Part 4

While these reminiscences of our life in Santos and Guaruja in 1895 and ’96 are uppermost, a figure comes to my mind which deserves your knowledge. It was still painfully near the horrible epoch of yellow fever developed by dredging for the new quays. That was why we all slept at Guaruja, the Barra, São Vicente, or São Paulo, even though daily coffee, banking or navigation business must be prosecuted in Santos. Such living was and is expensive, very.

At this time the United States saw fit to pay her consul in Santos $1,600 a year, since raised to $2,700, without allowance for office rent and expenses. The port cleared eight to ten millions of dollars’ worth of coffee per annum for the United States, and a large import business was opening up. The barest existence at Guaruja, or other healthful suburbs, for a single man, with daily transportation to Santos, cost $1,500 in gold. But one man could be found to try the service of our government for this State, and he was an Alabama negro. He was presumably an immune from yellow fever. At any rate, his income necessitated his sleeping in his office in Santos, and when even such undignified economies left him short of funds, he borrowed of the American merchants. A U.S. cruiser anchored off shore. The U.S. Consul and American citizens were invited on board. Tide and conditions made it necessary for the “tars” to carry the guests ashore on their backs through water about waist deep. The lieutenant in charge prophesied too sure an accident to do other than advise the consul to wade ashore on his own feet.

This black man did the routine work of the office, earned more than he received, and left in debt. Merchants, as consular agents, have filled emergencies for the government. The lack of a living salary for a good man as consul in a difficult but important port is the point I wish to make clear.

The British government rates this as a first-class consulate; salary, £1,500, nearly seventy-five hundred dollars. Offices for him in both Santos and São Paulo are maintained at government expense. Each year here counts for two in his required term of service, and at the end of the service his pension is based on the salary of the port. Of course he has been trained to the consular service.

The British Consul when we were in Guaruja had just come from ten years’ service in Mediterranean ports, a gentleman of intelligence, elegance, refinement and courtesy. His regalia always adjusted to a nicety to the diplomatic requirements of the occasion, be it a wedding ceremony, a Queen’s birthday dinner, a reception or a funeral, provoked smiles from the Americans. Even the flower in his buttonhole artistically harmonized or contrasted with the shade of velvet of his lapels and cuffs.

During his first year the worst of “the fever” was in the shipping. Sailors from British ships came to his office in all stages of it. With his own hands he steadied the tottering sick ones, sent them to the hospital, and knew of his own knowledge that they were being taken care of. When they died he collected their pay from the ship-masters and saw that their money and effects reached their relatives at home. He received while we were there a letter of thanks from an American mother, whose boy, a sailor on an English ship, had died in Santos. He had collected his pay and sent home his kit. The mother sent him money to erect a stone over her son’s grave.

His systematic exercises were a daily swim in the ocean, followed by a three-mile walk on the beach in the early morning, and two miles more when the business day was done, thus maintaining his best health and vigor in tropical conditions.

[Illustration: MACKENZIE COLLEGE.]

The engineer and purser of a British Royal Mail steamer came out to Guaruja while their ship lay in port. Neither could swim, but both went for baths in the sea. The current caught one who was drowning, and the consul rescued him in a seething surf after a struggle to the point of exhaustion. Reaching the shore, he discovered the other, a very heavy man, was being carried rapidly out to sea. He swam after him, but found him dead from sudden apoplexy, and brought his body ashore. He received a medal from the Royal Humane Society of England for his action.

These were contemporary consuls at Santos and for the great and rich State of São Paulo.

The American Manufacturers’ Excursion to Brazil and the Argentine took place that year for the purpose of promoting trade. Governments fêted them. Papers and magazines chronicled their movements. Only the very sad death of one of their number prevented their completing their plan of coming to the important port of Santos and being received by the representative from Alabama.

To the most of the American merchants their consul was “that ---- nigger.” To the British Consul he was always the representative of the U. S., and an individual in a trying and poverty-stricken position, and treated with corresponding courtesy and sympathy.

En route to Brazil we saw posted in the Oxford, England, post-office, a notice warning all emigrants against going to Brazil until they had consulted the Home Office.

A few months later we saw a steamer crowded with emigrants from Canada enter the Santos harbor. The State of São Paulo had sent out a statement of the need of agriculturalists. Misunderstanding of needs and conditions had brought about five hundred poor Canadians to this “Land of Warmth and Sunshine,” knowing nothing of agriculture, half-skilled in some trades, or well-skilled in trades useless in Brazil. The State fed them in barracks for a while, tried them on interior plantations, returned them to the barracks, tried to obtain other employment, but mostly to no avail. They sickened. Their feet festered with jiggers. They could not speak Portuguese. They were helpless. The British Consul had to send them home by twos, threes, tens, and scores, on tramp steamers, sailing-vessels--any way that they could work their passage or that he could secure the money to pay the passage of the women and children.

A letter from an American in São Paulo, dated July 6th, 1900, says:

“What does our government mean by sending out an Italian Priest as Consul to Santos? If he were only a priest who had practically withdrawn from active functions, it would not be so bad; but this one makes it his first duty to visit the newspapers and declare that he will not allow the duties of the consulate to interfere with his higher ecclesiastical functions, and, as proof of this, he left the duties of the office yesterday and came up to say a 30th day Mass for the soul of a person connected with the _Diario Popular_, and had it advertised far and near.”

THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO.

There is one train up from Santos to São Paulo at dawn and one after business hours. A coffee merchant has extended the courtesy of the club-car which daily brings and returns the bankers and merchants of this busy but sickly port. Half the men in this car are Brazilian, some of pure Portuguese descent, others with strains of African or Indian blood; the remainder are German, English and American. The journey takes two hours and a half, so they proceed to play poker, with a few exceptions, who prefer chess or cribbage, or have a big “home mail.” They are all too accustomed to these beautiful mountains to look out of the windows as you do, except to count coffee cars and estimate to-morrow’s receipts. You see many air-plants lodged among the trees with spikes of pink blossoms, which look like hyacinths at a little distance. Close by you would think the hyacinth much prettier and like its fragrance better. The tropical forest is an impenetrable thicket. You see the face of it only. A car going up the mountain must be attached to a cable weighted at the other end by a balancing car going down the parallel track. In this way passengers and thousands of carloads of coffee are transported by three successive, long, steep inclines. At the top you wait until all the cars of your train are cabled up; the train is joined and starts for São Paulo, over level, open country.

Judging from the din of porters and carriages at the station, São Paulo is very much alive. The hotel is in the midst of stores. You are taken to a suite of two huge rooms and asked a great price. You had said you wanted one room. Argument ensues. The rooms belong together. You affirm that you will have but one. There is no access to the farther room but through yours; would you afflict the hotel? You persist in taking the one, and at night hear voices in the other and know the owners found their resting-place by some other door than yours. That was only a white lie. That’s nothing!

After dinner you rest in an Austrian bentwood chair (the universally prized furniture, with no upholstery for insects and dampness, nor joints which come unglued), and read your lesson; for in traveling one reads all the available literature about the place one is visiting. It is little in English you have found about the city of São Paulo. You know it is now the educational center of all Brazil: that it is more than three hundred years old, with 200,000 people; that it has furnished two Presidents for the new republic, and many statesmen; that it has a charming mingling of tropical and temperate climates: that England, France and Germany have the import business rather than the United States.

Coming down on the steamer you became deeply interested in all you heard of it. A nobleman, who shared his Emperor’s banishment ten years ago when the republic began, was making a brief visit to his old home. One day he said very sadly to some American people of Brazilian experience: “What do you think of my country since the republic?” The gentlemen replied: “It has improved in many ways.” The Count said: “You are republicans, of course; yet is not my country very different from yours?” “Yes, _because there has been no education of the common people, and they have not been accustomed to self-control_.” Then an outline of what American missionary schools are trying to do for all grades, “gentle and simple,” in this city, was given, to his great surprise.[5]

[5] See Appendix.

Here are items you find in your reading:

“Less than thirty years ago it was common for men to lock their wives and daughters securely in the upper story when they went to business, or if absent for any length of time to deliver them to a convent for safekeeping. No respectable woman could go alone on the streets of any of the large towns.

“The story of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba is the story of Brazil and all countries where Rome has held undisturbed sway. In the seventeen and one-half millions of Roman Catholic Brazilians there is 82 per cent. of illiteracy and an enormous per cent. of illegitimacy and crime.

“The first missionaries of the Presbyterian Board landed in Brazil in 1860. Every avenue to knowledge was held by the State Church and the Jesuits had control. Private schools were subject to priestly inspection. Protestantism was fiercely opposed by State, Church and people. Men who dared to preach the Gospel publicly, risked their lives.”

In 1885, their schools had been opened fifteen years. “Under the influence of Protestantism, or at any rate coincident with the growth of Presbyterian schools and churches in Brazil, new and more liberal educational laws were enacted. Influences were at work in society which in the near future were to abolish slavery, overthrow monarchy, set up a government of the people and separate Church from State.”

In 1889 “Mackenzie College” was begun. In 1890 their record stands: “A boys’ boarding school, a girls’ boarding school, and a day school in the rua São João, with thirteen rooms for teaching purposes--a normal department with four rooms, all full to overflowing--an enrolment of four hundred and forty-seven pupils in all grades from kindergarten to high school. Eighteen primary schools in different parts of the field with an efficient corps of native teachers, and a self-supporting manual training school.”

The report up to date (1900) is: “The enrolment for the year was 546, with a very high average attendance. There were 339 Brazilians, 48 Germans, 38 Italians, 18 Americans, 14 French, 12 English and 17 of other nationalities. Roman Catholics, 427; Protestants, 117; Israelites, 2. This completes the twenty-ninth year of the school and the tenth year of the college.” A footnote explains that the numbers have not grown the last few years because there is not an inch more room to put a pupil in.

The Rev. Geo. W. Chamberlain was the founder of these schools. At the beginning boys and girls had not been accustomed to meet each other with any freedom. Evil was very evil and very universal. A Brazilian General of high rank, and the last Governor of the province of São Paulo under Emperor Dom Pedro, General Couto Magelhaes (Magellan, a descendant of the old explorer), later became Mr. Chamberlain’s friend, and begged for more American teachers and a larger school for _co-education_!! as he had now seen it developed. Indeed he said, “The only hope of Brazil lies in such co-educational schools.” Query. Did Prof. Agassiz plant the germ of this thought when they went up the Amazon together?

Next day you take a carriage and try to get a general sense of the town. You have heard the State of São Paulo called the “New England of Brazil.” But if you call the city of São Paulo the Boston, the difference is most apparent. The narrow, crooked streets are similar, but the buildings are like those in all Spanish and Portuguese towns.

As you go down the poorer streets, one word comes to you at every turn of your eye, “unclean”--the children, the grown-ups, the houses, the streets, even the emblem of the Holy Spirit which an appointed solicitor of his parish church carries while he begs funds for the celebration of the annual holiday of this member of the Trinity. When I saw one of these I mistook it at a little distance for a pole with a cast-off bonnet on top--a cluster of dilapidated artificial flowers and a bird. Investigation proved the latter a dove!

While many streets are lined with one-story hovels, there are many broad and quite well-paved thoroughfares, and you see these with pleasure. Solid walls higher than your head shut most of the pretty gardens from view, but you get glimpses of comfortable one and two-story houses, the bright colors soft and pleasing. Now and then the Portuguese style is supplanted by the French mansard, and you may guess the owner has been to Paris. Indeed, if he travels far in any direction, he must go on horseback, or on the Atlantic.

Gas, electric lights, street-car lines, sewers, public buildings, and parks, all add to the comfort of living in this old metropolis.

You drive through the finest part of town on your way to the Avenida (Boulevard) and to see the modern reservoir with fine water-works, and isolating hospital, just built by an ambitious government. On the slope of the ridge up which you drive, you see for a long distance a plain, square, substantial three-story, buff brick structure. “What is that?” “Mackenzie College.” In this city of ornate architecture and brilliant coloring this solid plainness is nearly droll. But it is just so much more noticeable. Everybody knows Mackenzie College. The low, insufficient dormitory, house for little boys, manual training shop and President’s dwelling dot the campus, not a foot of which can be spared to be sold if only they can get money to build a dormitory. Descending to the town again you pass the new Government Normal School building and go to see the teachers at the São João school. Plain brick again. Heavy wall around the grounds. What a bee-hive inside! You go through one full schoolroom after another with Miss Scott. The children are so well disciplined they scarcely notice you. The faces are pretty and bright. What surprises you most are the exquisite writing of the young Brazilian teachers on the black-boards, the order and attention in every room whether governed by American teachers or Brazilian who have been trained here, the devotion of the wee new scholars to Miss Baxter and the perfect cleanliness, system and good food which Miss Munson secures. Surely Dr. Lane and Miss Scott, who guide this combination day and girls’ boarding-school, ought to be happy, thankful and proud, and the men and women in the U. S. whose gifts have made this school a possibility ought to be grateful also. The children come from families of the rich and the poor, of title and missionaries, of many nationalities, and differing religious belief. But the mental and moral discipline has challenged the attention of the Government to such an extent that it has been building several remarkable buildings for schools, and teachers trained in this “American School” have been invited to assist in developing the work in them. Many are the tales you will be told, while you stay, of a Boston school-ma’am who was lent by the American school to inaugurate the first years of work in the new Government Normal School. The question of Bible and religion in the Government schools is the same in São Paulo and Chicago, but the other religious opportunities and influences are not the same. If any education of our Protestant type is given to Brazilian youth (not sectarian, but Protestant) it cannot be left to Brazilian fostering. Infidelity, spiritualism, and materialism abound.

When Sunday comes you can choose between three Protestant services, two Presbyterian and one Methodist, all in Portuguese, or the Church of England service in English. Perhaps you prefer to go early to mass. There is ample opportunity for that, and then the day would be a free holiday, so says the majority in the city.

[Illustration: GOVERNMENT NORMAL SCHOOL, SÃO PAULO.]

You may go to the Catholic cemetery on high ground, commanding a fine view of the city. In the thick wall surrounding it are receiving cells for coffins, which can be rented for varying lengths of time. It is a reproduction of such a place in Spain, the West Indies or New Orleans, including the durable wreaths of flowers made of metal, of bisque or of beads, often also photographs under glass. Women never go to a funeral. The hearses and coffins are of brilliant colors, purple, or scarlet, or yellow, and gold.

You must watch the people come and go at the hotel and amuse yourself again with their trunks. Here is a complete set of French ones--real Louis Vuittons made for every sort of contents, even one for the huge tin wash-pan which will be used for my lady’s clothes. How long since you had seen a real old-time “hair-trunk,” i. e., a trunk covered with calf-skin with its hair on! Here they are, studded with brass nails, initials and all! But the tin trunks were the drollest, till you finally bought one yourself and found how well it kept out dampness. The tin ones are all sizes and all colors--decorated. Yours is a nice bright blue, with red roses painted in a stiff bunch on top.

You are rapidly learning the value of sunshine in damp climates. You hang out your clothing and shoes at least once a week in the hot sun until the particles of mold are entirely dry, so they will not be pasty, then brush them thoroughly. Your gloves you buy, without metal buttons, which discolor, only a few at a time, and keep them with lumps of dry ammonia in a tight glass jar or tin biscuit box. You do not trim your dresses with steel. That would rust. When you buy a new hat-pin it has a gilt or brass, not a steel, pin. You keep an eye to your needles and scissors.

A few insects will give you something to talk about when you reach home, but they are not much more troublesome than home-pests.

The flea (_pulga_) takes the place of mosquitoes. He does not keep you awake with singing, and if you compel careful cleaning of your rooms and do not cherish vagabond dogs you will not find him a serious trial after the first fortnight or so. I do not know whether it was a truth spoken in jest or how to characterize the assertion of an old resident who said that his own home fleas never bit him. It was only in other people’s houses that he suffered. One does at least seem to grow bite-proof.

A borachuda bite is more rare but more interesting. He looks like a feeble baby fly. He bites your hand in the shadow, on the sly, and the spot indurates besides inflaming, and lasts longer than the other sorts of bite, but is not serious.

The barata is like a huge cockroach. He loves leather, shoes, traveling bags, passe-partouts, book-bindings. Starch and glue are also acceptable articles of diet to him. With strict housekeeping he is banished. You see how convenient a tin trunk will be if you really travel in all sorts of places, to protect a few of your valuables, now and then.

Now you know the worst there is to know, unless it may be the early puzzles of an American housekeeper here. First as to ice. You can get some if you will, but most people do not. It is considered most unwholesome to drink ice-water. I cannot myself see the superiority of an evaporating water-jar of porous terra cotta, for it has a slender neck and could only be rinsed, never washed and absolutely cleansed, I should think. I admit the chill of the ice-water may be bad in yellow-fever regions. Most people and most shops have no refrigerators. Meat is eaten the day it is killed, and is called _carne verde_, green meat. This is the tempting label on butchers’ carts. I remember going to dine with a lady who was a fine housekeeper. The turkey was as tender as one from Rhode Island or Philadelphia. I asked the secret. She said that before it was killed that morning she had fed it whisky until it staggered.

Every house of pretension has its “dispense,” or locked closet, from which the housekeeper every morning counts out or weighs out exactly what is to be used by the cook for the meals of the day. The cook usually goes to market, being able to beat down the prices to the proper point with better grace than the presiding genius of the house. Besides he or she can bring home the purchases in a basket, and there is no further doubt as to whether the article purchased is the one delivered. The great markets are worth a visit. You will go at least to the chief one, in the heart of town, in a great, light market-building which would be a credit anywhere.