Brazil and the Brazilians

687 Pages·2005·46.822 MB·English

by  James Fletcher, D. P. Kidder

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Rev. James Fletcher
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Rev. D. P. Kidder
Kegan Faul
London • New York • Bahrain
Originally published in 2005 by Kegan Paul Limited.
This edition first published in 2010 by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 10: 071031146X
ISBN 13: 9780710311467
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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be
apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright
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PREFACE
TO THE EIGHTH EDITION.
W ithin the last fifteen months two new editions (the sixth
and seventh) of “ Brazil and the Brazilians ” have been
exhausted. While translations of portions have been made in
various • languages, and while an author in England has almost
wholly “ made up ” a general book on Brazil from this work,
nothing has shown a more flattering appreciation of it than the
offer of Professor Laboulaye — the firm friend of America — to
write an introduction for a French translation of “ Brazil and
the Brazilians.”
Since the publication of the Sixth Edition (to the Preface of
which the reader is referred) several very important events have
occurred in Brazil, which the authors have thought best to men­
tion in this place, although they have noted them in the proper
chapters.
The Opening of the Amazon, which occurred on* the 7th of Septem'
ber, 1867, and by which the Great River is free to the flags of all nations
from the Atlantic to Peru, and the Abrogation of the Monopoly of
the Coast Trade from the Amazon to the Rio Grande do Sul (see page
589), whereby four thousand miles of Brazilian sea-coast are open to the
vessels of every country, cannot fail not only to develop the resources of Brazil,
but these measures will prove a great benefit to the bordering Hispano-
American Republics and to the maritime nations of the earth. The open­
ing of the Amazon is the most significant indication that the leaven of old
narrow, monopolistic Portuguese conservatism has at last worked out. Por­
tugal would not allow Humboldt to enter the Amazon valley in Brazil. The
result of the new policy is beyond the most sanguine expectation. The exports
and imports of Para for October and November, 186 7, were double those of
1866. This is but the beginning. Soon it will be found that it is cheaper for
all Bolivia, Peru, Equador, and New Grenada east of the Andes to receive
iv Preface to the Eighth Edition.
their goods from, and to export their India-rubber, cinchona, &c., &c., to
the United States and Europe via the great water highway which dis­
charges into the Atlantic, than by the long, circuitous route of Cape Horn,
or the Trans-Isthmian route of Panama. The Purus and the Madeira are here­
after to be navigated by steamers. The valley of the Amazon in Brazil
is as large as the area of the United States east of Colorado, while the
whole valley of the Amazon, in and out of Brazil, is equal to all the
United States east of California, Oregon, and Washington Territory ; and
yet the population is not equal to the single city of Rio de Janeiro, or the
combined inhabitants of Boston and Chicago. It is estimated that a larger
population can be sustained in the valley of the Amazon than elsewhere on
the globe; but it will never be peopled until there is as complete freedom
for emigrants, and as entire absence of red-tapeism in Brazil as exist in the
United States.
The System of Emigration is improving. In 1866 there were mis­
takes on the part of the agents for Brazil at New York. They were not
careful enough. They accepted any one and every one that applied for
passage under the liberal offers (which still hold good) of the Brazilian gov­
ernment, and there were mistakes on the part of many well-meaning, almost
penniless adventurers from our cities and from our own South, who sup­
posed that there was a royal road to prosperity in the tropics without labor,
and that slavery was a permanent institution in Brazil. But, notwithstand­
ing the croakers who have returned, many Southerners have succeeded and
are succeeding in Brazil.
Slavery has decreased with great rapidity during 1866-67, and the best
estimates make the present number of slaves 1,400,000, — a reduction by
the mild process of law and custom of 1,600,000 since 1853. The Emperor
took the initiative at the last session of Parliament, and invoked legislation
upon this most important subject. Dr. A. M. Perdigaö Malheiro, an eminent
advocate at Rio, has published a most important and convincing pamphlet on
this question, entitled A escravidaö no Brazil (Slavery in Brazil).
Direct taxation for the first time in Brazil has been brought about by
the exigencies of the Paraguayan war, — a conflict which has done more to
give Brazil a national feeling than any event since 1822.
The Paraguayan War. — The history and the aims of this contest, now
waging, have been more persistently misrepresented than those of any other war
of modern times, with the single exception of the misrepresentation in England
of the late internal struggle in the United States. From November, 1864 (the
beginning of the war), to November, 1865, the various battles and victories
were impartially described in the English journals, from which source other
countries, not South American, have derived their information. Bat in the
autumn of 1865 the Brazilian government applied in London for a loan of
£4,000,000. Such was the competition for this loan, and such the confidence
of English financiers in Brazil, that £ 30,000,000 were subscribed. The loan,
of course, immediately went above par. From that time to this “ opera­
tors” at Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, one thousand miles from the seat
of war, had a motive in sending rumors and partial statements detrimental
to the allies by the English steamer to Lisbon, whence their correspond­
Preface to the Eighth Edition. y
ence would be telegraphed to London ; and the result would be the depres­
sion of the Brazilian loan for a few days, then when the “rise” took
place the “ operators ” and their friends could profit by their former trans­
action- In regard to the contest, Brazil had no other alternative than war
with Lopez, who is as truly a despotic dictator as Francia was. The origin
of the war is impartially set forth on page 353. The present position of the
allies is very much that of the armies of the United States at the end of
1864, when Sherman made his famous “ march to the sea ” and Grant was
before Richmond. Brazil in 1867 sent an army to the north of Paraguay
and retook all the fortified ports seized by Paraguay in 1864; and the allied
land and naval forces at the beginning of 1868, after varied experience,
were closing upon Ilumaita, the last stronghold of the Paraguayans, — a
fortress far more inapproachable than Sebastopol. 1868 will doublless see
a complete resolution of a struggle whose end is the liberation of Brazilian
citizens and the reopening (which Paraguay had guaranteed by solemn
treaty obligations) of the great natural highway to the sea for the four
nations of Eastern South America.
Brazilian Coffee. — Brazil has also had her peaceful triumphs. In the
great Exposition held at Paris in 186 7 Brazil attracted much attention by
the display of her material resources. She succeeded in obtaining a num­
ber of prizes. To the uninitiated it may seem strange that from all the
countries — Arabia, Java, Ceylon, Venezuela, the West Indies, and Central
America — contesting for the production of the best coffee, Brazil bore away
the palm. But it has long been known to dealers that coffee does not de­
pend upon where it grows, but upon the length of time it remains upon
the tree and upon the manner of its curing. The Southern and the South­
western States became acquainted with coffee imported from Rio de Ja­
neiro fifty years ago, at a time when Brazilians did not know how to cure
coffee ; but the taste of the South and West has alone kept up the demand
for the green, poorly cured coffee known in commerce as “ Rio.” The Bra­
zilians themselves never use a Rio,” and although three fourths of all the
coffee imported into the United States come from Brazil, yet much of it
is sold as Mocha and Java, or under any other name than “ Rio.” The
English, Americans, and Germans make the poorest drink from coffee in
the world, while the Latin nations, who never boil their coffee, make the
best beverage. For the history and culture of coffee see pages 449, 451.
Cotton can be grown in any portion of the Empire of Brazil. In qual­
ity it ranks far above our “ uplands,” and in the Liverpool market the best
Brazilian cottons stand next — though at a distance — to the “ Sea-Island.”
Pernambuco is the chief port for exportation. There are no great cotton
plantations, but the most of its culture is carried on by small farmers and
by free negroes and half-breeds. An article in the New York Evening
Post, entitled “ Small Farms for Cotton Culture ” in our own country, called
forth a communication from Mr. Ilitch, of the house of Henry, Forster, & Co.
of Pernambuco, in which he describes the Brazilian plan of little farms cul­
tivated by from one to six persons. This has an important bearing on cot­
ton culture in the United States. Mr. Hitch shows how the demand caused
by the “ cotton famine ” brought forth the supply to such an extent that
vi Preface to the Eighth Edition.
Pernambuco in five years increased her cotton exportation tenfold. See
page 525.
GuaranA. — At the French Exposition of 1867 a brown chocolate-colored
substance figured under the head of the medicines from Brazil. This brown
material might at first sight have been taken for chocolate cast in the form
of serpents, diminutive turtles, tapirs, &c. It was, however, a remedy which
has been used for centuries in Brazil and Bolivia, and which has lately be­
come one of the most fashionable antifebrile remedies in Paris. Guarand is
the indigenous name of this new contribution to civilized Pharmacy. The
junior author has often partaken of it on the Amazon; and as many have
recently inquired concerning the Guarand, a short notice of it may be inter­
esting. Dr. Cotting of Roxbury, Mass., gives a brief account of it in the
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for February 7, 1867, pages 20, 21. On
the west bank of the river Tapajos (excepting the Madeira, the longest
southern affluent of the Amazon) lives a tribe of Indians called the Mauhés
or Maués, who prepare from the seeds of a small climbing plant (the Paul-
linia sorbiUs) the Guarand. The plant bears berries somewhat larger than
coffee-berries, and two in a capsule, not unlike the coffee. These are
roasted, ground, mixed with a little water, made into various shapes, and
dried to hardness in an oven. Grated and dissolved in water or lemonade,
it is highly esteemed as a refreshing and stimulating drink. It is much
used by the inhabitants of Matto Grosso and other interior provinces, and
sometimes, it is said, to such an excess as to produce great tremulousness. It
is also much used as a remedy in diarrhoea and intermittent fever. Dr. James
C. White of Boston, who has analyzed the Guarand, has given the public his
analysis in a very interesting paper.
The authors cannot close this Preface without recording an event which
may seem personal to them, but which is also one of sadness to all those who
love Brazil in the things that are far beyond her material development.
Amongst the devoted men who have gone from the United States to “ the
land of the Southern Cross,” none have been more zealous, wise, and suc­
cessful in “ winning souls ” than Rev. A. G. Simonton of Rio de Janeiro.
He founded the Presbyterian mission at Rio de Janeiro in 1859. He estab­
lished the Imprensa Evangelica, a religious journal of the most excellent
character, and thus, in addition to his constant labors in the pulpit, he did
much to furnish Brazil with an Evangelical literature. A few days before
his death, when in apparent health, he wrote to the junior author a most
cheering letter, stating that during 1867 the fruits of the missions (the Ameri­
can Presbyterian) with which he was connected were no less than 112 con­
versions, 82 of whom made their profession “ before men,” and the remainder
were soon to follow their example. He died in San Paulo on the 9th of
December, 1867. The individual dies, but the Church lives, and his labors
will still bring forth fruit to be gathered by the earnest harvesters, his coad­
jutors, now laboring in the same field.
Newburyport, Mass., March, 1868.
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.
The favorable reception which five editions of this work have
had in the United States, England, and Brazil, indicates a growing
interest in the largest and most stable country of South America.
It may be that the illustrations accompanying the Preface to the
first edition are not so appropriate to-day as they were ten years
ago, but there is still too much ignorance of Brazil in Europe and
North America. The present edition will give some idea of the
material and moral progress of Brazil during the last decade.
While several new volumes on some particular portion of the
country have been written since 1857, no other work in our lan­
guage has given a general view of Brazil and the Brazilians. As
much of the political and social life of the Empire centres at Rio de
Janeiro, the history and descriptions of the state of affairs at the
capital are, to a great extent, those of the whole country. It is for
this reason that the reader is detained longer in the city where the
Monarch resides and the Parliament holds its sessions.
Since 1857, one of the authors (J. C. F.) has visited Brazil in
four different years, passing much time at Rio de Janeiro; sojourn­
ing on plantations, and observing the phases of Brazilian slavery;
making extensive journeys along the sea-coast, and penetrating the
interior. In 1862 he ascended the Amazon to the verge of Peru,
— more than two thousand miles up the most marvellous river in
the world.