Pictures from Southern Brazil

American Geographical Society

Pictures from Southern BrazilAuthor(s): Mark JeffersonSource: Geographical Review, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1926), pp. 521-547Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/208383 .

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THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

VOL. XVI OCTOBER, I926 No. 4

PICTURES FROM SOUTHERN BRAZIL*

Mark Jefferson State Normal College, Ypsilanti, Michigan

S OUTHERN Brazil is a lovely land: lovely for its rich vegetation, for pebble-floored brooks of clear water, for house walls white and roofs red among the deep green of orange and banana

growths, for little towns set fair with gardens on well drained hills. All these beauties are enhanced for the traveler who comes on them

in winter from the Argentine Republic, then brown and dreary. June was bitterly cold in the southern hemisphere in I9I8. There

had been snow on shaded roofs in Buenos Aires for three days running, a thing which had not happened in the last thirty years. As it was war time, the English were shipping no coal. Rich ladies called for their furs at the dining tables and looked angrily at long electric globes that glowed and were expected to warm their salons but couldn't. Clerks, gloved and coated, sat in their offices and shivered and smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and talked of the cold. It is horrible to be cold in a warm country! People never expect it.

At Santa Maria, 650 miles distant, one is in the midst of Brazilian loveliness: a day and a quarter of actual and comfortable enough travel but two and a half of time elapsed from start to finish.

Santa Maria is a little city of ten thousand people, perched on a hill between the railway and the mountains, embowered in gardens which the cold snap had marked with blackened banana plants. There is a brightness about Santa Maria that adds to its attractive- ness. We came on it in a rain that had lasted all day. There was no dust. Some of the house walls are brilliantly white I do not under- stand how Brazil contrives to maintain whites so glowing!-some are painted red, yellow, or blue, brighter than the distemper colors used

* From the American Geographical Society's Expedition to the A. B. C. Countries in I9I8.

Copyright, I926, by the American Geographical Society of New York



522 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

in the Argentine. Almost all of the roofs are of dark red tiles, the older ones beautifully touched up with green moss. Not only are vegetation and its vivid colors in contrast to scenes in wintry Argen- tine or Chile, but the works of man are very different.

Wherever Spain has been, and that is virtually all over the con- tinent except in Brazil, the wrought iron grille fills all the windows. Hovels have none, but if you would have your dwelling rank as house

' 0 Go$ ROS~0Q5G

0

& SPauo R~~io deJaneiro

PARAGUAYR -25 {U~

l tAs % ~Nr BlumenaLX

C \ o R A ) S U L ' l

v San Antonio wHam r erBerg SMari <S.Le o IdoNo o mbur o

iluga R. CCUh ~ rto Alegre30

14 Lf-Sta. Ana Mt/ 0 0 o00 200 300 400 500 KILOMETERS

v 00 0 100 200 300 MILES

URU _ RioGrandeso 45 THE GEOGR REVIEW, OCT.I926

FIG. i-Sketch map of southern Brazil to show the location of the places illustrated in the text. Scale approximately I: i6250,000.

it must have rejas. Once the reja was for safety, now it is rather the bottom rung of the ladder of social pretension. Of course it prevails too in old Spain and in Burgundian Dijon, and in Italian Milan you may see it. I have wondered whether it was a note from Philip's Spain. But Brazil knows nothing of Spanish rejas or indeed of any Spanish architecture: no Moorish flat roof, azotea, where you would like to sit in the coolness of evening after scorching summer days; no inner court, patio, about a well or cistern; none of the flat surfaces affected by Spanish masons, as admirable of line and intention as imperfect of execution. It makes one wonder about Portugal do they have rejas there? I suppose not. For Portugal is wet Iberia, having rain where Spain has drought. Its rivers have water at all seasons, while Spanish streams run dry every summer. The country is green where Spain is brown. The architecture of Spain is arid- country architecture, which makes it appropriate enough in arid Chile and the Argentine Republic and incongruous in wet Cuba. Brazil too is wet country. Reja, patio, and azotea do not belong there.



W WW FIG. 2

I"~ I

FIG- 3

FIG. 2-Building in Porto Alegre of a style best described as "ornamentatious." FIG. 3-The palacete of Dr. Astrogildo Cezar de Azevedo, Santa Maria.

523



524 THE GEOGRAPHICAI, REVIEW

The garden is no longer sheltered beside a cistern within the house walls, with a few meager plants, but lies open in front of the house, luxuriant and varied. Where means allow, the severe walls of the Spanish mason give place to an efflorescence of decoration that I can only call "ornamentatiousness," something peculiar to the Portu- guese mason. You see a good example of this in the theater at Porto Alegre (Fig. 2). The Italian mason, who now builds all the Argentine

FIG. 4-Santa Maria and its pointed hill.

houses, runs to flowers. If allowed, he will fill all wall spaces with plaster wreaths and garlands.

Instead of a nearly flat roof, which would be difficult to keep tight under the heavy rains, Brazilian houses have roofs of tile that slope two ways or four. Where the pitch is toward the street, a parapet carries the house wall up two or three feet above the eaves, and in this parapet the vertical lines of the fa?ade usually end in urns or globes or "ornaments." The house opposite my hotel window in Santa Maria had orange pillars and window frames and a blue and white wall between. On the parapet were seven orange pilasters with seven orange urns. Blue panels were between. Such pilasters cap- ping a fa?ade are seen in Figure 3, beyond Dr. Azevedo's palacete. The graceful building to the right of Azevedo's is one of the older German houses.

THE GERMANS IN Rio GRANDE

Back in the thirties of the last century a number of Germans came to Brazil, as the Italians have been coming since, the first of them soldiers enlisted in the Emperor's armies. German farmers and



PICTURES FROM SOUTHERN BRAZIL 525

mechanics introduced the arts and industries of Europe among Brazilian herdsmen. These Germans, the industrious among them, prospered and often married into families of native landowners. Their descendants speak Portuguese today. They rate themselves as of higher culture than the Luso-Brazilians-Brazilians of Portu- guese and Indian or negro blood. Any craftsman rates himself above a herder. At Santa Maria, however, they are so intermingled with

FIG. 5Plateau summits back of Santa Maria

those of Portuguese blood that they are not conscious of themselves as Germans. They are not Germans but Brazilians, who could not possibly accommodate themselves to any life open to them in Ger- many. One hears some low German spoken in one and another of the workshops of Santa Maria, but the language is not prevalent. The language of the city is Portuguese. These old houses are all that speaks to the eye of German influence. Few Germans have come here since the old days; they are more attracted to the intensely German settlements near the coast. Dr. Azevedo's mansion is more in keeping with present-day aspirations. I saw no new houses of the German ty'pe, and a number of those now standing are occupied by Italians.

Yet the considerable industry carried on here, as well as in the more distinctly Teutonic colonies, is essentially German. The gaucho of the uplands of Brazil is as much a horse-and-cattle man as the gaucho of the Argentine Pampa. He will not- dig and is not handy with tools. He would be forever content with rawhide, with which indeed he has developed a certain technique of his own. German tanners have made Rio Grande a center for the exportation of ex-




cellent leather, which you may see among the solidly packed goods lying ready for shipment at Porto Alegre; but the Germans of Santa Maria have become completely merged in the population of the country.

THE LITTLE CITY OF SANTA MARIA

Santa Maria is perched on a hill, and there are some tremendous grades in its streets. Rio Branco, the broad street down to the railway station from the Praza, is perhaps the steepest and is paved with lava blocks. Some of the less important streets descending to lower levels have strips of paving blocks across them every hundred feet or so in the steepest places. This checks washing by the heavy rains, is less expensive than paving, and affords great help to horses hauling loads up the grade. The hill in Figure 4 is treated in this way. The foreground has pavement all across. The team is now being driven through the muddy stretch beyond. It is only a few hours after a heavy rainfall.

The hill situation gives Santa Maria excellent drainage but makes water supply difficult. Much water is sold from door to door from a barrel carried on a mule or donkey, with little appearance of clean- liness. The town was expecting to have running water supplied from a spring in the mountains by I9I9 and sanitary sewers finished at the same date.

The sidewalks are mostly of red sandstone, really too soft for the purpose. But it is the rock of the country. Where the blocks have been set in cement they are soon worn into hollows of sandstone between ridges of cement. This red rock occurs at Santa Anna, too, where the railway enters Brazil from the south, 174 miles from Santa Maria. It seemed to extend all the way between. About Santa Anna there are many exposures of the rock in place, and it is used to some extent in house building. There, too, a poorly jointed trap is used for pavements, and flat hilltops are seen that look much as if they were lava-capped. So do the hills behind Santa Maria (Fig. 5); and apparently it is there, on the lava upland, that the best farming soils are found.

The full name of the city is Santa Maria da Bocco do Monte (St. Mary's at the Entrance to the Mountains) referring apparently to the fact that the climb to the plateau of eastern Brazil is made from this point. Before I807 the southern part of Rio Grande was claimed by Spain. There had been more or less disputing, and at various times Pcrtuguese troops had occupied this site as a defensible position at the crossing of the ways between the lowland and the plateau and between the Atlantic and the river Uruguay at Uruguayana. In I807 the present boundary was established between Spanish and Portuguese possessions, which are now Uruguay and Brazil. At that date lands




began to be granted about here, and the city is regard- -.

ed as beginning with the _ year I814.

THE PLATEAU SCARPS IN

SOUTHERN BRAZIL

It is of course well known to all readers that -:

southern Brazil consists in _ great part of a plateau ris- FIG 6 ing half a mile or so above the sea near the Atlantic and sloping gently westward, so that it is drained by streams that flow inland to the Parana, away from .

the sea. It rises abruptly from the Atlantic on the east through a narrow belt of rough country which appears from the sea to be a range of mountains and carries the general name .

Serra do Mar. The state FIG. 7

of Rio de Janeiro consists of a group of valleys in this rough belt. As one sees Rio nestling among crags like the Pao d'Assucar, Corco- vado, Donna Martha (Fig. 6), and its many lower hills E

AZi '

one does not realize that these are outliers of a level plateau above. Indeed the rugged character of Rio crags and peaks, natural enough in that realm of FIG. 8

coarse-grained gneiss, is lit- FIG. 6-Donna Martha and Corcovado looming up over

tle suggestive of levels. Rio de Janeiro. , ~ PauloPara and FIG. 7-The Serra do Mar from Joinville. In Sao Paulo, Parana, and FIG. 8-The Serra do Mar from near the plateau level.

Santa Catharina also the coast mountains rise immediately from the sea; but more than half of Rio Grande do Sul is occupied by a lowland south and east of




the plateau, the "mountains" crossing the state from near its north- east corner toward the southwest and passing just west of Santa Maria.

The lowland is drained to the Atlantic by several rivers, of which the largest is the Jacuhy. Porto Alegre, the only large city of the province, stands on the Rio Guahyba, which is the north-western fork at the head of the Lagoa dos Patos, where the Jacuhy flows into it. The Jacuhy is navigable, as is the tributary that joins it from the west, at high stages, to within twenty miles of Santa Maria, from which point Santa Maria had a good wagon road at an early date. Santa Maria is 242 miles to the west of Porto Alegre on the divide between the Jacuhy tributaries and the westward-flowing Ibicuhy. Although the sea is far away, there is thus a certain similarity between the position of Santa Maria beneath its Serra and that of Rio de Janeiro and Joinville beneath the Serra do Mar.

Naturally it is at Santa Maria that the railways from Buenos Aires via Paso de los Libres and Uruguayana, from Montevideo via Santa Anna, and from Porto Alegre-all on the lower levels-meet to climb to the plateau of southern Brazil, a surface represented in Figure 7 by the summit of the peak and in Figure 8 by the several summits. The concave slope of the hill in Figure 4 is characteristic of slopes eroded by heavy rains in the tropics. Similar forms are to be seen in the island of Dominica and a striking hill in plain sight from ships lying off the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal.

THE PLATEAU LANDSCAPE

From Santa Maria the railway climbs steeply for fourteen miles among beautifully wooded hills. Then, when one is on the trap, the ascent is gentler, though perceptible enough, for another twenty miles. The upper surface as far as one can see from the tracks is open, grassy, and undulating (Fig. 9) in the most gentle hills imaginable. There are woods here and there in the hollows but often miles apart. Prevailingly the plateau surface is woodless. The trees that are to be found are chiefly Brazilian pines, affording the best construction wood of South America, striking trees for their level, spreading crown (Fig. IO). The wood seems much like our southern pine. The more open growths of the pines (Fig. 14) shade the trees that produce the valuable mate, or Paraguayan tea, an admirable beverage leaf largely consumed in Uruguay, Paraguay, and the Ar- gentine Republic. The pines occur in solid groves, but occasionally other species are intermingled; and palms and oranges occur in all clearings.

Usually the clumps of trees are verv irregular. Occasionally there are none to the horizon. The sky line (Fig. II) is strikingly level, and



FIG. 9

FIG. IO

FIG. I I1 FIG. 9-Grassy plateaus of Rio Grande. FIG. io-A pocket of "pines" (Araucaria) on the plateau. FIG. II-Railroad meanders on the level plateau surface in Santa Catharina. The English builders

received a subvention based on mileage!

529




it is remarkable that wherever the native rock is exposed in gullies in the upland it is trap, rotting to a red soil. The country is thinly settled by herdsmen of mingled Portuguese and Indian blood, a race of admirable qualities but distinctly averse to any work except tend- ing horses and cattle, like the Argentine gauchos.

To get an idea of the ascent to the plateau at some other point than the railway we drove up to the colony Silveira Martins. From Colonia station the distance is twelve kilometers. A gaucho-looking fellow, Castiliano (Fig. I2), from a miserable hovel with sides of wattle and mud agreed somewhat reluctantly to drive us up to the colony

in his carroSa (Fig. I5)?. The road had been roughly graded, had alarmingly deep ditches on

* # ~ff | z each side, but the surface had not been rounded up in the mid- dle or, at least, not for a long time. We had been having a week of heavy rain. In a little over an hour we had made about half our distance, fairly level and all in mud, and were at Arroyo Grande, an Italian hamlet. From here on the road was rougher. It was early July; the weather

4, F 1X ! I 11 f } _ | was fine with clear, still air and cool temperature so that, in spite

FIG. 12-Castiliano, typical upland Brazilian of the sun, our sweaters and of Portuguese-Indian blood.

overcoats were not too warm except when we got out and walked. The grass was thick and green, though white with frost till near noon. The occasional houses (Fig. I6) of Italians, with whitewashed walls and red-tile two-pitch roofs, were neat. They did not at all resemble the country houses of the same class of people in the Argentine, who generally used corrugated iron for roofs. That is used here for occasional sheds and warehouses but only rarely, even for a hut.

Trees were abundant. Each house was set rather in an opening in the forest than in a little grove on the empty plain, as is so characteristic in the Argentine Republic. Palms occur here and there, but most of the trees were not unfamiliar looking. The wood that is used here is all of local growth, and Castiliano said that all the trees were good and useful, a contrast to the usual remark in Chile that most of the trees are of no use, not even to burn. We met carts of alfalfa in bales going down to the station drawn by six and seven mules or horses. Many persons on horseback met or passed us. It is the only expeditious way to travel on that road (Fig. I7).




PLATEAU VILLAGES

After somewhat more than two hours' travel, the road became steep and stony. We had left the soft red sandstone and now were on the trap, which was of characteristic color, texture, and weathering. At places the weathering of the rock caused the customary long screes of rounded boulders. Under the very crest of the slope were numerous orange trees full of fruit and one lone tree fern. This tree fern, however, had been frosted, like all the bananas in the region. At last we were on the top of the great plateau of southern Brazil. I estimate our altitude at not more than I500 nor less than IOOO feet above the plain, which is about 400 feet above the sea. The dark brown soil was in evidence all about us. A little farther on we came to the village of San Antonio. It has but one street with two bends in it. Estimates give it from 600 to IOOO inhabitants. The houses were white, very white, with red roofs of tile in two slopes, and there were orange trees in the yard of every house we saw. For sixty cents we had an excellent breakfast of bife a cavallo (beefsteak on FIG. 13-A type of Brazilian that will not work.

horseback) -steak with fried eggs, fried potatoes, oranges, bread, and wine which Castiliano said was fermented grape juice. Potatoes are a specialty of the place. Last year they exported a million kilograms, we were told, and a great deal of alfalfa. The population was practically all Italian: the Brazilian shown in Figure I3 was quite the exception. He is precisely the type that fills most of the minor public offices of a clerical sort.

A pleasing element in the Rio Grande landscape, as seen from the railway, is the absence of the hovels so frequent in Chile and the Argentine Republic. The very pleasant Argentine city of Cordoba, for instance, with over a hundred thousand inhabitants, is encircled by wretched ranchos of sun-dried bricks with thin thatch roof (Fig. I 8). There live the servants of the city, the chinos, natives largely of Indian blood though speaking only Spanish.

The poorest house in San Antonio, the village of the upland colony Silveira Martins, was a neat frame construction with roof of heavy red tiles (Fig. I9). Quite typical of common houses are those of the Polish colonists at Uniao da Victoria, the northernmost town on



JLp

FIG. 14 .s~~ ~ ,..sj ._ E~

Ai F _-1

FIG. 1 _

FIG. I4-Open-growing pines with white-stemmed mat6 trees in their shade. FIG. I5-Carrofa, the springless Brazilian cart.

53 2



FIG. i6

FIG. I17

FIG. i6-Italian colonist's house with orange trees on the road to Silveira Martins. FIG. I7-The road is properly traveled on horseback.

533




the railway in Santa Catharina state (Fig. 20). Polish homesteads in the woods are similar.

Castiliano's hovel is the only one I recall seeing on the journey up to Rio, but it may well be typical of the interior away from the railway and colonizing Europeans. Mud and wattle are a natural house material there, as are sun-dried bricks on the Argentine Pampa. Both allow rapid construction of shelter, but neither makes for neat- ness of appearance.

It is singular that the log-cabin type of house should be wanting in all this region. Logically there must be log cabins in the remoter woods, logs are so evidently the natural building material for the settler with an ax. In Europe the log cabin survives today in the wooden house of Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, and Finland. The frame house, as it exists in the United States, with a thin sheathing of boards, is unknown over there. But the settlers along the railway in Rio Grande do Sul brought sawmill as well as ax, and milled lumber is universal in their houses.

PORTO ALEGRE

Of Porto Alegre I need say nothing but that it is a large commercial city of modern and cosmopolitan aspect. Built on a hill (Fig. 2I)

like little Santa Maria, it should be healthful. We found it pleasant, in spite of a drop in temperature from 830 to below freezing in a few days and no heat in the hotel.'

You hear " Empire " Germans declare the city is half German, but that is absurd. There is much German influence. Germans brought the arts and industries to the province, but Porto Alegre is absolutely a Brazilian city. The bit of backyard scenery shown in Figure 22 is

illustrative of its Latin-American character: nothing could be less likely in-a German settlement such as Joinville or Blumenau!

There have been reports in American newspapers about insurrec- tions of Germans against the Brazilian government in Porto Alegre, but I can say with confidence that nothing of the sort ever happened. It could no more happen there than in New York City. There are many well-to-do Germans in the city, merchants both German-born and Brazilian-born, who stand excellently with the government. They are persons of great influence, owners of valuable property in the city and country. They would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by any resistance to law and order.

THREE PROSPEROUS GERMAN SETTLEMENTS

Intensely German are the settlements twenty odd miles north of Porto Alegre, near the foothills in front of the plateau: Sao Leopoldo,

1 Compare Fig. I9 (p. 458) in the author's paper "Actual Temperatures of South America,"

Geogr. Rev., Vol. i6, I926, pp. 443-466.



FIG. I 8

FIG. I9

S ! . .. . ,..

FIG. 2 0

FIG. ii8 Typical rancho, suburbs of the Argentine city of Cordoba. FIG. ipg-Wooden house, exceptional type in Italian colony, Silveira Martins. FIG. 20-Wooden house usual among Polish colonists, Uni8o da Victoria.

535




... .E......

FIG. 21

~~t _

FIG. 22

FIG. 2I-Porto Alegre on its hill. The only large city of Rio Grande do Sol, it is a flourishing port of modern and cosmopolitan aspect.

FIG. 22-Creole couirt, Grande Hotel, Porto Alegre. Though there is much German influence, the city is essentially Latin-American in character as is illustrated by this courtyard scene. Compare with a typical German settlement such as Joinville.

Novo Hamburgo, and Hamburger Berg. The keynote of the situation there is that the Germans own all the land. There are Lusos there. The children of Figure 23, who offered strings of a dozen oranges for five cents one cold morning, are Luso- Brazilians. So are the four children of Figure 24,

taking home washing in their goat cart near Novo Hamburgo. But the appearance of all citizens or children of the well-to-do class (Fig. 25) speaks equally positively of Ger- man blood, and their language is German.

Apart from its more prosperous inhabitants I do not know that the town of Sao. Leopoldo looks German-like (Fig. 26). The streets are clean and well paved. That is Ger- man. The houses are well built and well kept. The windows are not Latin American; yet the street has the bare South Amer- ican air, with no plants, no garden, no grass between houses and street. Street corners like Figure 27 are pretty sure to be shops in the Argentine or Chile, and so they are here. Nothing but bars in the windows are lacking to make that picture illus- trate an interior Argen- tine town.



PICTURES FROM SOUTHERN BRAZII, 537

We went from Porto Alegre to Novo Hamburgo by railway and walked from Novo Hamburgo to Ham- burger Berg, a picturesque village (Fig. 28) under the twin peaks, Dois Irma c's, two brothers. This village is the oldest of the Ger- man settlements. An eld- erly German on the street, well but plainly dressed, was interested in our pho- tographing and greeted us.

Yes, every one was German here. He never heard of any one owning land in Novo Ham- burgo or Hamburger Berg who was not German.

What part of Germany did he come from? Why, he came from the Rhineland, that is, his father did. He himself was born here, right over there. He owned that whole row of houses! This was the first settlement, made in 1825. From here they settled farther south at Novo Hamburgo. That was why they called it Novo.

Had they prospered? Yes indeed. They had done well; there were no beggars. They had lots of wood. Lumber and tanned hides were their main products; but they had all sorts of industries, and the ground produced anything they could want. Now in midwinter you could see everything imaginable growing: oranges, bananas (as a matter of fact the bananas had all been frozen this year and turned black), cabbages, let- tuce, and whatever you wanted. Things grew almost too well, the soil was so rich. No one but Germans could settle here.

Why? Couldn't any one else buy land?

Oh, yes; but they must be deutschgesinnt (German minded).

FIG. 23

FIG. 24

_I *- .........

FIG. 25

FIG. 23-Luso-Brazilian orange sellers. A phenomenal cold spell has put the sellers into unusual garments.

FIG. 24-Luso-Brazilian children at Novo Hamburgo. FIG. 25-German at every pore though born at Sdo

Leopoldo.



I _ l _ - R[I I a

............... ..

- _i | L | l | _ ~~~ s~--|

FIG. 26

* ~ it ..

FIG 27

FIG. 26-Sgo Leopoldo. Lutheran church. Note the well-kept street. FIG. 27-A corner means a shop in Sao Leopoldo as in Chile or Argentina.

538




Were they contented? Certainly they were; some of them had gone back to Germany to visit and look around, but they did not like things over there and came back.

Of German signboards Hamburger Berg had just two-Schulhaus and Pfarrhaus, the latter in wrought iron, the sash of the front-door transom. The Brazilian government had been very particular in I825 to bring over only Germans who were Catholics. Now the Germans say that a good half of the 400,000 Germans in Rio Grande are Lutherans. For the first ten years the government provided free

FIG. 28-Hamburger Berg under its mountain. Dois Irmaos.

passage to Brazil, free land, assistance with supplies for two years, and exemption from military service and from taxes for ten years. In singular contrast to the present European effort to make emigrants retain their home citizenship while abroad, even though they may naturalize themselves in their new country, was the promise that the Germans should receive Brazilian citizenship as soon as they landed!

CHARACTER OF PRESENT POPULATION

The aged German pastor was very sad about the attitude of the present Germans. Born in Trier, like most of the early settlers, he was a charming, cultured man. The Germans had been very poor and sickly when they arrived, almost all of them Catholics. Now they were prosperous and well fed. But most of them were non- Catholics! His parishioners now were mainly Brazilians, 15,000 of them to be ministered to by himself and two assistants, who had to spend much time on horseback. The only Germans who had not prospered were a few who would not work. "One thing he knew clearly from his long life among them. Not from reading," he stated solemnly and impressively, " but from personal observation. He




could assure us that this was true: that the Germans born in Brazil loved this country-their fatherland-more than the Brazilians did! They had been eager to defend it in the revolution of I89I."

Shoes and leather goods are the great products of Novo Hamburgo and Hamburger Berg. There are many local handicrafts. A furniture maker in Sao Leopoldo praised the wood of the Brazilian pine. He showed us clear pine boards iS' inches thick, 13 inches wide, and 22 feet long which were selling for $I.50 (United States money). Formerly, he said, they were worth 75 cents.

At Porto Alegre a young man of German family said he had learned his German in that city. Of twelve in his family, including some uncles, but two could speak German. His family name was German, but it is significant that he had been christened Antonio. His manners were the easy manners of the Latin American, not German at all. The melting pot was certainly operating in his case! He was engaged in meteorological work for the government. He told me that the water of the Lagoa dos Patos wa's ordinarily fresh; of course it should be if the bar that walls it off from the Atlantic has been built by the deposits of the Jacuhy where they meet the salt waters of the Atlantic. All the salt-water fish consumed in Porto Alegre were brought from Rio Grande at the mouth of the lagoon by boat. However, in January, I9I8, they could not drink the water at Tristeza, about five miles south of Porto Alegre, on acGount of its saltness. At that time the Coast Line Company had twelve boats on the sand in the lagoon: the rivers were not pouring fresh water into it. The rainfall at Porto Alegre in I9I7 had been only 26 inches, while in the three previous years it had been 69, 69, and 52 inches.

That is European thought and observation. A Latin American would be more likely to indulge in imaginings and speculation. The young man's hair and eyes were black, however, and in no respect did he look German. He said regretfully that a great many forget their German; and all the evidence points that way.

On the other hand, the table boy at the hotel in Porto Alegre looked so fair and obviously German that my companion, not understanding what feijoes were, asked "Wie heisst es auf deutsch?" and received the answer " Bohnen " (beans) at once. This boy was born at Join- ville, a German colony in Santa Catharina, and could speak only German till fourteen years of age.

At the hotel in Novo Hamburgo we met a young man from Cologne who had been out here eight years, brought out as a clerk on contract. He said he had wanted to go back to Germany in I9I4 but could not get there. He wished he could have had part in the Grosse Zeit; but none of the Germans of Brazil talked like that though they naturally sympathized with Germany against England and France, like German Americans in the United States.



-Jl 3

L~~~~~~~~~~ic ..s 29,

-ji if -- _ ;j

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_ = . . ... \~~~FIG 3 FIG. 29 Th por of jonil o thCaher sm twny ilsf mteAlnic FIG 3o Th M tiwgJonle: evni anafil odra.

_ .- . f . w ......... -41_




Our need of rapid travel kept us close to the railway, where pros- perity was assured; but we saw signs of the difficulties of transporta- tion in roads that were mere stretches of dirt and in the dugouts always present along the rivers. Development so far has been mainly along the waterways, as the world over in pioneer times, because there were no other ways at all. The rivers are still being used a great deal.

AN IDYLLIC VILLAGE IN SANTA CATHARINA

The idyllic German village of Joinville, too, is maritime, though now it has been connected with the Southern Railway. The port (Fig. 29) on the Cachoeira, twenty miles or so from the Atlantic, is small; but Joinville is a little city served by little ships. Brazil has prepared the traveler who comes by land for the charm of Joinville by breaking away from the Spanish-American custom of building houses that are bare and dreary to look at. Here one finds green by the roadside and plants and shrubs around the houses. With the help of tropical warmth and abundant rain the results are admirable even in winter. Joinville is a real garden city, extraordinarily neat and well kept. The houses are white or light yellow and of graceful design, with roofs invariably of good red tiles, than which no roof can be more picturesque. The streets, though unpaved, were fairly good even in rainy weather (Fig. 30). There are no lawns warm countries are not friendly to lawn grass but green things occupy every inch of surface they can get at. The effect is wonderfully parklike; but the houses are simply homes, much as they have the air of being stage settings for opera. Here matter-of-fact Germans attend diligently to the affairs of daily life.

Often a shop or restaurant occupies one side of a house," the dwelling the other, as in Figure 31, without diminishing the charm of the whole. The windows are of European type, two folding windows with a glazed transom across the top. Often the frame of the house is of timber, many of the beams sloping and nearly flush with the brick and plaster work. The use of timber appears to have been universal in earlier days, to judge from old prints, and is now called "colonial." Now almost all the beams are painted like the plaster front of the house or even plastered over. You can see this in Figure 31 if you look closely at the gable end, but it is not conspicuous. New houses (Fig. 32) never have these beams in sight, and the houses that show them plainly are now mostly occupied by negroes or lower-class Brazilians.

Germans are everywhere. The mayor and perhaps some other officials are pure-blooded Portuguese, but almost all the business men and landowners are German. The child types are instructive (Figs. 33 and 34). Note the bare feet in Figure 34. There is a German ser- vant class in the town as strictly kept in its place as if it were in Ger-



FIG. 32

a x ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.. . ...........-_

FIG.- 32

FIG. 3I-House shops, Joinville. The timber frame has been painted over but is still visible. FIG. 32-Modern type of house at Joinville.

543




many. Complaint is made that the servants have to work for terribly long hours at very small pay. At the municipal building I read the lists of men newly called to the colors. Rather more than a third of the names were non-German.

ATTITUDE OF GERMANS TOWARDS THE STATE

One of Brazil's acts of participation in the war was the adoption of the national holidays of her allies. This included, of course, the French Fourteenth of July, on which day we happened to be in Join- ville. How would they celebrate the day, we wondered, in a city so strongly German? There were fireworks; there were speeches ex- tolling love of country; and there was a parade of about 200 troops, nearly half of them of distinctly Germanic aspect but intermingled with the others and on excellent terms with them. We saw them go by, rifle on shoulder, following the band through all the streets of their beautiful city; but when they reached the first speaking place, I noticed, they were without their guns. There was a group of men in front with the flags of the Allies, to which the onlookers pulled off their hats. These spectators were almost solidly Luso-Brazilians. I saw but one or two Germans apart from the soldiers. After a speech the first fifty men sang the Brazilian national hymn-not very well; possibly they sang other songs better. Then the troops proceeded around the city, and further speech-making took place at various stops. Incidentally, if the Germans didn't come to them, they went to the Germans: no part of the town was neglected. The Germans did not attempt to avoid them but were out in front of their houses waiting. All bared their heads as the colors went by. No doubt some of the poorer Brazilians would have liked to make it unpleasant for the prosperous Germans, but they did not know how. These men were their masters, the capable men of the city and region, men of business and affairs. The Germans, furthermore, look on the Brazilian flag as their flag and Brazil as their country.

The food and the service at the hotel were the best encountered by us since leaving Buenos Aires. In every way the Joinville Germans have a right to be proud of the city they have built and of the work they have done among Brazilians who had all their opportunities except the habit of work and the knowledge of handicrafts. The Germans have doubtless been the object of a good deal of jealousy on the part of their dark neighbors and evince a certain consciousness of greater worth, but we found them very simple and cordial and pleasant in every way.

Here are the words of a Luso born in Joinville :2

2 Crispim Mira: Municipio de Joinville, Joinville, I907.




"In all this vast country of ours two little Santa Catharina cities, Joinville and Blumenau, are colonial nuclei of pronounced Germanic aspect, but the Brazilian government has them always in complete control." Mira's book, moreover, is a great tribute to the Germans.

A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ A

FIG. 33 FIG. 34

FIGS. 33 A.ND 34-Child types in Joinville. Thiere are distinct classes among the Germans of th~e town: in Figuire 33 are children of the well-to-do; in Figure 34 children of the poor.

GERMAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE COUNTRY

One thing accomplished by the Germans in Brazil has been the maintenance of schools which their children attend until they are fourteen. This is noteworthy because it has not been done by the Brazilians, Luso-Brazilians, or the Brazilian Government. Joinville has a good school building with its name " Deutsche Schule" marked in bare red brick on a white plastered wall. It appears that before the war the name was printed in large gilt letters. On being ordered to remove it they took down the carved wooden letters, leaving the name plainer than ever, probably, in bare brick red. In the post office a notice forbade any one to speak German; but many of the older Germans can speak nothing else, and the order was not obeyed. The younger generation all know Portuguese, but German is necessary if you want to do business with the elders.

The Germans have also written and printed texts suited to their local needs and have even made some beginnings of a local literature. The German printing houses in Sdo Leopoldo and Joinville have ren- dered great services to Brazil. The colonists were ignorant people-




not readers nor men of education nor buyers of books. The chief reading matter circulated among them, besides newspapers, has been German almanacs filled with articles of a rather high order of merit although too partisan in the days of war to be allowed to continue. But such matter had enjoyed a wide circulation among the Germans and had been serviceable to Brazil.

The German textbooks give us insight into the doctrines instilled into the young German-Brazilian mind. From an admirable handbook of geography and natural history for German schools in Rio Grande do Su13 I extract the following:

The greater number of the inhabitants of our state are Luso-Brazilians, descended from immigrant Portuguese. . . But these Portuguese did not keep their race pure. For the most part they mingled with Indians and negroes so that with time the mixed race of the Brazilian people has arisen.

The Luso-Brazilian country dweller has many attractive qualities. He is generally modest and hospitable, much more polite and sociable than the German, and he is not so addicted to the abuse of alcohol. He has no class prejudice. Rich and poor, ignorant and cultured meet together in the pleasantest way. But these good qualities are not so well developed in the Luso-Brazilian dwellers in cities. Among them are noticed rather some less agreeable Brazilian qualities, little sense of duty, unpunctuality, carelessness, and ingratitude.

The Brazilian is a zealous patriot and loves his country above everything.

Of the Germans the handbook says there are 400,000 in the state of Rio Grande, more than a fifth of the population.

The German colonists are simple, industrious, worthy, and honorable men of good reliable character. All the more is it to be lamented that here and there one of them has hurt the name of the local Germans by quarrelsomeness or drunkenness. The significance of German things for Rio Grande is very great. A hundred years ago Rio Grande do Sul was a land on whose uplands the Luso-Brazilian grazed a few cattle and in whose primeval forests dwelt Indians and wild beasts. Then came the Germans and with them came

Agriculture Commerce and Industrial Arts

into the land. When we visit our thriving German colonies, when we see the German wholesale houses and factories in our cities, our hearts are proud of the things German industry and German capacity have accomplished.

What would Rio Grande do Sul be without the Germans? The future of the state depends on the further development of the German-Brazilian population.

That seems to me a modest statement and a reasonable assertion. But there always remains in my mind the question, What of the other four-fifths of the population, the Luso-Brazilians, those who are not blessed with German industry and German knowledge of the arts? The Germans no doubt have created a better environment for all Brazilians, for it is an environment of men at work. Who shall decide

3 Heimat und Naturkunde fur Deutsche Schulen, Theodor Kadletz, Rotermund, Sao Leopoldo, i9i6.




what is a desirable state of society? Work at any rate must enter into it: man is certainly at his best when working, and even happiness is then best attained or nearest approached.

When the Germans boast that they have given the "native" Bra- zilians work in abundance in a land where before they had little or nothing to do, I think their boast a good one.



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Pictures from Southern Brazil