82 per cent. of illiteracy and an enormous per cent. of illegitimacy and crime.
"The first missionaries of the Presbyterian Board landed in Brazil in 1860. Every avenue to knowledge was held by the State Church and the Jesuits had control. Private schools were subject to priestly inspection. Protestantism was fiercely opposed by State, Church and people. Men who dared to preach the Gospel publicly, risked their lives."
In 1885, their schools had been opened fifteen years. "Under the influence of Protestantism, or at any rate coincident with the growth of Presbyterian schools and churches in Brazil, new and more liberal educational laws were enacted. Influences were at work in society which in the near future were to abolish slavery, overthrow monarchy, set up a government of the people and separate Church from State."
In 1889 "Mackenzie College" was begun. In 1890 their record stands: "A boys' boarding school, a girls' boarding school, and a day school in the rua Sao Joao, with thirteen rooms for teaching purposes—a normal department with four rooms, all full to overflowing—an enrolment of four hundred and forty-seven pupils in all grades from kindergarten to high school. Eighteen primary schools in different parts of the field with an efficient corps of native teachers, and a self-supporting manual training school."
The report up to date (1900) is: "The enrolment for the year was 546, with a very high average attendance. There were 339 Brazilians, 48 Germans, 38 Italians, 18 Americans, 14 French, 12 English and 17 of other nationalities. Roman Catholics, 427; Protestants, 117; Israelites, 2. This completes the twenty-ninth year of the school and the tenth year of the college." A footnote explains that the numbers have not grown the last few years because there is not an inch more room to put a pupil in.
The Rev. Geo. W. Chamberlain was the founder of these schools. At the beginning boys and girls had not been accustomed to meet each other with any freedom. Evil was very evil and very universal. A Brazilian General of high rank, and the last Governor of the province of Sao Paulo under Emperor Dom Pedro, General Couto Magelhaes (Magellan, a descendant of the old explorer), later became Mr. Chamberlain's friend, and begged for more American teachers and a larger school for co-education!! as he had now seen it developed. Indeed he said, "The only hope of Brazil lies in such co-educational schools." Query. Did Prof. Agassiz plant the germ of this thought when they went up the Amazon together?
Next day you take a carriage and try to get a general sense of the town. You have heard the State of Sao Paulo called the "New England of Brazil." But if you call the city of Sao Paulo the Boston, the difference is most apparent. The narrow, crooked streets are similar, but the buildings are like those in all Spanish and Portuguese towns.
As you go down the poorer streets, one word comes to you at every turn of your eye, "unclean"—the children, the grown-ups, the houses, the streets, even the emblem of the Holy Spirit which an appointed solicitor of his parish church carries while he begs funds for the celebration of the annual holiday of this member of the Trinity. When I saw one of these I mistook it at a little distance for a pole with a cast-off bonnet on top—a cluster of dilapidated artificial flowers and a bird. Investigation proved the latter a dove!
While many streets are lined with one-story hovels, there are many brand quite well-paved thoroughfares, and you see these with pleasure. Solid walls higher than your head shut most of the pretty gardens from view, but you get glimpses of comfortable one and two-story houses, the bright colors soft and pleasing. Now and then the Portuguese style is supplanted by the French mansard, and you may guess the owner has been to Paris. Indeed, if he travels far in any direction, he must go on horseback, or on the Atlantic.
Gas, electric lights, street-car lines, sewers, public buildings, and parks, all add to the comfort of living in this old metropolis.
You drive through the finest part of town on your way to the Avenida (Boulevard) and to see the modern reservoir with fine water-works, and isolating hospital, just built by an ambitious government. On the slope of the ridge up which you drive, you see for a long distance a plain, square, substantial three-story, buff brick structure. "What is that?" "Mackenzie College." In this city of ornate architecture and brilliant coloring this solid plainness is nearly droll. But it is just so much more noticeable. Everybody knows Mackenzie College. The low, insufficient dormitory, house for little boys, manual training shop and President's dwelling dot the campus, not a foot of which can be spared to be sold if only they can get money to build a dormitory. Descending to the town again you pass the new Government Normal School building and go to see the teachers at the Sao Joao school. Plain brick again. Heavy wall around the grounds. What a bee-hive inside! You go through one full schoolroom after another with Miss Scott. The children are so well disciplined they scarcely notice you. The faces are pretty and bright. What surprises you most are the exquisite writing of the young Brazilian teachers on the black-boards, the order and attention in every room whether governed by American teachers or Brazilian who have been trained here, the devotion of the wee new scholars to Miss Baxter and the perfect cleanliness, system and good food which Miss Munson secures. Surely Dr. Lane and Miss Scott, who guide this combination day and girls' boarding-school, ought to be happy, thankful and proud, and the men and women in the U. S. whose gifts have made this school a possibility ought to be grateful also. The children come from families of the rich and the poor, of title and missionaries, of many nationalities, and differing religious belief. But the mental and moral discipline has challenged the attention of the Government to such an extent that it has been building several remarkable buildings for schools, and teachers trained in this "American School" have been invited to assist in developing the work in them. Many are the tales you will be told, while you stay, of a Boston school-ma'am who was lent by the American school to inaugurate the first years of work in the new Government Normal School. The question of Bible and religion in the Government schools is the same in Sao Paulo and Chicago, but the other religious opportunities and influences are not the same. If any education of our Protestant type is given to Brazilian youth (not sectarian, but Protestant) it cannot be left to Brazilian fostering. Infidelity, spiritualism, and materialism abound.
When Sunday comes you can choose between three Protestant services, two Presbyterian and one Methodist, all in Portuguese, or the Church of England service in English. Perhaps you prefer to go early to mass. There is ample opportunity for that, and then the day would be a free holiday, so says the majority in the city.
You may go to the Catholic cemetery on high ground, commanding a fine view of the city. In the thick wall surrounding it are receiving cells for coffins, which can be rented for varying lengths of time. It is a reproduction of such a place in Spain, the West Indies or New Orleans, including the durable wreaths of flowers made of metal, of bisque or of beads, often also photographs under glass. Women never go to a funeral. The hearses and coffins are of brilliant colors, purple, or scarlet, or yellow, and gold.
You must watch the people come and go at the hotel and amuse yourself again with their trunks. Here is a complete set of French ones—real Louis Vuittons made for every sort of contents, even one for the huge tin wash-pan which will be used for my lady's clothes. How long since you had seen a real old-time "hair-trunk," i. e., a trunk covered with calf-skin with its hair on! Here they are, studded with brass nails, initials and all! But the tin trunks were the drollest, till you finally bought one yourself and found how well it kept out dampness. The tin ones are all sizes and all colors—decorated. Yours is a nice bright blue, with red roses painted in a stiff bunch on top.
You are rapidly learning the value of sunshine in damp climates. You hang out your clothing and shoes at least once a week in the hot sun until the particles of mold are entirely dry, so they will not be pasty, then brush them thoroughly. Your gloves you buy, without metal buttons, which discolor, only a few at a time, and keep them with lumps of dry ammonia in a tight glass jar or tin biscuit box. You do not trim your dresses with steel. That would rust. When you buy a new hat-pin it has a gilt or brass, not a steel, pin. You keep an eye to your needles and scissors.
A few insects will give you something to talk about when you reach home, but they are not much more troublesome than home-pests.
The flea (pulga) takes the place of mosquitoes. He does not keep you awake with singing, and if you compel careful cleaning of your rooms and do not cherish vagabond dogs you will not find him a serious trial after the first fortnight or so. I do not know whether it was a truth spoken in jest or how to characterize the assertion of an old resident who said that his own home fleas never bit him. It was only in other people's houses that he suffered. One does at least seem to grow bite-proof.
A borachuda bite is more rare but more interesting. He looks like a feeble baby fly. He bites your hand in the shadow, on the sly, and the spot indurates besides inflaming, and lasts longer than the other sorts of bite, but is not serious.
The barata is like a huge cockroach. He loves leather, shoes, traveling bags, passe-partouts, bindings. Starch and glue are also acceptable articles of diet to him. With strict housekeeping he is banished. You see how convenient a tin trunk will be if you really travel in all sorts of places, to protect a few of your valuables, now and then.
Now you know the worst there is to know, unless it may be the early puzzles of an American housekeeper here. First as to ice. You can get some if you will, but most people do not. It is considered most unwholesome to drink ice-water. I cannot myself see the superiority of an evaporating water-jar of porous terra cotta, for it has a slender neck and could only be rinsed, never washed and absolutely cleansed, I should think. I admit the chill of the ice-water may be bad in yellow-fever regions. Most people and most shops have no refrigerators. Meat is eaten the day it is killed, and is called carne verde, green meat. This is the tempting label on butchers' carts. I remember going to dine with a lady who was a fine housekeeper. The turkey was as tender as one from Rhode Island or Philadelphia. I asked the secret. She said that before it was killed that morning she had fed it whisky until it staggered.
Every house of pretension has its "dispense," or locked closet, from which the housekeeper every morning counts out or weighs out exactly what is to be used by the cook for the meals of the day. The cook usually goes to market, being able to beat down the prices to the proper point with better grace than the presiding genius of the house. Besides he or she can bring home the purchases in a basket, and there is no further doubt as to whether the article purchased is the one delivered. The great markets are worth a visit. You will go at least to the chief one, in the heart of town, in a great, light market-building which would be a credit anywhere.
You visit an English bride who came with her new husband on your steamer, and is to live in Sao Paulo. Her wedding presents have been delayed in the custom house, and are but just received after paying duties the equal of $400, in American money! It was only the usual collection of gifts to the average bride, but the duties are excessive on silverware and on any bric-à-brac or furniture having gilt mountings. Fabrics and even rugs are dutiable by weight. You have lifted an Oriental rug. She had one. She also had, unfortunately, a whole "bolt of American muslin"—too close-woven and heavy for Brazilian customs. She is trying to decide whether her sala shall be altogether British or partly Brazilian in arrangement. An afternoon tea-table will seem like home to her. She settles upon bentwood furniture, cane-seated of course, and arranges sofa and chairs with elastic reference to Brazilian custom. The sofa occupies a prominent place, two mate armchairs face each other at right angles to the sofa, making three sides of a conversational square, nicely accommodating four persons. The genuine Brazilian would go on adding to the two chairs at least two more on either side of the sofa. His guest would take the chair farthest from the sofa while waiting for the host, and a seat on the sofa at the end of the aisle of chairs would be the high honor which could be extended by the host when he comes in.
She has an oil-stove, too, which is an occasional comfort in the cool evening or on a rainy day when even an umbrella will not dry.
Her handsome mahogany furniture is a comparative trial here, for the Brazilians have a cheaper hard wood of the same color from which many ordinary articles are made, and some other would have been far more elegant, black walnut for instance!
You are by this time entirely accustomed to the universal toothpick, smoothly made of orangewood, really a perfection of a toothpick; for every Brazilian has used one at intervals throughout every meal on the steamer and at hotels since you left Lisbon; also to the universal cigarette, welcome in dining-room and salon. You also find that they hold American dentists in high esteem, and there are several good ones in Petropolis, Rio and Sao Paulo.
Walking down the street men lift their hats as they pass each Romish church. Every sort of package is carried on porters' heads, and the colored porters often fall into a rhythmical walk or trot as peculiar to them as the flourish of a black waiter in a restaurant in America.
A pleasant invitation comes to you to attend the English cricket match, a gay affair, with plenty to eat—and drink.
I remember while I was in Sao Paulo one cool July day talking over the news of the last package of New York Heralds (the paper, or its Paris edition, taken largely by American exiles in Brazil), with an Anglo-Brazilian friend. We had been discussing the unwholesomeness of ice. I showed her the subscription list to the "Herald Ice Fund for the Poor of New York City!" She could only think it $10,000 misplaced! So true is it that one needs really to live in a given climate or place to really appreciate its requirements.
Frequently, evenings, there is a blaze of fireworks for saints you do not know. One day you are invited to go with a party to the "Penha," one of the Madonna festivals, perhaps the greatest one here. It is celebrated a little distance from town, with scores of roulette wheels, and the people save their earnings for some time to gamble there to their hearts' content.
When I was in Sao Paulo a General Conference of Methodist missionaries convened. The men had come from long distances, several of them remote from railror seaboard. I went to their farewell meeting. It was held in a plain, whitewashed room. We were seated on long benches. There was little modern style about the garments or evidence of high living in the cheeks or eyes. Bishop Granbery presided with gentle dignity. Dr. Morrison made the address. He began by quoting the text, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." Looking about with a quiet, half-sarcastic smile, he said: "Brethren, I do not think any one will accuse any one here of laying up treasures on earth. Let us talk about treasures in heaven. Any of you who has found a poor, ignorant, debased soul here, and has patiently put his own life beside that life, and taught and developed and strengthened that life by God's help so that it is purer, holier, more Christlike, will find some treasure laid up in heaven. It will be the difference between that soul as he found it and what it becomes." I have had many occasions to recall that bit of sermon in my knowledge of American missionaries and their helpful work in Brazil, and so, I believe, will you.
It will always be a pleasure to remember the hospitality of both merchants and missionaries. Before leaving Sao Paulo, you must accept the offer of Dr. Lane, President of Mackenzie College, to go through not only his own preparatory classes and college, where you will find the first working laboratory for chemistry in a Brazilian school and the first manual training school, as well as plenty of classic Portuguese, Latin, and other things, but go through the Government schools as well, where he is always an honored guest. Then go to Cantareira with Prof. Orville A. Derby, the eminent Government geologist, and the young professors of the college. It is an easy day's excursion to the source of the water supply for the city. A train of open cars takes you through old gardens of roses, and out to the mountain streams, enclosed by first-rate engineering, and filtered and reservoired amid gardens and masonry most attractive. You can study a coffee-tree (or bush) of your own height, with shiny green leaves and bright red cherries, the pits of which are two coffee-beans lying with their flat sides together, and recall the enthusiastic description of a man who has just returned from a trip to a great coffee plantation in the interior.
"As one rides on horseback between the rows of coffee-trees his head is hardly visible above them. Call to mind the hedgerows of England, stretch them in straight, long lines with just room between for the pickers. A space twenty-five feet wide between every hundred rows is a rfor carts, but there are no cross streets. Starting from the edge of the fazenda (plantation) quite rapid riding for two hours brings one to the center view from a dome-shaped hill. In all directions as far as the eye can see there is nothing but coffee trees. The only visible ground is the deep red earth of the streets separating each hundred rows. It is a rolling prairie of living green, on a colossal scale. Two months earlier the blossoms covered it 'like a white sheet.' A little later this green will be brilliant with red cherries, the branches heavily weighted down by the fruit. This fazenda has 1,600,000 bearing coffee trees. The next has nearly 4,000,000 trees and is the largest in the world. Now I understand how this State produces more coffee even in a bad year than all the rest of the world outside of Brazil combined. Its possibilities in a good year are nearly double the crops other than those of Brazil. The quality is altogether finer than that known in the United States as Rio. This is what has brought English and German capital, increased the population of the city of Sao Paulo to 200,000 from 60,000 in 1884, and made the commerce of Santos what it is. Italians and Germans both work on these plantations and the one I have just described, which I have just visited, has fifteen hundred people living on the fazenda and constantly employed. The larger plantation, 'the Fazenda Dumont,' had a railrof some twenty miles for use on the plantation, and its connecting line running through the 'Fazenda Schmidt,' was used by Mr. Schmidt, my hospitable host, for shipping his coffee to the trunk line and so on down to Santos."
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