The South American Republics Volume I Part 12

The coast soon became well known, but the Portuguese government did not extend its explorations to the south. It was left to the Spaniards to find the pa.s.sage into the Pacific Ocean and to explore the tributaries of the Plate. The southern extension of the continent became and remains Spanish. No exact records exist of the earliest Portuguese explorations of the northern coast from Cape St. Roque to the mouth of the Amazon. We only know that some Portuguese s.h.i.+ps navigated those waters and that Spain never seriously disputed Portugal's t.i.tle to that region.

For thirty years Brazil remained unsettled, though the fleets going to the East Indies often stopped in its admirable harbours to refit and take water. Private adventurers came for brazil-wood and the French poached more and more frequently. Soon the latter began to establish little factories to which they returned year after year, and got on good terms with the aborigines. It became evident that Portugal must establish fortified, self-sustaining posts if she expected to retain the territory.

CHAPTER III

DESCRIPTION

Cabral's discovery bequeathed to the Portuguese race one of the largest, most productive, and valuable political divisions of the globe. The area is 3,150,000 square miles--larger than the United States without Alaska, and surpa.s.sed only by the British, Russian, Chinese, and American empires. From north to south it extends 2600 miles, and east and west 2700. Lying across the equator and traversed by no very high mountain ranges, its climate is more uniform than any other equally large inhabited region, but its extent is so immense that there are very considerable variations.

Compact in form, with a continuous seacoast, unsurpa.s.sable harbours, and a great extension of navigable rivers, water communication between the different parts is easy and the danger of dismemberment by external attack a minimum. Occupying the central portion of South America it touches all the other countries of the continent except Chile, uniting them geographically, and to a large extent controlling land communication among them. It is nearer Europe and Africa than any other South American country, and is also on the direct route between the North Atlantic and both coasts of South America. Situated in lat.i.tudes where evaporation and precipitation are largest, where the trade-winds unfailingly bring moisture from the Atlantic, and on the eastern and windward slope of the narrowest of the continents, Brazil has the steadiest and most uniformly distributed rainfall of any large part of the globe.

The exuberance of life in Brazil must be seen to be realised. The early voyagers related the wonder and admiration which they felt. Amerigo Vespucci said that if Paradise did exist on this planet it could not be far from the Brazilian coast. Aga.s.siz believed that the future centre of the civilisation of the world would be in the Amazon valley. The plants useful for food, and in industry, commerce, and medicine, are innumerable. Nowhere except in Ceylon does the palm flourish so. There are more plants indigenous to Brazil than to any other country, and many species, like coffee, transplanted there have doubled in productiveness.

Indian corn and mandioc were already cultivated by the Indians when Cabral landed, and both upland and lowland rice grew wild. The soil lends itself kindly to any kind of culture, and in most cases two crops may be reaped annually. In a word the subsoil, the soil, the atmosphere, the forests, and the waters of Brazil are teeming with life and full of potential wealth--too much so, perhaps, for the most wholesome development of the human race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GARDEN IN PETROPOLIS.]

The most extensive and the least-developed part of Brazil is the Amazon valley. The Brazilian portion of the Amazon basin comprises forty-five per cent. of the whole territory of the republic. The northern and south-eastern borders slope up to the surrounding mountains, but the rest is an early level plain, little elevated above the sea. The plains are covered with dense forests, much of the country is frequently flooded, and communication is only possible by the streams. In their neighbourhood the climate is in many localities unhealthful, and is everywhere tropical and rainy. Back from the rivers is an unexplored and unknown wilderness. The Amazon with its tributaries forms the greatest of all navigable fluvial systems. Ten thousand seven hundred miles are already known to be suitable for navigation by steamboats, and four thousand eight hundred more for smaller boats.

It is in the narrow coast-plain on the Atlantic, and in the high regions lying to the east and south of the great central depression, that the Brazilian people live.

The main orographical feature of non-Amazonian Brazil is the great mountain system which extends uninterruptedly from the northern coast through the whole country. This continental uplift corresponds to the Andes on the west coast, just as the Apalachians do to the Rockies in North America. Its relative importance is many times greater on account of its great width, and because a broad plateau nearly connects it with the Andes between the headwaters of the Amazon and Plate river systems.

The joint result is that two-thirds of Brazil is high enough to have a moderate and healthful climate, but the cataracts in the rivers and the steep escarpments of the mountains make it difficult of access.

The promontory of South America which reaches out to the north-east, looking in a direct line to the western extremity of Africa, is a region of gentle slopes, of wide, spa.r.s.ely wooded plateaux, and of brush-covered hills. At long intervals, the interior is subject to severe drouths. The soil is fertile as a rule and the rainfall generally sufficient for cereal crops. Nearing the sea precipitation increases, and cotton and sugar thrive. The mountain ranges rarely exceed three thousand feet in height, and lie far back from the coast, from which the country slopes up gradually. This region was the first in Brazil to contain a large population, and the Dutch fought hard for it during the seventeenth century. In its area of 430,000 square miles seven of the Brazilian states are included--Maranho, Piauhy, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Parahyba, Pernambuco, and Alagoas. The promontory of St. Roque, where the coast turns from an east-and-west direction to a north-and-south, marks a commercial division. Sailing vessels found it difficult to round this cape from the north, and consequently the commercial relations of Maranho, Piauhy, and Ceara have been rather with the Amazon than southern Brazil. South of St. Roque the region is most easily accessible from Europe and is on the direct line of communication between both sides of the North Atlantic and the coasts to the south.

The region drained by the Tocantins and Araguaya very nearly corresponds with the state of Goyaz. It is the western slope of the Brazilian Cordillera, and differs radically from the Amazonian plain, which it adjoins. As one ascends the Tocantins and Araguaya from their mouths in the Amazon estuary the alt.i.tude rapidly rises and navigation is quickly interrupted by cataracts. In the south the level rises to over four thousand feet, and the climate shows a considerable range of temperature, with the thermometer sometimes falling below freezing in the higher mountains. Though the area is 350,000 square miles, the population hardly reaches a quarter of a million, and has not been increasing rapidly since the exhaustion of the alluvial gold deposits.

Roughly speaking, it may be described as a region well adapted to cattle and agriculture, and composed of high, open, rolling plateaux traversed by low mountain ranges and well-wooded river valleys.

The next natural division comprises the oval depression lying between the great central watershed and the high range which runs straight north from Rio within a few hundred miles of the coast. This is the So Francisco valley. Politically and commercially connected is the adjacent coast-plain. Valley and plain are divided into the four states of Minas, Bahia, Sergipe, and Espirito Santo, with 430,000 square miles and 6,000,000 inhabitants. In the coast-plain the rainfall is greater than farther north, and the soil is very fertile, producing not only cotton, sugar, and tobacco, but coffee, maize, and mandioc. The slopes are more abrupt and the mountains begin closer to the sea. The interior is a great plateau traversed by high mountain ranges and the tributaries of the So Francisco River. Most of this plateau is included in the great state of Minas, the most populous member of the Brazilian union, which is agriculturally self-sufficing, and one of the great mineral regions of the world. The rainfall is abundant, the climate is healthful and bracing, the birth-rate is large, and the region is admirably adapted to the white races. Its general character is a rolling plateau, three to four thousand feet above the ocean, forming extensive, treeless plains, which are interspersed with wooded mountain chains, river valleys, and extensive tracts of brush-land. The European who visits the So Francisco valley is astonished to find a country where the climate is temperate and the soil fitted to the production of all sorts of food crops including the cereals, and where, nevertheless, proximity to the equator makes practicable a multiplicity of crops in a single year. The coast-plain, which forms the greatest part of Bahia, Sergipe, and Espirito Santo, is fertile, but the climate is enervating to Europeans, and the proportion of black blood there is the largest in Brazil.

About the twentieth degree the mountains approach close to the coast, and from Victoria south to the thirtieth degree the Atlantic border of Brazil is steep and mountainous, often rising directly from the sea to a height of two thousand to six thousand feet. It is a coast of splendid harbours and magnificent scenery. The drainage is mostly inland into the Plate system, and water falling within a dozen miles of the ocean flows 2500 miles before reaching the sea.

To this rule there is but one important exception--the Parahyba River, the basin of which is practically coterminous with the state of Rio de Janeiro and the federal district. This state is commercially and politically very important, although its area is small. The surface is very mountainous and the soil mostly inferior to that of the divisions to the north and south. However, it is still an immense producer of coffee and sugar. Its geographical situation and great harbour have made it the most thickly settled part of the country. The rainfall is very large, especially on the mountains nearest the sea, which are covered with magnificent forests. The coast-plain is warm though not unhealthful, save in the vicinity of the infected city of Rio, and in the higher regions the climate is delightful and in temperature almost European. The northern boundary is the Mantiqueira range which divides the Parahyba basin from the valleys of the Parana and So Francisco.

This range is the highest in Brazil, and its culminating peak--Itatiaya--is ten thousand feet high, though it is only seventy miles from the sea. Slightly lower ranges lie between the Mantiqueira and the ocean, and of these the highest is Pedro d'a.s.su--7365 feet--which overlooks Rio harbour, only twenty miles away.

The Brazilian portion of the great Parana valley presents a remarkable uniformity of general characteristics. Bordering the sea is a range of mountains, or rather the abrupt escarpment of the plateau, some three thousand feet high. From its summit the surface slopes gently to the west, draining into the Parana by a hundred streams, many of which are navigable in their middle courses. This great plateau--with its area of about 250,000 square miles--is mostly treeless toward the north, but in the south is covered with pine forests. It lies in the temperate zone and snow sometimes falls on the higher peaks and _chapadas_ of So Paulo. The soil is remarkably fertile, and this is the coffee region _par excellence_ of the world. A coffee tree in So Paulo produces two to four times as much as in other parts of the globe. Food crops grow well, and the country might be economically independent of the rest of the world. The contour of the country is favourable to railroad-building and the region is easily penetrable. From their settlements on the seaward border of this plateau the Paulistas of the seventeenth century roamed over the whole interior of South America, enslaving the Indians and driving out the Spanish Jesuits. The rainfall diminishes toward the interior, and there is an ill-defined limit where it ceases to be sufficient for coffee. The coffee district is also limited by the lowering of average temperature with increasing lat.i.tude. The three states of So Paulo, Parana, and Santa Catharina contain most of the region under description, but south-western Minas and extreme southern Goyaz also belong to it.

The great plateau gradually dies away to the south ending with a low escarpment across the state of Rio Grand do Sul. Physically and geographically, this State is different from the rest of Brazil. Most of its area is drained by the Uruguay River, and its natural relations and affinities are with the republic of that name. Rio Grande's ninety-five thousand square miles contain over a million inhabitants, and the open, rolling plains, nowhere much elevated above the sea, are excellently adapted to cattle. The northern portion is higher, more broken, and more wooded than the southern, and agriculture has made greater progress. The climate is distinctly that of the temperate zone--hot in summer, cold in winter, and subject to sudden variations on account of the winds which sweep up from the vast Argentine pampas. The inhabitants are big, vigorous, and hardy, and great riders. All the products of the temperate zone, including the cereals, flourish, and this part of Brazil seems destined to great things in the near future.

From Bolivia around to Uruguay sweeps in a great semicircle, convex to the north, a plateau that nearly unites the Andes with the Eastern Cordillera, and forms the watershed between the Amazon and the Plate.

Its eastern horn has already been described as forming the states of So Paulo, Parana, and Santa Catharina; its western and central portions form the great interior state of Matto Grosso. Here the headwaters of the Madeira, Tapajos, and Xingu, tributaries of the Amazon, intertwine with those of the Paraguay and Parana. The narrow depression which the Upper Paraguay forms across it is the only portion that has yet been described. The rest of the 410,000 square miles of Matto Grosso is abandoned to Indians and wild beasts. Only enough is known of these solitudes to prove that in the centre of the continent exists a well-watered, fertile, and healthful region, capable of sustaining an immense population, but which is shut off from development by lack of means of communication. The northwestern part could be reached from the Amazon if the Falls of the Madeira could be overcome, a route which would also open up a great and now inaccessible portion of Bolivia.

CHAPTER IV

EARLY COLONISATION

The permanent settlement of Brazil was begun by deserters and mutineers set on sh.o.r.e from s.h.i.+ps on their way to India or to cut brazil-wood. In 1509 a certain Diego Alvarez, nicknamed by the Indians "Caramuru," or "man of lightning," landed at Bahia and escaped being eaten by frightening the Indians with his musket. He married a chief's daughter, and when a real colony was established years later he and his numerous half-breed descendants proved of great use to his compatriots. Two years later John Ramalho did much the same near Santos, hundreds of miles to the south. The story of the last of the three authentic _degradados_ is even more romantic. His name was Aleixo Garcia, and with three companions he landed about 1526 in the present state of Santa Catharina.

Collecting an army of Indians he led them on a conquering and gold-hunting expedition over the coast-range, across the great plateau, into the valley of the Paraguay, and even penetrated ten years before Pizarro into territory tributary to the Incas of Peru. He finally perished in the centre of the continent, but when, years afterwards, the Spaniards penetrated the valley of the Parana they found that the Indians already knew of white men and firearms.

As early as 1516 the Portuguese government offered to give farming utensils free to settlers in Brazil, and it is probable that shortly afterwards some sugar was planted. The first serious and official effort to cultivate sugar was made in 1526. Christovo Jaques founded a factory on the island of Itamarica, a few miles north of Pernambuco. It was shortly destroyed by the French brazil-wood hunters, and the settlers fled to the site of Pernambuco and renewed the effort pending the arrival of re-enforcements. Seekers of brazil-wood hailing from Honfleur and Dieppe were swarming along the coast. The value of the region for sugar raising began to be appreciated. When the news came of the failure of the Spanish expedition which Cabot had led to the Plate, the Portuguese government determined to fit out a considerable expedition, composed of colonists and families as well as soldiers and adventurers.

Seduced by the cry, "We are going to the Silver River," four hundred persons enlisted. The five vessels were commanded by Martim Affonso da Souza, a great general and navigator, who had already proved his capacity and who later went to the very top in the East Indian wars. He was instructed to expel all intruders and establish a permanent fortified colony. Early in 1531 he reached the coast near Pernambuco, captured three French s.h.i.+ps laden with brazil-wood, and sent two caravels north to explore the coast beyond Cape St. Roque, while he himself sailed south with the idea of founding a colony on the Plate.

But after pa.s.sing Santa Catharina he was unfortunate in losing his largest s.h.i.+p with most of his provisions, and deemed it safer to return toward the north. At So Vicente, now a little town near the great coffee port of Santos, he dropped anchor, and there, January, 1532, founded the first Portuguese colony in Brazil. Near this point lived the solitary Portuguese, John Ramalho, surrounded by his half-breed descendants, and he gave his countrymen a glad reception. He soon showed them the way up the mountains to the high plateau which begins only a few miles from the sea. Another settlement was founded on these fertile plains near the site of the present city of So Paulo.

In the west of Brazil the settlements were established at a striking distance from the coast, but in So Paulo the colonists could more easily spread over the open plains of the interior than along the mountainous coast. On top of their plateau they were cut off from ready communication with the mother country; they struck out for themselves, and their development was something like that of the British in North America. They were the pioneers of Brazil, corresponding closely in character and habits, in the virtues of daring, hospitality, and self-confidence, and in the vices of cruelty, rudeness, and ignorance, with the pioneers of the Mississippi valley.

The Paulistas were all profoundly influenced by their intimate a.s.sociation with the Indian tribes. In the early days intermarriages were frequent, but the continual re-enforcement of the European element, and the inferiority in capacity of reproduction which the Indian has shown in Brazil, make the traces of that intermixture hard to discover at the present time. The Paulistas and their descendants in the interior states are taller, slenderer, darker, and more active and graceful than the modern Portuguese. Their hands and feet are smaller, their movements more nervous, their manners more self-confident.

The successful founding of a considerable colony in Brazil aroused interest at home, and many courtiers solicited the Crown for grants. It was decided to part.i.tion the whole coast into feudal fiefs, each proprietor undertaking the expenses of colonisation and being given virtually sovereign powers in return for a tax on the expected production. Each of these "captaincies" measured fifty leagues along the coast, and extended indefinitely into the interior. In 1534 twelve such fiefs were created, covering the whole coast from the mouth of the Amazon to the island of Santa Catharina--these being the points where the Tordesillas line met the seaboard.

Six of these proprietors succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng permanent colonies.

Martim Affonso's settlement has already been described. In 1536 his brother, Pero Lopes, established Santo Amaro within a few miles of So Vicente. Naturally its history soon became confounded with that of the larger settlement. Duarte Coelho founded Pernambuco in 1535, and in it was soon absorbed Itamarica, the second of the two colonies founded by Pero Lopes in 1536. The other three permanent settlements were Victoria, the nucleus of the present state of Espirito Santo, Porto Seguro, and Ilheos. No one of them prospered, and their territories are still among the most backward parts of the Brazilian coast. The donatory of the territory which included the bay of Bahia, started a town, but it was destroyed by Indians. The other five captaincies were not taken hold of seriously by their proprietors. The four nuclei for the settlement of Brazil were So Paulo, Pernambuco, and the later colonies of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro.

Martim Affonso recked little of his fief or its revenues and left his Paulistas to work out their own destiny. Pernambuco was on the track of every s.h.i.+p which came to South America, the neighbouring interior was level and easily accessible from the coast, the soil and climate were suitable for sugar, and from the beginning relations with the mother country were intimate and continuous. Its proprietor, Duarte Coelho, determined to devote himself to his colony, and he personally headed a numerous and carefully selected colonising expedition. He spent the rest of his life there, and died twenty years later, surrounded by a large and prosperous colony, which was already a self-supporting state with all the elements of permanence. A good business man and liberal for that age, he granted land on easy terms; its possession was secure; contributions were moderate; and he resolutely defended himself and his grantees from the exactions of the Crown.

The Portuguese occupation of Brazil was induced solely by commercial considerations. Explorers and emigrants went out to make their fortunes, not to escape religious or political tyranny. When the first voyagers were disappointed in not finding gold mines, they turned their attention to brazil-wood. Soon the suitability of the territory for sugar was discovered. The European demand for this luxury was increasing, and the Portuguese had become familiar with its culture in Africa. Cane was taken from Madeira and the Cape Verdes to Brazil before 1525, and there is a record of exportation at least as early as 1526. Here was found the basis for the real colonisation. From the very start the industry prospered in Pernambuco, and Brazil became the main source of the world's supply.

Near Pernambuco little trouble was experienced with the Indians. Many of the tribes were allies of the Portuguese, though the fierce Aymores fought the settlers and once reduced the infant colony to the verge of destruction. Although the law of Portugal forbade the enslavement of Indians except as a punishment for crime, they were reduced to bondage on a large scale in Pernambuco, and the Paulistas never paid any attention to this prohibition.

By the middle of the sixteenth century Brazil contained one rapidly expanding colony of sugar-planters, Pernambuco, which gave sure promise of wealth if not attacked from without,--a half dozen moribund settlements on the thousand miles of coast to the south, and an isolated but vigorous and self-sufficing group in So Paulo, whose inhabitants produced little for export, but who were reducing the aborigines to slavery in an expanding circle. In the last there was a considerable proportion of Indian blood and in the first a large number of negroes.

The smaller captaincies were little more than resorts for pirates and contraband traders in brazil-wood. The settlers were powerless to prevent the French expeditions which yearly became more numerous.

Serious apprehensions were felt that the French would occupy the coast and make Brazil a basis for attacks on Portugal's African and Indian empires.

The best blood of the Portuguese nation was being drained away in exhausting wars and expeditions to India and Africa; absolute government was sapping civic vitality; the extravagances of Court and n.o.bles were impoveris.h.i.+ng the country. However, enough vitality remained, before the terrific destruction of Portuguese power and pride at Alcacer-Kibir in 1580, to secure such a firm establishment of the Portuguese race on the whole coast of Brazil that it never has been dislodged, and only once seriously threatened. This result was largely due to the founding of a strong military and naval post at Bahia, around which grew up a prosperous colony, and under whose protection Pernambuco spread out over the north-east coast, So Paulo developed uninterruptedly, and Rio Bay was saved from the French.

The first proprietary settlement in Bahia Bay had been destroyed by the Indians, but this magnificent and central harbour was manifestly the most convenient point whence to send a.s.sistance to the other settlements and guard the whole coast. In 1549 the king determined to build a fortress and city there. Thomas de Souza, the illegitimate scion of a great house, was chosen the first governor-general. He sailed in April, 1549, with six vessels, and accompanied by three hundred and twenty officials and a number of colonists. The new capital commanded the entrance to a magnificent inland sea which offered splendid facilities for the establishment of a flouris.h.i.+ng state. Bahia Bay is nearly a hundred miles in circ.u.mference; its sh.o.r.es are fertile and penetrated by rivers; each plantation has its own wharves. Within a few months a town of a hundred houses had been built, surrounded by a wall and defended by batteries; a cathedral, a custom house, a Jesuit college, and a governor's residence were under way.

Thomas de Souza was instructed to strike at the root of the difficulties that were supposed to have prevented the success of the proprietary captaincies. He was the direct representative of the king and had supreme supervisory power. Other officers, however, were a.s.sociated with him who were independently responsible in judicial, financial, and naval matters. He was closely bound by instructions covering every detail that could be foreseen, and these instructions clearly show the centralising and jealous spirit of Portuguese inst.i.tutions and ideas.

Few Portuguese of that age were capable of rising to an appreciation of the economical advantages of freedom. The liberal concessions to the original proprietors--free trade with the mother country, the right of communication with foreign countries, and judicial and administrative independence--availed nothing. Neither colonists, proprietors, nor the central government could understand or apply them. Brazil was subjected to a systematic and continually more rigorous exploitation by the home government, and to the irresponsible and uncontrolled military despotism of little satraps.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAHIA.]

In Bahia, as in Pernambuco, the sugar industry prospered from the beginning. Bahia is close to Africa and navigation across is safe and easy. The importation of blacks began immediately, and the port continued to be the greatest _entrepot_ and distributing point for the trade during three centuries. Bahia's population is more largely black than that of any other city in Brazil, and the pure African type is frequently seen on its streets. The local cuisine includes many dishes of African origin, and the local dialect many African words. Certain African dialects are spoken to this day, and a few Mohammedan negroes there still perform the rites of the Koran in the most absolute secrecy.

The munic.i.p.al government of the town, though under the overshadowing power of the governor, showed some vitality and independence. The fertile island of Itaparica, just opposite the city, had been granted to the mother of a minister. Though the donation was repeatedly confirmed by the king himself, she and her heirs were never able to put their agents in possession. The munic.i.p.al council successfully insisted that the original royal instructions to the governor required all grantees to occupy their estates in person.

CHAPTER V