Part 42

The bay around which the city lies is famous for its beauty, and rivals that of Naples or the Golden Horn. The panorama is ever changing with the shifting clouds, and in this country everything is intense. Nowhere is the contrast between sunshine and shadow so strong, and the outlines of the clouds lie distinctly upon the landscape where their shadows fall, changing the tint of the foliage and flowers. The mountains, which furnish a noble background for the picture, are so steep, so rugged, and so high as to exaggerate the peace of the water, and furnish another striking contrast in their dark and frowning lines to the white buildings of the city and its countless towers. These mountains seem to enclose the town and the bay like a wall, and leave no passage in or out except at the entrance to the harbor, which is scarcely wide enough for two vessels to pass. Along their base lies the city, like a lazy white monster, sleeping under the shade of imperial palms in a garden of never-failing colors and eternal loveliness.

Viewed from the deck of a ship in the harbor, the city of Rio looks like a fragment of fairy-land--a cluster of alabaster castles decorated with vines; but the illusion is instantly dispelled upon landing, for the streets are narrow, damp, dirty, reeking with repulsive odors, and filled with vermin-covered beggars and wolfish-looking dogs. The whole town seems to be in a continual perspiration, and the atmosphere is so enervating that the stranger feels an almost irresistible tendency to lie down. There is now and then a lovely little spot where Nature has displayed her beauties unhindered, and the environs of the city are filled with the luxury of tropical vegetation; but there are only a few fine residences, a few pleasant promenades, and a few clusters of regal palms, which look down upon the filth and squalor of the town with dainty indifference. The palm is the peacock of trees. Nothing can degrade it, and the filth in which it often grows only serves to heighten its beauty. Behind some of the residences of the better classes are gardens in which grow flowers that baffle the painter’s skill, and foliage that is the ideal of luxuriance and gracefulness. They are little glimpses of green and gold in a desert of misery and dirt. A few years ago there was not even a sewer in Rio, and all the garbage and offal of the city was carried through the streets on the heads of men, and dumped into the sea. Now there are drains under the principal streets, but they seem to be of little use, as the main thoroughfares are abominable, and one wonders what the less pretentious ones may be. The pavements are of the roughest cobble-stone, the streets are so narrow that scarcely a breath of air can enter them, and the sunshine cannot reach the pools of filth that steam and fester in the gutters, breeding plagues.

The city is in the shape of a narrow crescent, lying between the mountains and the bay, nowhere more than half a mile wide, and stretching for a distance of nine or ten miles. It can never be any wider, but grows at either end. The chief residence street lies along the edge of the water, but the business houses are crowded into the lower portion of the town, damp, gloomy, and dismal, the streets being so narrow that carriages are forbidden to enter them during the busy hours of the day. A fire that would burn out the older portion of the city would be a blessing, and might redeem Rio from some of its filth and ugliness.

The public buildings are quite as ugly and unpretentious as the commercial houses. The city palace of the Emperor fronts the market-place, in which donkeys and carts are unloaded daily, and where the fish-boats land. It is impregnated by the stench of decaying vegetation, and has an ancient and fish-like smell. The structure looks more like a warehouse than the shelter of imperial power, and Dom Pedro will not live in it. He has two beautiful palaces in the country, in which he resides, and only comes to the city palace on occasions of public importance. The only presentable Government buildings are the post-office and printing-house, and many of the private residences are superior in every respect to anything the Government owns. The building in which Congress sits is a gloomy old pile, without a single redeeming feature, and a great empire like Brazil ought to be ashamed to house its Parliament in such a place.

The Rue Dineta is the Wall Street of Rio de Janeiro, and during the morning hours, while the Coffee Exchange is open, presents quite an animated appearance. Brokers and commission men, merchants, planters, agents of transportation lines, speculators, men of all ages and nationalities, assemble there to trade and gamble; and one can hear a dozen different languages in half as many groups. Most of the speculation is done in coffee, and in the buying and selling of exchange on London.

Nothing in Rio strikes an American as more singular than the nomenclature of the streets. Many of them, such as the “Seventh of September” and the “First of March,” are named after days on which something (no one seems to know exactly what) has taken place. There is one thoroughfare called the “Street of Good Jesus,” and the names of the saints are freely used. It seems a trifle queer to be directed to “No. 20 First of March Street,” or for a man to live at the corner of “St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist Streets,” but the Brazilians do not mind it.

The principal street in Rio is the celebrated Rua do Ouvidor. It is a narrow little alley-way, in which two carriages could not pass each other. In fact I never saw a carriage in

the street, and doubt if a driver would be bold enough to venture there. Here are the shops of the principal merchants, and the gorgeous stores of the artificers of feather flowers, and the dealers in gold and silver and precious stones. The street, from one end to the other, is filled at night with people, not on the narrow sidewalks only, but completely filling the thoroughfare from wall to wall. Officers of the army and navy, and soldiers and sailors, all in uniform, mingle with the crowd, and flash their gold lace in the bright light that floods the street. Everywhere, too, are the elaborate mulatto gendarmes, the police of the city. From the _cafés chantants_ come the sounds of music and the clinking of glasses. At little tables in the cafés the Brazilians sit, drinking strong coffee or other beverages, talking, gesticulating, and never for a moment completely at rest. Catching a weasel asleep is easy compared with that of catching a Brazilian when some portion of his body is not in motion. This is owing to the amount of strong black coffee they drink. A Brazilian proverb says that coffee, to be good, must be “black as night, as bitter as death, and hot as sheol.”

The total abstinence cause has few if any supporters in Brazil. Everybody drinks--men, women, and children. The police records show that men do get drunk here, but they are very seldom seen. The laboring classes drink a vile beverage called _casasch_, which is made of the juice of the sugar-cane in the regular distillery fashion. But moderate as the Brazilians are in the use of liquors, they are decidedly immoderate in the use of coffee. It is coffee the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, coffee at meals and coffee between meals, and all of it made according to the proverb.

Rio is a succession of disappointments. The only really pretty place is the Botanical Garden, which serves to illustrate what the whole city might be with the exercise of a little taste and the expenditure of a trifling sum of money. Here are colonnades of palms which surpass anything on the globe, and which are worth a journey to Brazil to see. Here are all the plants and trees that the country produces, and no land is so rich in vegetation as Brazil. Flowers of the most gorgeous hues, orchids that are wonders of color, and a representation of the virgin forests of the Amazon, a tangled mass of wild, luxuriant vegetation, full of birds of the most brilliant plumage, bugs that look like animated gems, and flowers of scarlet, purple, and yellow, that make the forest appear as if it were ablaze. Every color is intense.

There are no delicate tints and no gentle hues. The flowers have no perfume, and the birds no songs. The whole country seems to be painted yellow and red.

Strangers always visit the fish-market, where all sorts of shiny creatures are to be found, most of them peculiar to the waters of Brazil. The whole business is conducted by auction, and the fish are sold by the basket to the highest-bidder men, who have retail places throughout the city, or who peddle them in the streets. All varieties of food are peddled about the town, and the venders attract attention by clapping pieces of wood together and uttering peculiar cries. There are drinking-booths along the street at which all sorts of beverages can be obtained, from goats’ milk to brandy, and casasch is sold by the bucketful. There are plenty of street-car lines, and all the population ride. The cars are always crowded, and everybody reads a morning paper as he goes down-town, and an evening paper on his way home.

Foreigners are generally puzzled to know why the horse-cars in Rio are called “bonds.” It happened in this way: When the first horse railroad was built in Rio bonds were issued to pay for it. There was a great talk about these bonds, and the uneducated were at a loss to know what the English word meant. When they saw the first car they thought they had found a solution of the question, and all exclaimed, “There is one of those much-talked-of bonds.” So all over Brazil a horse-car is a “bond” to this day.

It is noticed that every ox-cart in Brazil creaks with the most soul-reaching sounds. I asked a cartman why he did not grease its wheels. He replied that the creaking stimulated the animals, and they would not work without it.

Humming-birds are plenty as flies about Rio, and the natives call them _be aflores_ (kiss flowers). At night the air is full of myriads of fire-flies that look like a shower of stars. To one who makes a tour of South America before going to Brazil, it seems as if all of the homely women on the continent had emigrated there, for pretty ones are extremely scarce. Their complexions are sallow, and they all have a bilious look. Another oddity is that the women are invariably fat and the men are invariably lean. Their complexions are ruined by the climate, and the lives of indolence they lead give them a tendency to obesity, which is augmented by the excessive use of sweetmeats. The women are munching confectionery from morning till night, and scarcely eat anything else, and their time is divided between dozing in a

rocking-chair or peeking through the blinds to see the people on the streets. One can ride about Rio all day without seeing a Brazilian lady, and the only glimpse a man ever gets of them is during the evenings at the cafés or at the playhouses, unless he gets out early in the morning and sees them on the way to mass.

At six o’clock every morning the streets are full of women on their way to church, at seven o’clock they are on their way to their homes, and at half-past seven there is not one to be seen. In the evening, when the gas is lighted, they pour from the houses into the streets, the parks, the ice-cream booths, and the theatres. There they appear in their Paris finery, overloaded with jewellery, munching candy, nibbling ices, and gossiping.

Next to her complexion, the ugliest thing about a Brazilian woman is her voice. It sounds as if the parrots had taught her to speak, and when you hear it behind the blinds, as one often does, it is always a matter of doubt whether “Polly” or her mistress is talking. But the Brazilians do not call their parrots Polly, as we do. The common name is “Loreta.”

A Brazilian woman never goes shopping. Servants are sent for samples; and if it is a bonnet the señorita wants to buy, a box or basket containing all the latest Parisian styles is sent up for her inspection. Most of the purchasing is done in this way, and a woman is seldom seen in a shop. But in all of these remarks the negroes are excepted. The streets swarm day and night with gorgeously dressed Dinahs, wearing turbans that would shame a passion-flower for color, and usually yellow or red gowns. They chatter like magpies, and seldom seem to be going anywhere or to have any object in life beyond gossiping with the friends they meet.

More attention is now paid to female education in Brazil than formerly. At one time it was only necessary for a señorita to know how to read her prayer-book and to embroider, but of late seminaries for females have been established, and the nuns compelled to enlarge the curriculum of convent study. The Brazilian woman is now beginning to receive the respect that modern civilization demands for her, and is no longer kept as a plaything for man. She is intelligent, learns readily, and has considerable wit, but never reads anything except the fashion papers and translations of French novels. A bookseller told me that the demand for the last named was increasing largely, and that where he sold only one ten years ago he sells a hundred nowadays. Education in music and the lighter arts is also becoming popular, as the increased sales in music and painting and drawing materials show. The Brazilian woman has always been famous for her embroidery, and her house is full of the most beautiful work, the doing of which she has learned from the nuns.

In Rio social restrictions are being removed, the two sexes are allowed to mingle with greater freedom than formerly, and society is beginning to assume a new phase. Occasionally grand balls are given, and within the last few years the natives have acquired the habit of occasionally visiting one another’s houses socially with their wives--something that was unknown a few years ago. The etiquette of modern society was reversed in Brazil not many years ago. If a man bowed to a female acquaintance, or addressed her, except in the presence of her husband, father, or brother, it was considered an insult, to be punished with a blow, but now it is considered entirely proper for ladies and gentlemen to converse together. There remains, however, the old system of formal calling or exchanging visits. Ladies never go out alone to call on their friends, and no gentleman will be received at a house when the husband or father is absent.

The theatres of Rio are numerous and well attended, but are neither handsome nor well arranged. There are French, Spanish, and Portuguese performances, and during the winter season an Italian opera two or three times a week, which is liberally patronized by the upper classes. The performances at the opera as well as at the theatres are considered only an adjunct to social conversation, however, and because of the talking going on around him during the play, one can scarcely hear what is said by the performers. Connected with every theatre is a garden and café, and between the acts the people repair to these places. Ice-cream and all sorts of beverages are served, and confectionery of course. They have recently built the great Theatre Dom Pedro Segundo, larger than La Scala or San Carlo, and said to have a seating capacity of eleven thousand. In building this theatre the matter of size has rather been overdone, for a large portion of the audience is unable to hear the opera. The Emperor has two boxes in the opera-house--one a small private box, and one a great and gorgeous box of state. When the venerable gentleman is out spending the evening somewhere, and wishes to visit the opera quietly for a moment, he goes into his private box, and sits there without causing unusual attention; but when he goes in state he occupies the large box. Then he dashes up to the theatre with his guards, equerries, and gentlemen-in-waiting. As he enters the box the orchestra strikes up the stirring imperial hymn, the people rise, and shout, “Viva Dom Pedro Segundo!” the Emperor bows, smiles, takes his seat, and the opera proceeds.

The hotels in Brazil are very bad. There are two or three small ones, which furnish tolerably good rooms and good living, but they are usually crowded, and a stranger coming to the city finds it difficult to procure rooms. The city might support a very fine hotel, such as is found in Montevideo and Santiago, but at present there is nothing to compare with the accommodations found in those cities. Rio is about as badly off for hotels as any city in the world. The meats and fish served are usually of a poor quality, but the fruits are excellent. There is no such fruit to be found anywhere, either for variety or for deliciousness of flavor, and the wines are usually good. Good wine can always be procured throughout Spanish America. If a Spaniard were limited to a crumb of bread and a drop of water per day, he would always expect a bottle of wine to go with it. The strawberries and grapes of Brazil are unusually fine, and are grown the whole year round. The peaches are also very good; but the principal fruits are bananas, oranges, pineapples, chirimoyas, sapotes, and some other things that we do not find in temperate climates.

So far it has been found impossible to raise good cattle in Brazil, although the province of Rio Grande de Sul, being the most southerly, has a cooler temperature, and ranchmen have been utilizing the ranches to be found in the interior on the border of Uruguay. Cattle-breeding is chiefly in the hands of the natives, and the horses come over the Uruguay border. The stock cattle sell for from five to six dollars a head, while fat cattle are worth about twelve dollars. The larger amount of the beef and mutton supply of Rio de Janeiro comes by steamer from the Argentine Republic.

The native dishes are peculiar, and are not palatable to those who do not care for an unlimited amount of garlic. In fact, a stranger going into the interior cannot find anything to eat but boiled eggs, for these are the only articles the native Brazilian cook cannot spoil. Grease and garlic do not penetrate the shells; but even eggs are unreliable, for the natives seem to have no idea of any difference in them, and use them in all conditions of age, and often in the transition stage of being.

Among the important articles used for the table is jerked beef. Immense quantities of it are imported from the Argentine Republic and Uruguay, and it is shipped here by the ton. It is said that thirty thousand tons of it are annually imported into Brazil, and it furnishes the staple food for the slaves on the plantations and the common people in the cities. Jerked beef and beans are always to be found on the table, and both mixed in a stew with plenty of garlic compose the omnipresent national dish. _Bacalao_, or codfish, is considered a great delicacy, and about seventy-five thousand tubs are annually imported from Nova Scotia and the United States. The people in Brazil are so fond of it that they will use it at any time in preference to the fresh fish of their own waters; but the Yankee would not recognize either the codfish or the beans in this country, mixed up as they usually are in an _olla podrida_ of yam, cabbage, and garlic.

The foreign commerce of Brazil is in the hands of the English, and the retail commerce in the hands of the French and German. In fact, nearly nine-tenths of the commercial community of Rio de Janeiro is composed of foreigners. There are very few Americans there, however, and that is one reason why our trade with that country is so small. The native Portuguese are usually the land-owners, the planters, and professional men; and there is a very large body of officials, composed to a great extent of the decayed aristocracy.

At all the public gatherings in Rio these people appear in uniforms or court dresses, decorated with stars and crosses so numerously and inappropriately bestowed as to border on the ridiculous. Many boys, apparently not more than fourteen or fifteen years of age, can be seen at these gatherings, wearing tawdry silk and velvet dresses, and stars which have been obtained by inheritance or by purchase. There used to be a custom under which patents of nobility, with stars and crosses, and “the insignia of the order of Christ,” which was the highest decoration, could be obtained by purchase, and the rage for these decorations attained a greater height in Brazil probably than in any other country. At one time almost every petty shopkeeper in the empire might be seen on the streets on holidays with a “habito de Christo” on his breast. These purchased honors were worn by the dignitaries of the Church as well as by civilians of all degrees, and being handed down from the generation that lived when such

things could be procured by purchase, still exist in great numbers among the people of the country. In the present generation the decorations of the empire are given to those only who have performed some service for the State, and cannot be secured by purchase.

The prevailing costume of the people in the country is just as it was a hundred years ago. They wear broad-brimmed hats with low crowns, tied with a ribbon under the chin; velveteen jackets, and waistcoats of gay colors, with metal buttons; linen or cotton drawers; high black gaiters buttoning up to the knee, and a sort of mantle similar to that used in Portugal, generally lined with red, thrown negligently over the shoulders; but on the sea-coast people dress in the European style. In Rio there is a great deal of rivalry in toilets among the ladies. As in other cities of South America, the gentlemen usually dress in broadcloth suits, patent-leather boots, and black silk hats, or in white duck or linen.

The school system is very meagre, but is improving. There are in the empire 2000 public schools for a population of 12,000,000 people, and the State expends annually $8,000,000 for public instruction. During the last few years, at nearly every session of Parliament, the Government introduced a compulsory education bill; but the bill has never become a law. The upper classes have an inclination for education; but nothing is ever done by the Government towards educating the slaves. The little learning which they acquire is received from the priests.