CHAPTER XIV

WANDERING IN MINAS GERAES

On December 13th our alarm-clock having gone astray and being evidently unreplaceable in Brazil, where time means so little, I sat up all night in order to rout “Tut” out at four and send him off to the station, following him next day up on the cool and comfortable plateau to the second town of Minas Geraes. Juiz de Fora lies in a deep lap of wooded hills, with a conspicuous monument and statue of “Christo Redemptor” on a little parked hilltop high above yet close to the city, and revealing its site from afar off. Fir trees, masses of roses of all colors, and other flora of the temperate zone add to stretches of densely green grass, so unlike the gravel or paved squares almost universal in South America, in making the town a pleasant place of sojourn. The country round about is very rolling and without a suggestion of the tropics, but its coffee is unfortunately small, poor, and ill-tended, grown completely over in places with weeds and creepers; and as the town depends almost entirely on this product, it had a squeeze-penny mood that was not natural to Brazil. Like many another Brazilian town, its name is of simple origin. A _juiz de fora_, or “outside judge,” went about the country on a regular circuit in colonial days, holding court in various places, of which the present town was the most distant, not from Rio, which had no official standing in the olden times, but from the ancient capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto.

It was toward Ouro Preto that I continued a day or two later, pausing in one town to make a contract with the local saloon-keeper, in another to find a cinema about the size of a box-car tight closed and the owner off traveling; in a third that turned out to be a mud village without electricity, even had I been willing to risk dragging our outfit through the atrocious streets to its toy theater. It was in the last that I boarded the northbound train an hour before it arrived, which is not what the Chileans call a “German tale,” but an everyday fact. For there the government railway, which comes that far with a gauge even wider than our own, suddenly changes to a meter in width, and I had already grown weary of sitting in the train I was waiting for when it rolled in and, transferring its contents to its narrower self, rambled on across the cool plateau.

Besides our cloth-mounted three-sheets, I had had printed several thousand posters and window-cards, and the towns of Brazil blossomed with Edison behind me. Then there were great bundles of _avulsos_, or handbills, of many colors, to be strewn among the eager populace when the show actually arrived. Except for the printer’s errors, which were legion, these new masterly appeals were all my own handiwork, as were the articles on the life of Edison which sprang up in the newspapers along my route, for I had at last almost tamed the mis-jointed Portuguese language. By the time our tour was finished Brazil would certainly have known the story of Edison far better than he knows it himself, had he not already been the best-known American in South America—with the possible exception of Franklin, whom thousands took to be his contemporary, often asking if the two great inventors sometimes worked together and were on good terms socially, or whether they raged with jealousy over each other’s achievements.

There were many tunnels on the way to Ouro Preto, and much winding among deep-green hills, the soil still reddish, but showing little cultivation. All this region is at least 3000 feet above sea-level, where corn feels more at home than bananas or even coffee. Herds of cream-colored cattle of part zebu ancestry roamed the broken, grassy countryside. It was a dull, showery day, and the wet green trees clung to the hillsides like the plumage of birds, while everywhere the palms stood with disheveled hair. We made several stops on the branch line eastward from Burnier, just why I do not know, and at length halted at an isolated building with the information that we had reached Ouro Preto.

On the train I had chanced to mention my business to one of several local celebrities in heavy overcoats, who quickly shouted the information to all within hearing, so that when I disembarked the negro hotel runners were already calling me “Doctor Franck.” One of them piled my baggage on his head and we set out on foot into the night, for Ouro Preto, I quickly discovered, is so steep that vehicles have never become acclimated there. As we panted upward past great sheer-cut bluffs, scattered lights gradually disclosed the town, piled and tumbled far above and below us, the round cobblestones of its precipitous streets worn so icy smooth by many generations of bare and shod feet that my own showed a continuous desire to lag behind me. In a hotel as old as Vasco da Gama, and about as dilapidated, I was shown with ceremonial courtesy into an enormous front room with a “matrimonial” bed wider than the street outside, the springs of which I quickly discovered to be solid planks. Recalling my courteous colored companion, I gave him five minutes in which to find me a real bed. We wandered much longer than that through a labyrinth of rooms and anterooms—the latter all with narrow bedsteads, suggesting the old slave days when each traveler brought with him a servant to sleep outside his door—before we found a _cama de arame_, or “bed of wire,” in another vast chamber, with a window looking out across what seemed to be a bottomless gorge to patches of small, window-shaped lights climbing high into the sky.

I went out for a stroll, climbing cobbled streets so sheer that a foot-slip would have landed me in quite another part of town, passing buildings so old and quaint and medieval that in spite of the modern lights Edison has bequeathed the place I expected some old Portuguese viceroy in his cloak and sword and plumed hat to step out of any dark passageway followed by his slaves and retainers and preceded by his link-boys. I had all but forgotten the “feel” of old South American mountain towns, with their something peculiarly their own, and could easily have fancied myself back in the Andes again. Indeed, I was only beginning to realize the charm of those old Andean pueblos, barely guessed when one is physically lost in their squalor, yet fascinating from a distance of time and space, every twist and turn and descent and rise of their streets a lurking mystery, like a winding mountain road, cool and silent—especially silent, in the absence of all wheeled traffic.

Ouro Preto means “black gold.” The hills and young mountains lying in tumbled heaps about the town are honeycombed with abandoned mines, as the town itself is said to be with secret subterranean passageways. Not even Ayacucho in the Andes is so overrun with churches. Only an accurate man could throw a stone without hitting one, most of them of light colored rock, beautified with age, bulking far above the few little old houses apportioned to each, both by their size and by their places of vantage on some eminence or mountain nose. Evidently whenever they killed a slave or committed some particularly dastardly crime the old Portuguese adventurers salved their consciences or quieted their superstitions by building a church. Between them the little old houses straggle in double rows far up every steep valley that has room for them, here connected by very old stone bridges over narrow, yet deep, gorge streams, with time-crumbled stone benches along them, there refusing to follow when the cobbled street suddenly lets go and falls headlong with many a racking twist into another abyss.

In general, the old capital of the mining province is built along both sides of a small swift stream, which spills down through town with a musical sound, picking up some of its garbage on the way. Old colonial ruins, built in the leisurely, plentiful, massive fashion of long ago, still bear coats-of-arms and cut-stone Portuguese emblems, some half-hidden behind masses of white roses or climbing flowers. Old fountains of variegated colors, very broken, much weather- and time-faded, still have tiny streams trickling forth from the stone mouths of human heads or strange creatures unknown to natural history; scores of quaint old balconies, mysterious corners, and queer porticos jut out over streets or abysses. There was evidently no building plan except that imposed by nature. Each householder built on his few feet of space at any height and slope he chose, so that although the buildings nearly all cling close together for mutual support, they present most fantastic combinations, each with its red-tile roof faded from bright to drab according to its age and situation.

In the main praça up at the top of the town, which is rectangular and square-cobbled and singularly quiet, is a statue of “Tiradentes” high up on a slim granite pedestal, his hair wild, his shirt open, his wrists weighted down with chains. This nickname of “Pull Teeth” was given a sergeant who, way back in 1792, started the first revolution for Brazilian independence, but who was captured, executed, and his head hung up in an iron cage in this same praça. There is a School of Mines, the principal if not the only one in Brazil, in an old viceregal palace that was later the seat of the state government until that honor was taken away from Ouro Preto. The Indians of Minas could not or would not be enslaved, and the workmen required in the mines were brought from Africa early and often. I do not recall a mountain town anywhere with so large a percentage of African blood, though it is not now, of course, pure African, for the old Portuguese settlers were not slow to dilute it with their own, and with the exception of a very few of the proud old families of Minas, who have overridden their environment and kept their veins free from the taint of slaves, there are not many of full white race. In the morning the inhabitants straggle home from the outdoor butcher-shop, carrying strips of raw meat by a grass string run through them; in the later afternoon the frequent clash of jogging horse-shoes on the irregular cobblestones calls attention to some young blood come prancing by the window of his desire, peering out from her window-ledge over the otherwise silent and almost deserted street.

As to my own job, I did not even have to go out to look for contracts, for as I sat reading the newspapers and recovering from a Brazilian lunch, there came slinking in upon me the local pharmacist and owner of the “Cinema Brazil.” He had heard that I had come, and why, and as he was eager to outdo his one rival in town, he—ah—er—he, too, had come. If we played in Ouro Preto it meant four important days—Christmas, followed by a Saturday and Sunday, and a Monday also, for the trains did not run on that day. The only entertainment in town, my visitor rambled on, in his eagerness to attract us, was that provided by two old Italian “women of the life,” who offered a song and dance nightly at the other cinema. At a town eight kilometers away there were many “Englishmen” employed in the gold mines, who would be delighted to come in and see their fellow-countryman Edison—what, he was not coming himself?—well then, his invention. No doubt _Senhor Edisón_ did not think poor old Ouro Preto worth visiting, now that it was no longer the capital, but it had many wonders even for a great inventor, if one really knew where to look for them. By this time I had handed him our printed contract, through which he carefully spelled his way, while I read several columns of newspaper. Then he brought me back to Brazil with, “Ah yes, very good, only—er—sixty per cent. is a very large percentage and——” At which point I broke in with “Why, I ought to charge you eighty per cent. for being way off here on a branch line, in a town without even wheeled vehicles!” Whereupon he shuddered and begged me to figure to myself that he had not said a word and, reaching for the contract, he signed it on the dotted line.

Rain was pouring and the night was still black when I followed my baggage down the steep cobbled road to the station. There I discovered, in a sudden flash of genius, why all Brazilian trains start at daylight and stop at dark; it is not because they are afraid to go home in the dark, but so that the languid employees will not have to light the car-lamps. Even the government night expresses rarely have more than a firefly of a gas-lamp or a couple of flickering oil-wicks in the end of each coach. Brazilians are not a nation of readers, and do not demand decent lights, though there is nothing to prove they would get them if they did. The print-loving stranger is often warned that it is dangerous to the health to read during, or just before, or until long after meals, which may be true, but the Brazilians themselves are living proof that it is still worse never to read at all. In most stations there are waiting-rooms only for women, and not a spot for the mere male to sit on unless he boards the train itself, which is also the favorite lounging-place of scores of the local population who have no intention of traveling on it. Here an affectionate crowd was embracing and fondling one another after the Brazilian fashion and gradually filling a tightly closed car in which it was not easy to breathe. It is really foolish, too, to ride first-class on the trains of the interior, for it means little more than paying double price, when the single is bad enough, for the privilege of sitting in a cane seat at one end of a car, instead of in a wooden one at the other. However, a few kind words may unhesitatingly be said for the railways of Brazil. One may leave all he possesses in a train seat and not only will no one touch it, but his fellow-travelers will stand for hours rather than disturb the smallest parcel left to hold a place. Nor is the baggage-smasher indigenous to Brazil. Several pieces of our outfit were delicate, yet during a year’s travel by every known means of conveyance except aëroplane through nearly every state of Brazil, it was never seriously injured—though on its return to my beloved native land it was badly damaged between New York and the Edison factory, an hour away.

Beyond the old town of Sabará, where the first of the gold that was to make Minas Geraes famous and Portugal wealthy was discovered in 1698, we turned westward and a few moments later sighted through bedraggled palm-trees the glaring new town of Bello Horizonte. No doubt it was to escape the labor of propelling themselves about the precipitous streets of Ouro Preto that led the calfless legislators of Minas Geraes to dethrone the time-honored old capital at the beginning of the present century and move the government to a hitherto uninhabited spot, justly called “Beautiful Horizon.” The site chosen on which to build to order this new capital is a broad shallow lap of rolling country, a bare, treeless landscape which abets the light-colored new buildings in producing a constant uncomfortable glare. It is strange that they did not choose a place with water, a lake or at least a river, which may be found even in the lofty State of Minas. As it is, there is only an insignificant creek creeping through town and an artificial pond in the center of an unfinished park in which the water is so red that even the swans paddling disconsolately about in it have a reddish hue. The designers have all the details of a complete city in mind; the difficulty is to carry out their well laid plans and produce one. For Bello Horizonte is visible proof that it takes more than houses, streets, and inhabitants to make a city. Its public buildings are large and plentiful. Whitewashed houses with bright new red-tile roofs lie scattered far and wide over the rolling landscape. Wide park streets with electric tramways stretch out in every direction in a wheel-shaped system evidently copied from Washington. But the broad avenues are still unpaved, unpacked stretches of red mud, resembling newly plowed potato patches, and one soon recognizes that they run nowhere, that they are an exotic, forced growth which men are still chopping farther back into the red flesh of the virgin, scrub-grown hills. A few have stretches of broad cement sidewalks lined with trees, but they are trees still in their swaddling clothes of protecting frames, or at best are half-grown and unfamiliar with their duty of giving shade and beauty and restfulness. Such grass as exists grows in scattered tufts over bare earth, in no way resembling sod. Though the houses are new, many of them are set in the beginnings of walled bush and flower gardens, with steep outside stairways leading to the real residence in the second story and having fanciful paintings of such scenes as Rio’s Beira Mar on the walls under the porches. They have an alien, unsatisfying appearance which suggests that it is better to let even towns grow up of themselves than to force them by hothouse methods. There are, of course, some advantages in a city, especially in a capital, built to order, but though modernity’s gain over medievalism is in some ways shown, Bello Horizonte lacks not only the charm of old Ouro Preto but even the air and spirit of a city. The whole place feels like a house one has moved into while it is still building over his head.

While they were about it, one wonders they did not build in stone, instead of adobe bricks and plaster. The impression that everything is built only for a temporary halt, by people who, like Arabian nomads, expect to move on again to-morrow, pervades all modern America, in sharp contrast to Europe and the ancient American Indian civilizations. But at least there are as yet no slums, unless one counts as such the large clusters of small new houses that were almost huts scattered through the several shallow valleys spreading out from the town. It is curious how a city draws houses about it like a magnet even when there seems to be nothing for the inhabitants to do but take in one another’s washing—or do one another’s governing. Though it offers free sites to any industry that will establish itself there, only the scream of a single small weaving mill is heard in Bello Horizonte. The city produces nothing except government for the state, and the man who comes into personal contact with that soon realizes that it “costs expensive” and is none too good governing at that. More fuss is made over the state president than over our own national executive. Negro soldiers in khaki and bright red caps guard his “palace” and great high-walled garden, parading back and forth day and night before all government buildings with fixed bayonets, not because there is any real danger—except to the unwary pedestrian who might run into the pointed blade of some sleepy guard—but because all Latin-America loves to make a show of deadly weapons even in time of peace. The population had the bland, sophisticated air of people already trained to city life elsewhere, like transplanted flora from other gardens of varied kind and situation. Strangers attract far less attention than in even larger interior towns, because here all are more or less strangers and the inhabitants have not lived long enough together to form that sort of closed corporation of old established towns, which not only makes a new and unfamiliar face an object of curiosity, but arouses a kind of distrust and annoyance among the native inhabitants.

The show reached Bello Horizonte before me and had done a good Saturday and Sunday business, but “Tut” reported that all records for “deadheads” were being broken. The manager was a bullet-headed mulatto—whose name, by the way, was Americo Vespuccio—and who did not have the moral courage needed to cope with the swarms of official beggars which infest a state capital. When the doors opened on Monday night I was lolling incognito nearby. The ticket-taker was a mulatto girl of about fourteen who thrust out her hand whenever anyone walked in, taking the ticket if there happened to be one to take, but paying no attention to the fact that as often as not there was none. Not only were there many people with monthly passes and permanent free tickets, but the negro management, being afraid of anyone with authority, real or pretended, had given everyone capable of manufacturing a shadow of excuse the conviction that he had the right to enter without payment. In the first few minutes I saw seventy persons enter without tickets, exclusive of the house employees and men in uniform. Then I burst into the manager’s office and informed him that he was going to pay us our percentage for every person who had not, and did not thereafter, pay an admission fee. He turned an ashy gray and begged me to take full charge at the door. I discharged the mulatto girl on the spot, made a ticket-box of my hand-grip by cutting a slot in it—hitherto ticket-takers had stuffed the tickets into their pockets or any other convenient receptacle—and proceeded to shock the good people of “Beautiful Horizon.”

An elaborately dressed man in a frock coat, accompanied by two women glittering with diamonds, pushed haughtily past.

“Your ticket, senhor?” I smiled, in my most ceremonial Portuguese.

“I never pay admission,” the man replied haughtily.

“And why don’t you?” I retorted, which wholly unprecedented question so dazed him that without a word he went back to the wicket and bought three tickets. The same incident was repeated dozens of times that evening.

Another favorite trick was for a man to enter with one or two women and purchase tickets only for them.

“Where is yours, senhor?”

“_Eu volto_” (I am coming back) was the unvarying reply, by which the speaker meant to imply that he was merely going to escort the ladies to their seats and come right out again, but in almost every case he remained an hour or more until the “Kinetophone” number had been run and came slinking out with the air of having kept eyes and ears tight closed during the performance.

No doubt many of the well-dressed, haughty individuals I sent to the box-office were state senators and the like, but what of it? We were paying heavily to support them, paying every time we moved from one town to another, every time we gave a performance, every time we left or entered a state, in addition to what we had paid to enter the country, every time we drew a check, or put up a poster, or inserted an advertisement, and even in my most charitable mood I could not see why we should give free entertainment to any government official who was not there in line of duty.

During the second section a chinless, pomaded popinjay in full evening dress, with an own-the-earth air, pushed scornfully past when I asked for his ticket. I stepped in his way, repeated my question, and finally laid a hand lightly on his arm, whereupon the manager, frightened to a kind of grayish pink, came running forward to assure me “It’s all right.”

“But who is he?” I insisted.

“I’ll tell you later,” whispered the trembling mulatto.

The chinless individual, who turned out to be the _delegado_, corresponding to our chief of police, remained only a few minutes, all the while plainly boiling with rage. As he came out he stopped before me—the rush having ceased I was seated—and in a voice and manner that no doubt scared ordinary people to death, he growled:

“Before you ever grasp anyone by the arm again you want to know who he IS!”

“Senhor,” I replied, without rising, which is a shocking insult even to the most petty Brazilian official, “I want to know who everyone is, and any man who is a cavalheiro will tell who he is under such circumstances in any civilized country, and until I know who he is I’ll catch him by the arm or by any other part of the anatomy that is handy.”

He went out, fuming at the nostrils, leaving me wondering if he would send a subordinate to place me under arrest, but abuse of authority had become so rampant that I would have been willing to explore the interior of a Brazilian prison to bring the matter to a head. When the performance was ended I cornered the manager in his office and forced him to pay us our share for every “deadhead” I had counted, and though he and his equally dusky assistant hastened to assure me that my demands were wholly justified and that they did not stop officials and ladies “because they did not have the courage of Americans,” there was something in their manner that told me they would have taken supreme delight in knifing me in the back. That evening I turned my papers, valuables, and revolver over to “Tut,” in order to be prepared for the probable next move of the _delegado_. But he must have suffered a change of heart, for thereafter even soldiers and policemen in uniform had orders to pay admission unless they were on duty and wearing their sidearms to prove it. Thenceforward every resident of Bello Horizonte who entered the “Cinema Commercio” either handed in a ticket or gave proof of his right to free admission, whether he was president, senator or state dog-catcher. When we had broken all records for the time and place, I ran the second section of the show myself, just to keep in practice against the day when I must become a motion picture operator, and went to bed leaving orders to be called at dawn. By this time “Tut” spoke considerable Portuguese—though, having learned it mainly from Carlos, he had many of the errors of grammar and pronunciation of Brazil’s laboring class—so that I left on my next advance trip with less misgiving.

Nowadays you can go to famous old Diamantina by rail. The world is building so many railways that there will soon be no place left for those who prefer travel to train-riding. I had little hope that the diamond town would prove worth the time and expense necessary to bring the Kinetophone to it, but I had a personal desire to see it, and also, though I could not get exact information on the subject, the map suggested that I might be able to cross on muleback from Diamantina to Victoria and thereby save myself a long and roundabout trip.

The rain had let up at last, though sullenly, like a despot forced out of power. All that day there came the frequent cry of “_chiero de panno queimado!_” (smell of burned cloth), whereupon everyone jumped up and shook himself—everyone, that is, except the advance-agent of the Kinetophone, who had ridden behind Brazilian wood-burners often enough to know how to dress for the occasion. Our “express” not only stopped but was sidetracked at every station, and every time it gave a sign of coming to a halt the passengers sprang up as one man, crying “_A tomar café!_” and poured out upon the platform, to return growling if even a dog-kennel of a station miles from nowhere was not prepared to serve them their incessant beverage. “Tut” used to say that the Brazilians drank so much coffee that their minds went to dregs. It is a curious paradox, too, that the Brazilian, often an unprincipled rogue in business, never dreams of cheating the coffee-man out of his _tostão_, even if he has to exert himself to hunt him up and pay it before scrambling aboard again as the warning-bell rings.

Beyond Sete Lagoas the country began to flatten out, with patches of corn in new clearings, then more and more heavy brush and only the red-earth railway cutting and a wire fence on either side. Curvello, the largest town of the day, was almost a city, but so largely made up of negro huts that it probably would not have paid us to make it a professional visit. The traveler never ceases to wonder how all Brazil came to swarm so with negroes; all the ships of Christendom could not have brought so many from Africa, and the original slaves must have multiplied like guinea-pigs. In the afternoon I got reckless and bought an apple, which only cost me a milreis—but then, it was a very small apple. Far up here in the interior prices seemed to be easing off a bit, but this was largely offset by the lack of small change. In contrast to Rio, there was almost no silver or nickel, which made an excellent excuse for plundering the traveler of a few _tostões_ every time he approached a ticket-window, and forcing him to accept dirty old bills often patched together out of six or seven pieces that were completely illegible.

It would have been sunset, had there been one, by the time we pulled into Curralinho, whence a branch line carries a two-car train three times a week to Diamantina. I believe I was the only first-class traveler with a ticket next day, one having a kilometer-book and the rest government passes or uniforms. There was not a woman on board, though one man with a government pass had with him a boy of seven who, the conductor weakly declared, should pay half fare; but he did not insist and let the matter slide in the customary Brazilian way. No wonder the Belgian syndicate which built this line and another starting toward Diamantina from Victoria hovers on the verge of bankruptcy, though my own ticket cost 14$800, plus 1$600 for the federal government and 1$600 for the State of Minas, or $5.80 for ninety-five miles of uncomfortable travel.

Except in spots the country was almost _sertão_, a bushy wilderness with here and there long piles of wood for the engines. We crossed the Rio das Velhas, flowing northward and inland, carrying red earth in solution and pieces it had torn away from the forests through which it had commandeered passage. There were some cattle and here and there a patch of bananas in a hollow with a hut or two, but the rest was a desolation of black rock, which proved to be white inside where the railroad builders had broken into it. Rare patches of corn were the only visible cultivation; between scattered collections of miserable adobe huts there appeared to be no travel; the listless part-negroes lolling their lives contentedly away in their kennels seemed to raise nothing but children and, not being cannibals, it was a mystery what they lived on. Slowly and painfully we climbed to the top of a great ridge, a wild country of barren rocks heaped up into hills that were almost mountains, drear and treeless as the landscape of Cerro de Pasco. No wonder the men who wandered up here seeking their fortunes thought the bright pebbles they picked up worth keeping, if only to break the melancholy monotony.

Beyond a miserable collection of huts where those of robust nerves ate “breakfast,” we passed the highest railway point in Brazil, 4,600 feet above sea-level, whence vast reaches of dreary country, broken as a frozen sea, spread to the horizon in all directions. The last station before Diamantina looked like a town in Judea, so ugly was the desolation that surrounded it, and across this one gazed as vainly for the city which the map proclaimed near at hand as one may stare for a glimpse of La Paz from the plains of Bolivia high above it.

Ten years before, one traveled on muleback all the way from Sabará to reach the heart of Brazil’s diamond-bearing territory, and only this same year had the inaugural train reached Diamantina, amid hilarious rejoicing of its population. In the few months that had passed since, the inhabitants had not lost the sense of wonder which the tri-weekly arrival of the puffing monster on wheels gave them, and though it was Christmas Day, nearly the whole town had climbed to the station to greet us. For climb they must. A youth of decided African lineage took my bag and we stepped over the edge of the uninhabited plateau, to find a town heaped up directly below us, all visible roads and trails pitching swiftly down into it. The medieval streets were rough-paved in misshapen cobbles, with a kind of sidewalk of naturally flat stones running down the center. The town was labyrinthian, its narrow blocks of every possible form between the narrower streets, built to fit the lay of the land, spilling down on the farther side into a deep valley and backed on all sides by a rough and savage landscape of blackish hue as far as the eye could see. It was as picturesque as Ouro Preto, which it seemed to equal in age, though it had been somewhat less elaborately built than the old state capital, and its churches were fewer, smaller, and more insignificant. The fact that here also there were no vehicles may be one of the reasons why the population seemed so healthy and active—climbing to the station alone proved that—in spite of their decidedly preponderating negro blood.

The railroad had not yet brought them long enough into contact with the outside world to spoil the simple people of Diamantina. They seemed to live together like a great affectionate family, soft-mannered and little given to quarreling, even the street boys treating one another like French diplomats. No doubt it was their negro blood, perhaps also the adventurous happy-go-lucky, take-a-chance character natural to a mining community, that gave them their considerable gaiety. There was no evidence of anything but kindliness and good-feeling among the barefoot women who stopped to gossip with water-jars set jauntily on their heads—real jars, too, for Diamantina is so far away from the world that American oil tins have not yet come to usurp the place of picturesque native pottery. As final high praise, my hotel host asserted that the town is so different from the rest of Brazil that a man can occasionally visit a family with unmarried daughters without bringing them into disrepute among public gossips. It is, indeed, a Brazilian Utopia!

I was Diamantina’s star guest during my stay, having the main room in the main hotel looking out on the main praça. The latter was small and three-cornered, paved with cobbles back in the days of Shakespeare, and had in its center a bust of a native of Diamantina who was Minister of Viaçao when President Peçanha was coaxed into signing the decree giving the Belgians the concession for their railroad. But then, Brazil is the land of busts, and the man who does not succeed in getting at least one of himself tucked away in some praça is not much of a buster. My huge front room, next to the homelike hotel parlor with many chairs and a cane divan all dressed up in lace coats, was fully twenty feet square, its immense French windows reaching to a floor made of great hand-cut planks fastened by handmade spikes with heads an inch square—or in diameter, according as the blacksmith happened to shape them—and so glass-smooth and warped and twisted that in places one had to brace one’s legs to keep from sliding downhill along it. The house seemed older than the surrounding hills, but there is so much of the new and crude in Brazil that the old cannot but be greatly relished. As a matter of fact Diamantina does not deserve a public hostelry, for nearly all its visitors have the South American habit of stopping with friends or relatives, and for all its electric lights and spring beds, and moderate charges, the hotel had only a couple of paying guests.

The adventurous _bandeirantes_ of São Paulo first penetrated this region looking for gold. A considerable amount of it was found in the muddy stream at the foot of the present town, and early in the seventeenth century the adventurers founded the village of Tijuca, which took its name from a nearby swamp. In olden times gold dust and tiny nuggets were used as money throughout the region, and there were scales in every shop. Gold seems to be found almost anywhere in the region, and placer-mining is the natural occupation of all its inhabitants. When electric-light poles were put up by a syndicate at Boa Vista, in order to give Diamantina as light by night what the company uses as power during the day, the children carried off the earth dug up from the holes to wash out the gold. After a heavy rain tiny particles of gold are picked up in the gutters of Diamantina and along the edge of the little stream below it. So here at last is a place where you can really pick up gold in the streets, yet the people are poorer and more ragged than those who live by planting beans.

It was while searching for gold that the miners of Tijuca came across many bright, half-transparent pebbles that were plainly of no use to them, but the largest of which they gave to their children or used as counters in their own card games. There were a bushel or more of them in such use in the village and its vicinity when a new priest arrived from Portugal. In his first game of cards the pious padre noticed the peculiar poker chips that everyone produced by the handful. He let the information leak out that he thought them very pretty, and would be pleased to have them as keepsakes. They were quite worthless, of course, to his new parishioners, and if his innocent sacerdotal eye was caught by their transparent brightness, they saw no reason why they should not humor his whim, and at the same time gain in favor with the Church, by giving him such of the worthless little baubles as he did not win at cards. Thus he gathered together half a bushel or more of the pebbles, and suddenly disappeared in the general direction of Amsterdam, dropping a hint in Rio on the way.

Word soon reached the Portuguese crown of this new form of riches in its overseas possessions. It turned out that the range of hills from well south of the present town of Diamantina to far up in Bahia, a tract of more than four hundred square leagues, was diamond-bearing land. Indeed, if one may believe local conviction, the finest diamonds in existence come from Minas Geraes, and the world’s most famous black diamonds from Bahia State a bit farther north.

Diamonds were first discovered in India and for centuries came only from there. When they were found in Brazil, thousands of the stones were sold as Indian diamonds not only because buyers were prejudiced, but because the Portuguese government had forbidden private mining on penalty of death, and the contrabandists were forced to reach their market by way of India. The village of Tijuca became a flourishing center, far as it was from the outside world, and for all the stern government régime set over the region. In 1734 Portugal sent out an “Intendente Geral dos Diamantes,” with absolute power to enforce the government monopoly. His palace still exists in a garden near the top of the town, with the remains of an artificial lake on which he kept a sailboat to show the people of what came gradually to be known as Diamantina how he had crossed the sea. The crown forbade individual mining and gave the job to contractors, who worked six hundred slaves and paid 220–240$ yearly per slave for the privilege, yet who made fortunes even though all large diamonds and twenty per cent. of all finds went to the crown. Population multiplied and Diamantina became a center of riches and luxury. Contrary to the case in the rest of Brazil, many broken noblemen and men of education came here to mend their fortunes, and the colony, and eventually all the province of Minas Geraes, became a focus of “civilization,” as that word was understood in those days,—much powdered hair, knee-breeches, beauty patches, minuets—and swarms of miserable slaves. It may be that the courtesy of the poor Africanized inhabitants of to-day is but a hold-over from those times of elaborate etiquette.

Amazing tales are still told in Diamantina of its golden days. It was evidently the custom of the government viceroys to imprison the contractors as soon as they got rich and “roll” them penniless. One official is reputed to have made every guest a present of a cluster of diamonds. The _Grupo Escolar_, or school building, across the street from my hotel was once the residence of a great diamond buyer, and when the building was made into a school some years ago a score or more of skeletons were found tumbled together in the bottom of a secret shaft. This revived the legend that the buyer had a chair set on a trapdoor, and when a man came in with a large “parcel” of contraband diamonds he was asked to sit down and make himself at home while the buyer looked over the stones—and brought up at the bottom of the shaft.

In 1771 the famous Pombal sent out the “green book,” with fifty-four despotic articles that nearly depopulated the district, but in 1800 the régime softened, and finally, in 1832, the government monopoly was abolished. Since then mining has been more or less intermittent. Diamonds reached their highest price during the war with Paraguay, at the end of which, in 1867, the stones were found in South Africa, a blow from which the industry in Brazil has never recovered. For while it is claimed in Diamantina that Brazilian diamonds average much higher than those from the Cape, the African mines now produce at least eighty per cent. of the world’s supply and with more modern methods and widespread propaganda completely control the market. Abolition was the final straw, and in five years exportations of diamonds from Diamantina dropped from 2,500 to 300 annually.

Unlike those of South Africa, the diamonds of Brazil are found on or near the surface. In a few places quartz is broken open in the search, but in general they are taken loose in the gravel of the alluvial deposits by the simpler process of placer mining. The fact that enormous tracts of territory were worked over by the Portuguese does not mean that they took out fabulous amounts, according to modern local authorities, because they had to feed their slaves anyway and it was to their advantage to keep them working, even if the finds were few. To-day, though there are some syndicates and large companies, most of them are completely paralyzed and such work as is done is mainly by individual natives. The company troubles seem to be due to lack of a good mining law—natives may wash for diamonds anywhere, even on company claims—the insecurity of titles, the prohibitive cost of transportation for machinery, high tariffs, low rate of exchange, the constant war of South Africans against South American diamonds, and finally the “salting” of mines by fake promoters, coupled with carelessness of foreign stockholders in sending out experts to examine the ground before accepting even an honest promoter’s word for it. Thus fortunes have been lost in the Brazilian diamond fields, notwithstanding the fact that diamonds continue to be steadily picked up in them.

The largest diamond ever found in Brazil was the “Star of the South,” found at Agua Suja (Dirty Water), on the line to Catalão. This weighed about the same as the famous Kohinoor diamond,—300 carats. The stones are usually found in the beds of rivers, larger near the source, and smaller farther down, for they wear off in traveling, and in sand, earth, and common gravel, usually with gold. Rough diamonds generally have no brilliancy, looking merely like white, half-transparent pebbles, though any child of Diamantina is said to be able to recognize one at a glance. There is really nothing more prosaic than diamond gathering, and the resemblance is slight between those who hunt for and those who wear them. None of the improved methods of South Africa have been introduced into Brazil, not even the hand screen or the “grease board,” and the negroes still use the _batea_, or wooden bowl in the shape of a hand basin, in washing for both diamonds and gold. When he has chosen his spot beside some stream the negro sets up a _baca_, a kind of topless soapbox with one end knocked out, about six inches above the surface of the water and fills it with gravel. Then with the _batea_ he scoops up water and throws it with a peculiar flip on the gravel, washing it from side to side until the loose stuff runs off and leaves only the pebbles. These are then spread out and gone over carefully by hand, the diamonds being readily detected by the experienced eye, particularly since, unlike the other stones, they cannot be wet and for that reason stand out brilliantly from the rest. In fact, in Spanish and Portuguese they are as often called _brillantes_ as _diamantes_. With the war and the sudden drop in the diamond market that came with it the people of Diamantina largely left off hunting for diamonds and began the more paying occupations of planting corn and gathering firewood.

On the Sunday afternoon following Christmas, the rain having at last ceased, I went out for a walk. An hour’s climb, in which I did not suffer from heat, brought me to a cross on the culminating point of the great mass of gray-black rock of ragged formation across the valley and small stream in which many a diamond has been picked up and much gold washed. Here is a full view of the town, stacked up on the green and fertile side of the long valley and spilling like coagulated grease down into it, scattered groups of eucalyptus trees and its general greenness in great contrast to the rockiness of all the rest of the vast and jagged encircling landscape. The gothic church of Coração de Jesus and the tree-girdled seminary stand somewhat above the rest of the orderless heap, and one realizes that the railroad does indeed come in at the top of the town, for its station is so high that here it cannot be seen above the edge of the plateau on which it sits. Diamantina is a great trading post of the interior, and down in the center of town there is a species of Arab khan, a roof on posts where shaggy sun-, rain-, and road-marked muleteers with long, ugly _facas_ in their belts pile their saddle-blankets and goods and cook over campfires. The old, old highway unravels down across the broken rocky hills, descends into the valley, stops a while at the khan, and having gathered its forces together once more into a compact trail, marches across and out of the valley again and away over the bleak horizon.

It was in the middle of this public trail that I came upon two negroes in quest of gold washed down by the recent rains. While one dug up wooden bowls of earth and gravel, the other stood knee-deep in a muddy, dammed-up pool and, filling his _batea_ with the earth brought by the other and letting water into it, whirled it about until the heavy matter went to the bottom. Then he scraped off by hand the top layer, continuing the process until within ten minutes he had left about a quart of heavy black earth. This he dumped with more of the same in a white sand-nest he had made on the bank of the little stream crossing the trail. Like most of his fellow-townsmen he was talkative and ready to explain his affairs to a stranger. He had washed for gold after a rain ever since he was a boy, getting from two to four milreis worth every time, and where there is gold there are sure to be diamonds, especially the “chapeu de palha” (“straw hat”), which he explained to be a very flat diamond making much show with little weight. Though both he and his companion were shoeless and had been from infancy, ragged, illiterate and half toothless, they were far from ignorant on some points, especially of words used in the diamond industry, which they spoke with a curious negro mispronunciation mixed with slang.

In riding about the vicinity on other days I came upon several gangs of a score of negroes each, bare-legged and ragged, hoeing at an average wage of eighty cents a day in banks of red earth through which a rainy season stream had been turned. This they keep up as long as the rains last, rarely seeing a diamond, which wash along through the artificial gorge with the other gravel and come to rest on a sandy flat place beyond. Then the men are set to “batting the _baca_,” until the sand is washed away and the diamonds recovered by the same crude methods used in the first days of the colony. One question almost sure to be asked by the layman is how workmen are kept from stealing the diamonds. Theft, it is explained, is by no means so easy to accomplish as would appear at first glance. In the first place, it takes on the average a cartload of sand and gravel to yield a one-quarter carat diamond. By the time the negro has washed a load down to about two bushels an overseer has an eye on him and watches him until the process is finished. It is rare for a diamond to appear suddenly on the surface during the preliminary washing, when the negro might snatch it, and even if he did he would have a hard time selling it. If ever a native of Diamantina has stolen a diamond, even as a boy, he is blackballed in the community for the rest of his life. It is a long way to anywhere else, even since the advent of the railroad, so that thieving of the town’s chief product is extremely unusual. Men from far off up country come in with thousands of dollars’ worth of diamonds or black carbons on a pack mule, which lags far behind with its negro driver. Everyone along the way knows what it carries, yet for decades no driver has run away nor anyone “framed” a holdup.

In town, gold and precious stones are handled with a casual carelessness only equalled by the Bank of England. A local jewelry shop, famous in the trade the world over, looks like a miserable little tinker’s den, where a dozen men and boys, all with more or less African blood, work at dirty old worn and smoked benches. About them is a wilderness of junk where cigarette butts, gold nuggets, old iron tools, gold wire, and worthless odds and ends lie scattered and tumbled together with diamonds of all sizes, cut and uncut, old tin tobacco-boxes containing fortunes in diamonds and precious stones of several species wrapped in dirty bits of paper. Gold coins of the former Empire as well as new British sovereigns waiting to be melted up for local use can scarcely be distinguished from the dusty rubbish on the tables; drawers filled with the ragged money of to-day stand half-open; a tiny show-window—recently put in as a concession to modern ideas—has a six-carat diamond stuck against the glass with several smaller ones about it, day and night; a can that originally held soap but now full of emeralds, amethysts, topazes, and half a dozen other precious stones found in the region was kicking about the floor. Yet there was no sign of lock or key, except that used to fasten the outer door at night. The owner only came now and then during the day, and amid this disordered jumble of wealth his dozen workmen and boys toiled from seven in the morning until sometimes nine at night at ludicrous wages without a loss ever having been reported.

Down in the valley near the town there is a native diamond-cutting establishment, a capacious old barn of a building with the immense rough-hewn beams of olden times and two long double rows of “wheels” run by water-power on which the stones are “cut.” Strictly speaking, a diamond is not “cut” at all; it is ground—_lapidar_ or “stoning” they call it in Brazil. Disks of the best grade steel, about a foot in diameter, move round and round at a moderate rate of speed. Rough diamonds are first chipped off by hand to the general shape desired; then they are set into a bed of lead and solder so that one facet may be ground down, after which they are removed at a forge, resoldered, and ground on another facet. The “wheels” must be polished down and filed in slight ridges every two or three weeks, a task that takes about one day, and they are rented at 12$ a month to the individual _lapidarios_, both men and women, largely of negro blood, who work for themselves, either “cutting” diamonds for others or speculating with such as they can buy themselves. A day is the average time consumed here in “cutting” a one-carat diamond, at a cost of about 7$, the chips and diamond dust left over bringing the ordinary income up to 65$ a week.

Diamond buyers of all nationalities journey to Diamantina, and the town expressed surprise and often incredulity to hear that I had not come to purchase a few “parcels” for speculation. “Everyone” buys diamonds, yet no one pays the state export tax on them, if one may believe local opinion. This would have to be paid if the stones were sent out legally by express, but when a buyer has collected a “parcel”—in Portuguese it is _partida_—he finds some man bound for Rio and says to him, “If it isn’t too much trouble just hand this little package to —— and Co.,” thereby defrauding both the railroad and the politicians. The men who deal in diamonds in the place of their origin no more wear them than do the men who dig them. Old buyers who have handled the precious stones all their lives are not only plainly dressed but have none of the tendency toward personal adornment so widespread among Brazilians. Two American diamond-men I met had huge blacksmith hands on which a ring would have looked absurd, and the only diamonds one sees in Diamantina are those offered for sale in “parcels” or show-windows, or those worn by an occasional tenderfoot.

Newcomers have sometimes been deceived by this state of affairs. A few years ago there arrived in Diamantina a German with a conviction of his own wisdom and superiority over common mortals, who, with an air implying that the thought had never occurred to anyone else, let it leak out that he was buying diamonds. An old negro wandered up to the hotel in an aged shirt and trousers, a ragged hat, and bare feet, and shuffling in a halting, diffident way into the German’s room, told him that he did not know what the two diamonds he carried wrapped in a scrap of paper were worth, but that he would sell them cheap. The German paid him about half the market price for them and asked him if he had any more, adding with a wink that any transactions they might make would be kept a secret. The poor old negro said he thought he could find a few more about his hut or in the river or among his friends, and for a month or six weeks he continued to slouch into the hotel, until he had sold the wise German about a pint of diamonds for a mere song of fourteen or fifteen _contos_, say $5,000. Then the Teuton, highly pleased with himself, packed up and took the down train from Curvello, smuggling his untold riches out of the state without paying the export duty—and discovered when he reached Rio that every one of the fine diamonds the poor ignorant old negro had sold him so cheaply were what are known in the trade as “fourths,” or worse, full of knots and gnarls as a century-old olive tree and worth at most some 50c a carat for cutting glass. A bit later, the poor innocent old negro having occasion to go down to the capital and talk with the senator whose political boss he was in Diamantina, blew into Rio in the frock-coat and patent leathers he wears when not doing business with gullible strangers, with a real six-carat diamond dazzling from his little finger and two or three more shouting from his shirt front and, meeting the worldly-wise German on the Avenida, raised his fifty-dollar imported Panama hat with true Brazilian courtesy, and invited him to come in and have a drink for old times’ sake.

One evening my hospitable host of the hotel dragged me over to the cinema he owned, where I found a crowded house come to see what to Diamantina was a brand new romance of their own color, called “A Cabana do Pae Thomaz,” in other words, “The Cabin of Uncle Tom.” It was all too evident, however, that there was nothing to be gained by bringing our show so far inland, for the negroes had little to spend and the railway charges are naturally high to those who can find no excuse for not paying them. Meanwhile I had opened negotiations for a journey on horseback, or even on foot, across to the railhead of the line out of Victoria, which would have brought me out well up the coast on my journey north. A native _camarada_ familiar with the trail offered to rent me a horse or a mule for the journey, with saddle and spurs, for 3$ a day. This seemed reasonable. It would make the trip across come to about 20$? Yes, but it takes _two_ animals. Why’s that? You must have a guide, or at least a man to bring back the horses. Ah, then that makes 6$ a day instead of 3$? Yes—ah—and then of course you must pay the man. How much? Oh, 3$ a day, the same as the other animals. Ah, then that makes 9$ a day, and seven days would be.... No, say ten days. But why ten days? Because in this season that is the least you can depend on. In other words the trip would cost me 90$, nine times ten? No, it would be nine times twenty, or 180$. Eh, what twenty days? Why, the man and the horses would have to come back, wouldn’t they? _Sacramento_, I suppose so, unless I could chloroform them when I got there. So then 180$ would cover _all_ the expenses? All, completely all—er—that is, of course, you would have to feed the animals and the man on the trip, and it might be much more than ten days, and—er.... And no doubt there would be a tip to the man and the animals, and perhaps a third horse needed when he caught sight of my valise, and of course the government officials here and along the way would come in for their customary graft, and there would be the stamp-tax on each horseshoe, unless they were mule-shoes, in which case no doubt it would be doubled, and a tax on each bray the “burros” might emit en route, and—whereupon I gave him a warm handshake and bade him good night, saying I would think it over and wire him from Bagdad in 1946, and thus eventually got him out of the room. In short, I had come to understand at last why people travel by rail in Brazil, even though their bones are racked on the warped and twisted roadbeds, their movie-magnate garments turned into sieves by burning cinders from the straining locomotives, and there is a tax on every corner of a railway ticket.

All Diamantina was down—I mean up—to see us off, just as they are at the same early hour three times a week. The distance-blue piles of earth lay heaped up into considerable hills where a clearer atmosphere disclosed wider horizons, hung on all sides with fantastic heaps of clouds, that increased the sense of being on the top of the world. On the several days’ trip southward I met a strange man, a _juiz de dereito_, or district judge, from Serro back in the hills, who refused to ride on a government pass or to accept one for his son, whom he was taking to the medical school in Rio, declaring that there was “much abuse” in such matters by government officials! At Burnier, where we changed to the broad gauge, I got a berth to the capital. Though the car was the familiar American Pullman, the slovenly government employees had discarded most of the small conveniences. The aisle was as carpetless as the floors of Brazil, the berth net had long since been turned into a hammock for the brakeman’s baby, the mattress was thin and hard as a Brazilian wooden bed, and the sleep I did not get as we creaked and jounced through the endless low hills explained why sleeping cars and night trains are not more popular in the mammoth republic of South America.

When I returned from the washroom next morning, “Tut” stood dressing beside the opposite berth. They had played in Palmyra the evening before and managed to pack up in time to catch the night train. Carlos had had his hat stolen in the preceding town and “Tut” had been bitten by a dog while walking out to pay his respects to the English-speaking miners near Ouro Preto; otherwise things had gone well—except for one other personal mishap to “Tut.” While buying his ticket for the sleeper he noted that the berths were divided into “_leitos inferiores_” and “_leitos superiores_.” Now why should he take an inferior berth when he had been working hard, and Linton paid the bill anyway? He took a _leito superior_. Unfortunately, in the matter of berths, the Portuguese word _superior_ means “upper”!

By seven the day was already brilliant and hot, for we were down off the great plateau I was never to climb again, and the familiar suburbs of Rio were rumbling past. I dropped off as we drew into the yards, knowing from experience how long a process it is to get into the station, and diving out through a hole in the railway wall, I hurried away up the Rua Mattoso to the home of our theater contractor. He surprised me by saying that times had grown so “brutally hard” in Rio, to say nothing of the brutal heat of midsummer, that it would not be worth while to play there at all, but that we could finish our sixteen days with him at his theater in Nictheroy.

The ferry that carried us across the bay was crowded with newspaper men and photographers, and the gunboat _Sergipe_ lay close off the state capital with its guns trained on the public buildings. Inquiry disclosed the fact that there was not a new mutiny, but that a revolution was expected in Nictheroy during the day.

Nilo Peçanha, son of a former president of Brazil, had been elected president of the State of Rio de Janeiro for the term to begin with the new year; but, as so often happens in South America, the opposition party still in power was determined to give the office to their own defeated candidate. This was one Lieutenant Sodré, an army man of similar caliber to the celebrated “Dudu” and having the same backing. With the aid of the outgoing state president he had “acquired” arms and ammunition from the federal stores in Nictheroy and was preparing to take office by force, having picked up large numbers of _Carioca_ crooks and gunmen and scattered them among the various cities of the state to stifle opposition. Peçanha, on the other hand, had applied to the Supreme Court for a habeas corpus, giving him the office that was being stolen from him, and after considerable dodging and hesitation the national president had decided to lend federal armed force to uphold the Supreme Court decision in favor of Peçanha.

Mere orders from the federal government mean little in the life of a Brazilian state, however, and Nictheroy was seething on the brink of anarchy when we landed. Sodré, it seemed, had had himself sworn in as president by the state assembly early that morning and had sent word to that effect to the president of Brazil. He could not gain admission to the state presidential palace, but with the support of the state police and the outgoing authorities he did take over the presidential offices. Then suddenly, some three hours later, a cry of “Viva Peçanha!” had resounded through the police barracks, the policemen had taken it up and, headed by two sergeants, threatened to kill the officers unless they joined in also, and the entire state police force on which the rebel had depended swung over to the other side, looted the stolen ammunition, and took to rushing about town shouting and firing in the air.

This was the condition in which we found the state capital. The firemen had joined the police, and auto-trucks crammed full of excited shouting negroes and half-negroes in uniform were rushing about town at top speed, all but overturning at every corner. The lower classes, having likewise filled themselves with cheap _cachaza_, had joined the general uproar of noise, irresponsibility, and probable violence, and the streets were swarming with _populares_ shouting “Viva Peçanha!” “Viva o Salvador do Povo!” and similar nonsense in maudlin drunken voices, while Sodré sent hurriedly to the national president demanding “guarantees” for his personal safety.

Residence in South America, however, teaches one that revolutions are by no means so dangerous on the spot as they are in the armchairs of those who are reading about them afar off, and we serenely continued our preparations for the evening performance. Desultory shooting, street brawls, and the surging of masses of drunken _populares_ continued throughout the day and for several days thereafter, while the shouting, shooting truckloads of police and firemen continued dizzily to round corners, each time more nearly resembling the drunken brute into which the tropical languor of negro militarism is apt to degenerate in times of crisis or popular excitement. But it was, on the whole, a good-natured rather than a blood-thirsting brute, and though what Brazil calls “persons of most responsibility” kept out of sight, we common mortals, including not a few women, walked about town attending to our business as usual. Once a ragged, drunken mulatto _popular_ came into the _leitería_ in which I was quenching my thirst with a glass of ice-cold milk, walked bellowing and reeling past me and two men at another table up to a little messenger-boy of fourteen, and ordered him to shout “Viva Peçanha!” The proprietor dared not protest, for the police were all drunk and the _povo_ more than likely to take the ragamuffin’s part; but when the latter finally staggered out again the shopkeeper raised his hands to heaven and demanded to know why the fellow had picked on the boy and not, for instance, pointing at me, on “_o senhor_ over there.”

The “Cinema Eden” was right on the waterfront, though the only paradise in sight was the view of Rio piled up into massive banks of white clouds across the emerald bay and the marvelous sunset and steel-blue dusk which spread over its unique, nature-made sky-line as we opened our doors. The near-revolution was still surging through the streets, though a few sober soldiers of the regiment of federal troops that had been landed were riding about town in street-cars, with ball-loaded muskets ready for action. Peçanha had been sworn in that afternoon, surrounded by a swarm of other perspiring politicians in wintry frock-coats and silk hats, but the national president had concluded to avoid any responsibility in the matter by calling a special session of congress to decide between the rival candidates, instead of carrying out the decision of the Supreme Court—“which,” perorated Ruy Barboso, “is what our constitution orders and what is practiced in the United States,” two equally convincing final arguments. Though we were the only theater open the house was not crowded. “Persons of most responsibility” preferred to remain at home, and the _populares_ were plainly in most cases without the price of admission, even had the revolution not promised a more exciting show outside. I took charge of the door in person, not at all certain but that the _povo_ might try to force itself in en masse. Once, during our part of the program, a mighty explosion shook the town like an earthquake and shooting sounded under our very windows; but as the stampede for the door started I barricaded the immense exit and “Tut” went on calmly running an amusing film known as “College Days,” and before it was ended the volatile audience had quieted down again. The explosion, it turned out, was of a great deposit of powder on one of the many islands in the bay, nearly twenty miles away.

Our receipts for the first section were so poor that we cut out the second and went home for a moonlight dip in the sea just outside our waterfront rooms in the charming residential district of Nictheroy. But it was the last day of the year, with a crushing heat after the splendid air of the plateau, and the soft wind that was now sweeping across the bay drew me back for a last glimpse of Rio in the throes of New Year’s Eve. The city lay a vast irregular heap of lights, here in dense clusters, there strung out along the invisible lower hills, all cut sharp off at the bottom by the endless row of them along the Beira Mar. The Avenida was densely crowded, and getting more so. Newspapers had erected booths covered with artificial flowers and colored lights, several police, fire department, and military bands were scattered along the great white avenue, and a constant, unbroken procession of automobiles crept up one side and down the other, pretty girls perched on the backs of the seats and on the furled covers, all filled with the “respectable families” whose plump and physically attractive ladies are rarely seen in the streets after dark on any other day in the year. I was caught where the confetti fell thickest, but there was little rowdyism and no unpleasant din, though paper ribbons spun across the lighted sea of faces and perfumed water was squirted into them in that good-natured and outwardly courteous way with which the Latin-American softens the perpetration of his most hilarious, carnival-time tricks.