Читать книгу Abundant Beauty - Marianne North - Страница 11
ОглавлениеBRAZIL
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1872–73
FOR THE next two months I enjoyed the society of my friends in London, and then began to think of carrying out my original plan of going to Brazil, to continue the collection of studies of tropical plants that I had begun in Jamaica.
1872.—I started in the Neva Royal Mail ship on August 9, 1872, with a letter from Mr. R. G. to the captain. I had a most comfortable cabin, quite a little room, with a square window, and the voyage was most enjoyable. Lisbon was our first halt, which we reached on August 13 at sunset; the entrance to the harbour is striking, with the semi-Moorish tower and convent of Bela in the foreground; the domes and tall houses of the city gave me a much grander idea of the place than it deserved when investigated nearer: on August 19 we stopped to coal at St. Vincent. I did not land on that treeless island, which looked like a great cinder itself; but the boats that surrounded the ships were full of pretty things from Madeira, baskets and inlaid boxes, feather-flowers, and fine cobwebby knitting, as well as monkeys and lovebirds from the coast of Africa.
On August 28, 1872, we cast anchor at daylight off Pernambuco, and I saw the long reef with its lighthouse and guardian breakers stretching out between us and the land, and wondered how the crowd of ships with their tall masts ever got into the harbour. Seen through my glass, the buildings of the town looked much like those of any other town, but beyond were endless groves of cocoanut trees, showing clearly in what part of the world we were.
“Friend, a walk on shore will do thee good; my husband hath work to do there, and where he goeth I can go, and where I can go thee canst also,” said a dear old Quakeress of New York to me; so I fetched my umbrella and prepared to follow the leader of our landing party (a Belgian) down the ladder into the boat, but he went too fast and far, a wave went right over him, and we had to come up again while he changed all his clothes, for he was completely soaked. Our next start was more fortunate; we all watched till the boat was on the top of the swell and then dropped ourselves in, cleverly, one by one. It is often quite impossible to land at Pernambuco for many days together, and yet in this stormy sea, which is full of sharks, one sees the native fishermen floating about on the rudest kind of rafts, like hen coops, with their legs in the water. The planks that form these rafts are so much more under than above the water that the men seem to sit on the actual waves as one sees them in the distance, and being black they fear no sharks. Our row over the surf was easy enough, though the white breakers on the coral reef looked angry on either side of us. Inside, the harbour is calm as a millpond, and we soon stood under the great umbrella trees in the principal square.
It was Sunday, and the shops were shut with as much rigour as in Glasgow itself. I saw little to buy but parrots, oranges, and bananas. In the superb gardens we saw grand palms and other tropical plants new to me. The fan palm of Madagascar was perhaps the most remarkable, with its long oar-like leaves and stalks wonderfully fitted together in the old Grecian plait, each stalk forming a perfect reservoir of pure water, easily tapped from the trunk; thirsty travellers had good reason for naming this palm—strelitzia, or bird of paradise—their friend. The Frangipani (Plumeria sp.) trees were also in great beauty, covered with yellow or salmon-tinted waxen bunches of sweet-scented flowers shaped like large azaleas, but as yet almost leafless. The flowers go on blooming for many weeks, then come the leaves, and with them a huge black and orange caterpillar with a red head, which eats them all up in a very short time; in spite of this the vitality of the tree is so great that it soon flowers again. The natives say that the moth lays its eggs in the very pith of the wood, and that if a bit is taken as a cutting to any part of the world and a young tree grown from it, the caterpillar will also grow, and appear in time to eat up its first attempts at leaves. Ants seem to abound about Pernambuco, and I noticed that all the rose trees or other choice plants in the gardens had a circular trough of water round them, which I have little doubt is a protection till the clever little creatures learn to tunnel under them.
We drove out to the country by the Bonds, or street railways, which are now established in all the principal towns of Brazil, and are a great convenience and economy of time and money. These carriages are drawn by mules and go at a great pace; the sides are open, and a substantial awning keeps the sun off the roof so that one cannot well have cooler quarters at midday, obtaining at the same time a good sight of the country and its people.
At Bahia we also landed, and after mounting the steep zigzag to the top of the cliff had another drive into the country, which is wild, hilly, and covered with rich forests. The market was most entertaining and full of strange pictures. Huge negresses in low embroidered shirts, a gaudy skirt, and nothing else except a bright handkerchief or a few flowers on their heads, were selling screaming parrots, macaws, and marmosets, gorgeous little birds, monkeys, and other strange animals, including a raccoon with a bushy tail, and a great green lizard as big as a cat, which they said was very good to eat. I saw one girl quite covered with crawling and scratching marmosets; she never moved, but they did incessantly. One of the children onboard bought a very tiny marmoset, so small that he hollowed out a cocoanut shell, put some cotton wool in, and used to keep his pet in it, having cut off the small end to let it in and out; its tail was eight inches long and very bushy.
The oranges at Bahia are large and sweet, and they pack all their seeds into a kind of bag at one end, which renders them particularly easy to eat; the piles of this fruit as well as of melons, tomatoes, eggplants of different sorts, and pineapples make grand masses of rich colour, while bunches of sugarcane, great whorls of bananas, and heaps of cocoanuts form a fine background. Lazy people were carried up the steep streets sitting on chairs in a kind of crazy palanquin, which was hung on a bent pole and carried on two men’s shoulders; if the passenger were not a fidget he might arrive at the top of the hill uninjured. We did not try, but tired ourselves out in the usual British manner on foot and were not sorry to get back to the Neva again. It took us in two more days safely into the beautiful Bay of Rio, which certainly is the most lovely seascape in the world: even Naples and Palermo must be content to hold a second place to it in point of natural beauty.
I soon felt myself at home in Rio, and in a few days had a large airy room and dressing room at the top of the hotel, with views from the windows, which in every changing mood of the weather were a real pleasure to study; both the Sugarloaf and Corcovado mountains and part of the bay also were within sight.
The town of Rio has a great look of its relations in Spain or Sicily; the houses so full of colour, the balconies of such varied form; and the tiled roofs project in the same way, with highly ornamented and coloured waterspouts and terminals: the inhabitants have the same love of hanging out gaudy draperies and bright flowers from their windows and balconies, with the addition of parrots and monkeys screaming and scrambling after the passersby, who are fortunately generally well out of reach. One day, however, I saw a tall slave girl’s tray of oranges robbed by a spider monkey as she walked underneath with a well-balanced pyramid of fruit on her head. The shops in the streets seem very good, but the things are principally from Europe and exorbitantly dear.
Brazil offers to a stranger few inducements for spending money, except its wonderful natural curiosities, its gorgeous birds and butterflies; “Even its bugs are gems,” a Yankee friend remarked to me, and these latter are set in gold as ornaments, with considerable taste and fineness of workmanship. To me the hummingbirds were the great temptation. M. Bourget, one of Agassiz’s late travelling companions, had a rare collection that he valued at three hundred guineas, and I passed many happy mornings among his treasures hearing him talk of them and of their habits; but after the first few days I seldom went into the town.
The mule cars passed the door of the hotel every ten minutes and took me at six o’clock everyday to the famous Botanical Gardens, about four miles off. The whole road is lovely, skirting the edges of two bays, both like small lakes, to which one sees no outlet; the mountains around them are most strangely formed—on one side generally a sheer precipice, on the other covered with forests to the very top; and such forests! Not the woolly-looking woods of Europe, but endless varieties of form and colour, from the white large-leaved trumpet trees to the feathery palms, scarlet coral (Erythrina sp.), and lilac quaresma trees. Then the villa gardens along the roadside were full of rich flowers and fruits and noble trees; at one place a sort of marsh with masses of Indian bamboo gave the eyes a pleasant rest after the glaring gaudiness of the gardens. That drive was always charming and fresh to me, and I wished the mules had not been in such a hurry; but they were all splendid animals and seemed to enjoy going at full gallop, after the first little scene of kicking and rearing, which they considered the right thing at starting. They often went too fast, and would have arrived at the station before the appointed time if they had not been checked.
The gardens of Botofogo were a never-ending delight to me; and as the good Austrian director allowed me to keep my easel and other things at his house, I felt quite at home there, and for some time worked everyday and all day under its shady avenues, only returning at sunset to dine and rest, far too tired to pay evening visits, and thereby disgusted some of my kind friends.
Of course my first work was to attempt to make a sketch of the great avenue of royal palms (Roystonea regia), which has been so often described. It is a half mile long at least, and the trees are one hundred feet high, though only thirty years old; they greatly resemble the cabbage palm of the West Indies, though less graceful, having the same great green sheaths to their leafstalks, which peel off and drop with the leaves when ripe; about five fell in the year, and each left a distinct ring on the smooth trunk. The base of the trunk was much swollen out and looked like a giant bulb. This huge avenue looked fine from wherever you saw it (and reminded me of the halls of Karnac). There were grand specimens of other palms in the gardens: a whole row of the curious screwpine (Pandanus sp.), with its stilted roots and male and female trees; rows of camphor trees (Cinnamomum camphora), bamboos, the jackfruit (Artocarpus sp.), with its monstrous pumpkin-like fruits hanging close to the rough trunks, and endless other interesting plants and trees. Beyond all rose the great blue hills. One could mount straight from the gardens to their woods and hollows, with running water everywhere.
The garden seemed a favourite place for picnics, and tables and benches were set up under the wide-spreading bamboos and other trees. One day a most genial party settled near me, several of whom talked English; one of them brought me a saucer of delicious strawberries with sugar and champagne poured over them; he said they were not so good as those in England, but the best in Brazil; they were grown in his garden and picked by his children. The visitors were not all so well bred, and once my friend the director flourished his big stick and gave them his mind in strong German on the subject of standing between me and the tree I was drawing.
One day I was puzzled at hearing him continually calling “Pedro,” in a coaxing tone of voice; at last up trotted a tapir, like a tall pig with a cover to its nose; he got something he liked out of the director’s pocket and a good scratch from the director’s stick, and followed us as long as he dared. I found some difficulty about food for luncheon; if I put meat into a tin box it went bad, but if I took it in paper the ants ate it up for me, even eggs they contrived to get into, and at last I came to the conclusion that oranges and bread were the best provisions to take.
One day I asked the director if I could get a cup of coffee at the little inn near the gate. “Gott bewahr!” was his answer; he would not let his daughters even walk in the road alone among such people. Poor girls, they must have had a dull life of it; they were so thoroughly German and isolated, they had hardly ever been even into Rio. We had some pleasant scrambles together in the woods and up the hills; for they were nice simple girls, full of information about the plants and other natural curiosities of the neighbourhood. They collected marvellous caterpillars—some hairy, some with the most delicate moss or feather-like horns on their heads and tails—and fed them till they turned into the gorgeous butterflies or moths, which abound in these gardens.
At Rio I made my first acquaintance with a very common inhabitant of the tropics, a large caterpillar, who built himself first a sort of crinoline of sticks and then covered it with a thick web; this dwelling he carried about with him as a snail does his shell, spinning an outwork of web round a twig of his pet tree, by which his house hung, leaving him free to put out three joints of his head and neck, and to eat up all the leaves and flowers within his reach; when the branches were bare he spun a bit more web up to a higher twig, bit through the old one, jerked his whole establishment upstairs, and then commenced eating again. He had a kind of elastic portico to his house that closed over his head at the slightest noise, his house shutting up close to it like a telescope; and then when all was quiet again, out came his head, down dropped the building, and the gourmand again set himself to the task of continual eating. He ate on for some months incessantly, using his claws to push and pull dainty bits down to him, and shifting his moorings in a most marvellous way. At last the sleep of the chrysalis overtook him, and he finally became a very dowdy moth.
Some other caterpillars cover themselves in a much less artistic way with bits of their favourite leaves strung on a frame most clumsily, as a child strings paper to the tail of its kite. These creatures are very quick in their movements; I have often seen them cross the room and drag themselves up my dress and on to my knee in search of a bunch of rose branches I laid there to tempt them—in a wonderfully short space of time.
The lady in whose garden I first found these caterpillars lived on the hill of Santa Teresa and, instead of blinds, had her windows shaded with creeping plants trained across and across them. Through the spaces left one could see the bay of Rio with its endless islands, strange Sugarloaf mountain, and many of the same odd form seeming to mimic it in the distance. The quivering haze and blueness of the whole scene was indescribably lovely, and the little terrace below was crowded with bright flowers. Daturas, bananas, cypress, and palm trees gave form to the foreground, whilst the orange Bignonia venusta— the orange trumpet vine, the blue petraea, bougainvillea, and rhynchospermum climbed over both trees and balustrades in great masses, the latter helping the gardenias, carnations, and jasmines to scent the air almost too deliciously. It was a small paradise, and though my friend grumbled at the nine long years of bad health and discomfort she had spent there, she will miss all this abundant beauty when she returns to foggy old England.
I spent some days in walking and sketching on the hills behind the city; its aqueduct road was a great help to this enjoyment, being cut through the real forest about a thousand feet above the town and sea. A diligence took one halfway up to it every morning; the road itself and the grand aqueduct by its side were made two hundred years ago by the Jesuits, and the forest trees near it have never been touched, in order to help the supply of water that is collected there in a great reservoir. In this neighbourhood I saw many curious sights. One day six monkeys with long tails and grey whiskers were chattering in one tree and allowed me to come up close underneath and watch their games through my opera glass; the branches they were on were quite as well worth studying as themselves, loaded as they were with creeping plants and grown over with wild bromeliads, orchids, and ferns; these bromeliads had often the most gorgeous scarlet or crimson spikes of flowers. The cecropia, or trumpet tree, was always the most conspicuous one in the forest, with its huge white-lined horse chestnut–shaped leaves, young pink shoots, and hollow stems, in which a lazy kind of ant easily found a ready-made house of many storeys. The most awkward of all animals, the sloth, also spent his dull life on the branches, slowly eating up the young shoots and hugging them with his hooked feet, preferring to hang and sleep head downwards. Some of the acacia trees grow in tufts on tall slender stems and seem to mimic the tree ferns with their long feathery fronds, whose stems were often twenty to thirty feet high. Mahogany, rosewood, and many less-known timber trees might be studied there; the knobby bombax, grey as the lovely butterfly that haunted them, were planted at the edge of the road in many places, and under them one got a really solid shade from the sun.
It was the favourite home of many gorgeous butterflies, and they came so fast and so cleverly that it was no easy task for a collecting maniac to make up his mind which to try to catch and which to leave; before the treasure was secured, more came and tempted him to drop the half-caught beauties for other, perhaps rarer, ones that he would probably miss.
One happy mortal lived up in this neighbourhood and collected calmly, with his whole heart and time in the work, thereby gaining a good livelihood; he had drawers full of the different specimens, which were worth a journey to see: alas! when I went he had just sold the whole collection to the Imperial Princess, so I kept my money, as well as a most fascinating occupation for odd hours, which would have gone if I had, as I intended, done my collecting by deputy. He lived on a lovely perch just under the Corcovado Crag, with a glorious view of the city and bay beneath, and a rare foreground of palms and cacti, one huge mamen tree in front of all, its thick umbrella of leaves supported by great pear-shaped fruit growing close to the stem. The common snail of Brazil introduced itself to me on that road; it was as large as a French roll, and its movements were very dignified. It had a considerable appetite for green leaves (as I afterwards found after keeping one as a pet in a footpan for a month), and its eggs were nearly as large as a pigeon’s; the first I met was taking a walk on the old aqueduct amongst the begonia and fern leaves, and moved on at least fifty yards whilst I made a two hours’ sketch.
Of course (again), like all other visitors to Rio, I walked up to the top of the Corcovado and looked down on the clouds and peeps of blue sea and mountains seen occasionally through them, and on the splendid yellow and white amaryllis clinging to the inaccessible crannies of the rock; the whole way was a series of wonders and endless beauties.
On that expedition I met, for the first time, Mr. Gordon and his daughter, who asked me to come and see them in Minas Gerais, to which they were returning in about three weeks. I liked their looks and manner of asking me, and it seemed a grand opportunity of seeing something of the country, so I said I would come for a fortnight, at which they laughed, and with reason, for I stayed eight months!
On October 25, I sent down my three portmanteaux in a return cart drawn by eight oxen, and followed myself the next day, in pouring rain, to Rio. After some necessary shopping and other business, I crossed the bay and its lovely islands for Mawa, where a train was waiting to take us over the marsh to the foot of the Petropolis hills; in this same marsh were many fine plants, but the most conspicuous was the real Egyptian papyrus, growing with even greater vigour than it does at the source of the Cyane, near Syracuse. Tall white lilies and scarlet erythrinas also made me long to cry stop as we passed.
At last we reached a more healthy-looking region, and stopped at Raiz da Serra, where I was put into a carriage with three Brazilians and conveyed up the ten miles of zigzag road, dragged by four mules, who kept up a continual trot, the rise of three thousand feet being well graduated. The mules were changed at a station halfway up, and the short stoppage gave one time to enjoy the magnificent view, the great mountains looking like ghosts through the mist and rain, the few giant trees that had escaped the cutting of the forest when the road was made, standing out all the grander for the background being veiled. As we rose higher the sun’s last rays sent a red line through the openings in the clouds, and one or two of the highest points seemed on fire. From the top the view back towards Rio is perhaps as fine as anything I had yet seen, with the exception of its having no snow; the distant view of the city, with its two guardian masses of rocky mountains, as well as the bay full of islands, and the rolling middle distance shaded by floating clouds, was inexpressibly beautiful.
Two more miles at full gallop downhill took us to Petropolis, and I was soon in Mr. Miles’s comfortable hotel, and again amongst friends, with whom I had a merry English dinner. Then came two days of rain and cold and loneliness, in which I worked and walked and soaked and froze, and came to the conclusion Petropolis was an odious place, a bad imitation of a second-class German watering place, with its red roofs, little toy houses, and big palace in the midst, the river cut and straightened into a ditch, running down the middle of the principal street, with fanciful wooden bridges crossing it continually, and its banks planted with formal trees; though, when one came to think and thaw a bit, those very trees were in themselves a sight to see: umbrella trees with their large heart-shaped leaves and pink fluffy flowers, and araucarias larger than any in England. My friend Mr. Hinchcliff had written me minute directions how to find one of his favourite walks, where he promised I should see ideal tropical tangles. I paddled through the mud and rain to find, alas! nothing but charcoal and ashes remained; some German women added insult to injury by informing me it was verboten to go farther that way, so I returned to my packing in disgust.
I was glad to see the Gordons arrive, and to hear them say they had taken their and my places in the coach for Juiz de Fora the next morning. Mrs. Miles took charge of my tin box and sketching umbrella, which, I may as well say here, is a perfectly useless article in the tropics; when the real unclouded sun is shining one requires a more solid shade than that of a gingham umbrella, and it is far too heavy to drag about in a hot climate, so I was glad to be quit of it.
It rained all night, and was still raining when we packed ourselves into the coach at six on the morning of October 28, and four splendid mules, after their usual resistance, started suddenly at full gallop with the swinging, rattling old vehicle. A violent jerk brought us to the door of the other inn, and there our fourth place was filled up by a very important person in these pages, Antonio Marcus, commonly called the Baron of Morro la Gloria, who had been for forty years in the service of São João del Key Mining Company, to whose mines I was going. This old gentleman generally commanded “The Troop” that brought the gold up to Rio every two months at least; he was a great character, full of talk and pantomime, either grumbling or joking incessantly, or sometimes even doing both at once. Mary G. was his ideal of perfection and understood how to stroke him the right way, so we had a merry journey through the most splendid scenery.
Such scenery! High trees draped with bougainvillea to the very tops, bushes of the same nearer the ground reminding one of the great rhododendrons in our own shrubberies in May at home, and of much the same colour, though occasionally paler and pinker. There were orange-flowered cassia trees (whose leaves fold close together at night like the sensitive plant) and scarlet erythrinas looking like gems among the masses of rich green; exquisite peeps of the river, winding below its woody banks or rushing among great stones and rocks, came upon us, and were gone again with tantalising rapidity. My friends only laughed when I grumbled at the mules going so fast; now and then a peaked mountaintop pierced its way through the clouds for a moment and was lost again, then came a grey overhanging cliff sprinkled with bracket-like wild pines spiked with greenish flowers; the near banks were hidden by masses of large-leaved ferns and begonias and arums of many sorts, whose young fresh leaves and fronds were often tinted with crimson or copper colour.
The wild agaves too, were very odd: having had their poor centre shoots twisted out, the sap accumulated in the hollow, and a wine or spirit was made from it; the wretched wounded things, sending up dwarfish flowers and prickly shoots from their other joints, formed a strange disagreeable-looking bush, several of which made a most efficient hedge. Under each of these flowers a bulb formed, which when ripe dropped and rooted itself, thus replacing the parent whose life ended at its birth. Another curious plant here abounded, the marica, like a lovely blue iris, which flowers and shoots from the ends of the leaves of the old plant, the leaf being often more than a yard in length, and weighed down to the ground by the bunch at its end. When the flower is over, a bulb forms under it and produces roots; eventually the connecting leaf rots off, so that a perfect circle of young plants succeeds round the original old one. When in flower the appearance was very peculiar; a perfect rosette of bent green leaves and a circle of delicate blue flowers outside them.
The grand coach road we went over had, of course, encouraged emigrants to settle near it; we passed miles of cultivated ground, and the long rows of tidily trimmed coffee and corn gave as much pleasure to my companions as the forest tangles gave to me. We stopped to dine at Entre Rios; here we came to the Don Pedro railway, and the real traffic of our road began.
There was no other way of reaching the rich province of Minas, or of obtaining its minerals, coffee, sugar, or cotton; so from this point we passed a continual stream of mules or waggons till we got to Juiz de Fora and its most comfortable hotel. The last part of the way was lighted by swarms of fireflies. We were two hours after our time, owing to the state of the roads and the overloaded coach; all the baggage was packed on the top in one high pyramid, and the outside passengers were clinging to every ledge, the whole machine swaying from side to side in the most frightful way. The Baron’s head was continually out of the window, shouting directions to the driver and conductor, who of course knew him too well to take the slightest notice; they were both great characters in their way, two German brothers who had driven over that road ever since it was first made, nearly twenty years before.
Juiz de Fora is all one monument to the great and good man who founded it, Señor Mariano Lages; even the excellent hotel was designed and built by him, and a college for agriculture, library, museum, his own pretty villa and gardens, and the grand road itself were all made by him for the good of his country, as well as his own. He did not live long enough to see them prosper, but pined away after the death of his favourite daughter; and his college and other schemes will soon pine away too, for patriots are not common in his country. His garden was full of treasures, not only of plants, but of birds and animals; there was a fence of fifty yards at least, entirely hung with rare orchids tied together; every available tree branch was also decorated in the same way, and many of them were covered when we were there with lovely blossoms of white, lilac, and yellow, mostly very sweet scented. There was also a great variety of palms. I saw one huge candelabra cactus twenty feet in height, and the air was perfumed with orange and lemon blossoms. The village itself looked very comfortable, every cottage having its own luxuriant little garden and shady porch, under which the fair German women and children sat knitting with their hair plaited round their heads.
Everyone said the road to Minas was impassable from the late, heavy rains. We heard of mules being smothered in the mud, a woman killed in it, etc.; but the more I heard the more I determined to see my friends safely through if they were willing to be burdened with me; besides, people had said in Rio I should never really go, some had done their best to keep me from going, and one Scotchman had said I should not find to paint any in Minas!
The first loading of thirty-seven mules is not done in an hour; everything must be weighed and strengthened and hung with stout bands of cowhide, balanced well, or the mules will suffer. When once they are well loaded the things are numbered, and the operation on subsequent mornings becomes a much easier and quicker affair. All these arrangements were our Baron’s glory; he had to think and be responsible for every little item, and made as much fuss as he possibly could getting in and out of a score of terrible rages before midday. When the rain left off, his temper also cleared, and we finally started, forming a party that would not have shone in Hyde Park but was admirably adapted for riding through Brazil in the wet season.
First went the loaded mules with their bare-legged black drivers, then the Baron in the shabbiest of straw hats, any quantity of worsted comforters, and brown coat and gaiters. Mr. G. on his noble grey mule, his daughter on her pretty little horse, and myself on Mueda, the steadiest and most calculating of mules. My dress was as good as any could be for such riding, namely, a short linsey petticoat and a long woollen waterproof cloak with sleeves. I had besides a light silk waterproof rolled up and hung on my pommel for extra wet hours, and my old black straw hat on my head. Behind us rode the two grooms, Roberto—the little bright-eyed mulatto boy whose duty was always to look after Mary and myself—and Antonio, Mr. G.’s own particular attendant, in a gorgeous livery, glazed hat with a cockade on one side, top boots, and a decidedly negro face. Alas! his magnificence soon disappeared; his coat was ere long splashed up to his shoulders and, with his dear boots, had to be strapped and hung over his saddle, his trousers tucked up as high as they would go, and he was wading with the rest in front of us, feeling for holes in a sea of pea soup, occasionally not only finding but falling into them, a wholesome warning to those behind.
The road was one constant succession of holes and traps and pies of mud, often above the mules’ knees, often worn by constant traffic into ridges like a ploughed field through which the tired quadrupeds had to wade, or drag their feet from furrow to furrow of the sticky, soft, clogging mud. The only real danger was on the broken bridges, which are made of round logs or branches laid side by side, and liable to roll apart out of their places, leaving holes through which the mule’s leg easily slips and breaks, or if the clever creature recovers it he may be thrown down and roll into the mud bath on either side. These corduroy bridges are constantly occurring, and when hidden up with mud are very dangerous traps indeed. Mueda was most careful and seemed herself to know every inch of the road and always to pick the safest places. When the difficulties began, my friends insisted on my taking the place of honour after our leader, the Baron, whose track Mueda followed exactly (except when she had some good reason of her own for diverging); she seemed to put her feet into the identical places our leader’s mule’s feet had been in, and I believe the others almost always followed her example.
Every traveller we met delighted in magnifying the horrors they had passed, and said that as the rain had continued it was utterly impossible for us to go on; and one party that had started the day before were actually coming back in despair. Our progress through all this was slow; we were obliged to stop after only three and a half leagues of it and put up for the night, while Mr. G. sent on a note to the chief engineer of the province to ask his help. An answer came the next morning, begging us not to start too early; he had set fifty men to work and hoped to make the road passable by noon, which gave us time to enjoy and examine our present quarters.
It was not a bad specimen of the ordinary roadside inn, or rancio, of the country—a small room with a table and two benches, and an earthenware water jar with cups to dip into it, standing on a piece of wood that served for lid, the roof hidden by a mat of plaited palm leaves, and the floor made of clay taken from the walls of the great termite ants’ nests and pounded down, a material that in its way is clean, though it does not look so. Besides this room, with its unglazed window and outer door, were two smaller rooms, also entered from the outside, and reached by stepping stones set in mud; two beds were in each—mere wooden frames with a mat stretched over them, and a sack of well-shaken corn leaves, cotton sheets with embroidered or lace edges, and a gay painted cover. We took our own pillows and coloured blankets or rugs, for the nights are often cold. Near our inn was the shed, under which the men pile all the luggage and saddles cleverly and tidily, so as to make a substantial shelter from the wind; here they sit and sleep round a good fire, cooking, gossiping, and mending their clothes or harness, the animals tethered round them, feeding, or being groomed or shod, till it is time to turn them out to grass for the night.
Inside the house we fed right well, and as we had much the same fare everywhere more or less, I will here give our average rations. For dinner, soup, roast or boiled chicken and pork, rice prepared somewhat greasily, and feijão, the staple food of the country—some English say, “very stable, for it is only fit for horses,” but I always liked it; it resembles the French haricot, only the bean is black instead of white; in Brazil it is always eaten with farinha sprinkled over it, a coarsely ground flour of either Indian corn (Zea mays; maize) or mandioca (Manihot esculenta; cassava). Then we had the country cheese, which was excellent, reminding me of the fromage carré of Normandy; this was always eaten with preserve of some sweet sort known by the general name of doce, and followed by the best of coffee—the poorer the house, the better the coffee. In the evening we had tea and biscuits, or bread and butter; but these biscuits, as well as wine and candles, we brought with us; and after tea a roast chicken was cut up, rubbed with farinha, and packed in a tin box for the next day’s breakfast or luncheon, though we never started without a cup of hot coffee and a biscuit— a great security against the bad effects of a cold, damp morning ride. The second morning of our journey it rained again, and we sat at the window watching, with great interest, the different passersby as they floundered about in the mud; our turn was coming next.
There was a particularly bad place opposite our door; it probably had been particularly bad for years and would be the same for years to come, it having apparently never having come into the head of the landlord to mend it. Perhaps he thought it stopped people and brought custom to his house, as they were literally unable to pass his door. One by one, we saw the poor mules go flop into the liquid mudhole, have their loads transferred to men’s heads, and themselves lifted out by tail and head, the lifters often replacing them in the hole during the process. We, however, all got safely over and were soon met by “Beesmark himself,” as our Baron called the great Prussian engineer, a large man with a magnificent white beard and tall horse, which I believe was once of the same pure colour. After many compliments and hearty greetings he took the lead, and we rode round the valley by the steep hillsides, so as to avoid the muddy road and marsh, now powdered with lovely masses of the Franciscea, with its blue and white blooms. At last we were forced to descend again and came to the worst place from which the travellers had been turned back the day before. Here men were now at work throwing on turf and trying to make a causeway.
The Graf and Mary passed over safely, then flop! In went a young engineer’s mule in front of me, only his neck to be seen above the water while his master tumbled cleverly on his feet beyond the danger, and everyone shouted to me to stop, which Mueda had no objection to do. A big black man was called up and ordered to carry me, and I submitted under protest. He had no sooner got the extra weight (no light one) on his back than he sank steadily in the spongy ground like a telescope, and would doubtless have disappeared entirely if I had not scrambled to my seat again on dear old Mueda, who stood steady as a rock and seemed to grin to herself at the idea of anyone but herself having the strength to carry me.
After we had done laughing at this scene I was allowed to walk over on my own feet from sod to sod, and Mr. G. followed my example. We afterwards rode on tolerably well till we got to the small town where we were to breakfast, the high street of which was a torrent of mud. All the people had their heads and elbows out of the windows to see us pass, for many of them had not had a walk in the street for a month; they would only have tumbled into the pea soup if they had attempted it. Our engineer and his party were lodging here, and after accompanying us a few leagues farther, they turned back to give a few more despairing looks at the mud and to tell the people nothing could be done till the wet season was over—a fact they already knew too well.
Our next night’s quarters were worse than the first, for the landlord had not been out of his house for a month and had not even a sack of corn for our poor tired beasts; but the night after that we passed in a fazenda, or farmhouse, with a beautiful green grassy hill behind it, on which the animals did enjoy themselves, rolling over and over, cleaning their coats, and eating any quantity of delicious capim grass. This is almost as good as corn for them, growing in tufts like the tussock or guinea grass of India, with a whitish downy leaf, which is extremely sweet, and in the springtime is covered with feathery lilac flowers that give a glowing tint to all the hillsides. We also enjoyed ourselves, and ceased, for the first time since we started, to feel damp, as the dwelling rooms were built on the second storey, the lower one being used as stables and servants’ quarters. The family, too, were more civilised than any of the people we had been with before. The young daughter of the house delighted to hear about Rio fashions. She showed us all her finery, and her lace made by her own hands. Even the poor sick mother from her bed in the corner seemed to brighten up at having news of the outer world. She had a most conversational parrot on a perch. All the food he dropped was eagerly watched for and fought over by five cats and a dog. They had also the somewhat rare luxury of a dairy and herd of cows, brought up a great many calves, and made cheeses with the spare milk, pressing them with their hands in a primitive manner, with the help of a wooden ring and a board; butter they did not attempt.
Near here I first saw the araucaria trees (Araucaria brasiliensis) in abundance; it is the most valuable timber of these parts, and goes by the name of pine. The heart of it is very hard and coloured like mahogany; from this all sorts of fine carvings can be made; the outer wood is coloured like the common fir. This tree has three distinct ages and characters of form: in the first it looks a perfect cone; in the second a barrel with flat top, getting always flatter as the lower branches drop off, till in its last stage none but those turning up are left, and it looks at a distance like a stick with a saucer balanced on the top. During the first period the branches are more covered with green; but as it grows older only the ends are furnished with bunches of knife-like leaves, and the extremities alone are a bright fresh green, looking like stars in the distance amongst the bare branches and duller old leaves. Its large cone is wonderfully packed with great wedge-shaped nuts, which are very good to eat when roasted. These curious trees seldom grow lower than three thousand feet above the sea.
After crossing the grand pass of Mantiqueira we changed the general character of vegetation. I saw there masses of the creeping bamboo, so solid in its greenery that it might have been almost mowed with a scythe; also the taquara bamboo hanging in exquisite curves, with wheels of delicate green round its slender stems, reminding me of magnified mares’ tails, and forming arches of twelve to twenty feet in span. I know nothing in nature more graceful than this plant. Over the stone fountain that marked the top of the pass was a palm tree, three of whose branches were weighted at the end by the pendent nests of the oriole bird, at least a foot long, woven cleverly out of the fibre of the palm, and of the parasite commonly called old man’s beard, which one sees hanging from the branches and waving in the wind, like masses of unravelled worsted from some old stocking. I have often taken hold of the end and pulled it out for yards; then, on letting it go, it returned again to its crinkly state. This fountain was a favourite halting place in fine weather, and there could be few more inviting places for lingering in.
Every bit of the way was interesting and beautiful; I never found the dreary monotony Rio friends had talked about. Every now and then we came to bits of cultivation, green hills and garden grounds. Once I saw a spider as big as a small sparrow with velvety paws, and everywhere were marvellous webs and nests. How could such a land be dull? Then we crossed high tablelands, which seemed quite colonised by the Jean de Barbe bird; every tree was full of their nests—curious buildings of red clay divided into two apartments, the whole as big as my head. The birds were flying about near their homes and were of the same reddish colour as the nests they lived in. Roberto climbed a tree and tried to get me one of these nests, but broke it in the attempt; it looked like a half-baked and ill-formed earthenware pot.
The ground of this same bleak region was dotted with the large wigwam-looking establishments of the termite ants, as big as sentry boxes and with no visible entrances. The small creatures who make and inhabit them tunnel their way underground from openings at a considerable distance from the erections themselves, which are full of cells and passages made of a black sticky substance, much used by the natives as putty for stopping water holes and fuel to heat their ovens; they also pound it down for the floors of their houses.
After a long day’s ride over these glaring plains, still sticky and slippery with mud, though the hot sun was shining on it, we were glad to find really comfortable night quarters in the house of a gentleman who prides himself on producing the best cigarettes in Brazil. They are all rolled up with the greatest nicety in Indian corn leaves and tied together with coloured ribbons in pretty little bundles; the daughters of this house did them so neatly that report says they were forbidden to marry or to leave the work on any pretence whatever. We were received with a most hearty welcome and lodged in their best rooms with every luxury—tubs of water, embroidered towels, and the best of coffee. Our dinner was also sumptuous, and here, for the first time, we persuaded the master of the house to sit and dine with us at the head of his own table, a post that was generally given to me as the greatest stranger. We had one dish for which the house is famous—a bowl of chicken soup with a huge chicken boiled whole in the middle of it. There was a piano here, and we sang and played all we knew for the benefit of our entertainers, whose musical attainments were as yet very young indeed; but they formed a most enthusiastic audience, and the Baron declared, with tears in his eyes, he could not smoke while I sang. It affected him so much afterwards that he put the wrong end of his cigar into his mouth and burned it; no wonder he cried!
At this point in our journey Mr. G.’s carriage met us. Such a carriage! But if we had been ill I suppose we should have gladly submitted to its jolting; it was a sort of double sedan chair, intended to contain two persons sitting opposite one another, and hung on two long bamboos, with a mule harnessed between them before and behind. Persons travelling in these liteiras are very apt to be seasick from the swinging motion; but I am thankful to say none of us required to go through this ordeal, and the machine was sent on ahead with the baggage mules. The sunshine continued as we rode on over the high country to Barbacena, the chief town of this district, beautifully situated on a hill about four thousand feet above the sea, with fine araucaria and other trees shading its garden slopes. Two tall churches made a finer show in the distance than they did near. The horrible paved road up to it was good neither for man nor beast, and reminded one of North Italy. These abominations seem a plague common to all Latin nations.
We were entertained at the house of the agent of the mining company most hospitably. I was shown a well-furnished and perfectly windowless room that I could have if I liked to stay and paint flowers and scenery on my return. After breakfast we went to see the old chemist who was the naturalist of the neighbourhood. He had many valuable books, curiosities, and rare orchids, which he took the greatest delight in showing to us; but his chief pride was in one wretched little cherry tree, which after ten years of watching, had produced one miserable little brown cherry: he had brought the original stone from his dear native Belgium, and it reminded him of home.
The flowers on these high campos were lovely—campanulas of different tints, peas, mallows, ipomoeas creeping flat on the ground, some with the most beautiful velvety stalks and leaves; many small tigridias, iris, and gladioli, besides all sorts of sweet herbs. There are many peculiar trees and scrubby bushes with brown or white linings to their leaves, and the stems powdered over with the same tints. I have never seen these elsewhere. When we descended into the greener hollows and crossed the swollen streams, the vegetation became dense again and wonderful in its richness. Gorgeous butterflies abounded and seemed to be holding dancing parties on the gravelly water’s edge. Birds, too, chirped and fluttered from branch to branch, canaries abounded, and small green parrots flew screaming across our path. Once I saw a great lizard nearly a yard long run along the road in front of us, with his tail held up in the air like a cat; he was very stupid about getting out of our way, and we had a good look at him.
We meant to make up for lost time now we neared the end of our journey. Mary had a threatening of diphtheria and longed for home and her mother’s care; so we toiled up and down the high ridge of Morro Preto, whose white sharp rocks stuck up like bleached bones, and whose cracks were filled with the brightest red, purple, or yellow earths. Occasionally there were fantastic earth pyramids standing up, balancing balls of harder earth on the top, instead of stones, as in the Tyrol. At the top of this ridge I saw many strange plants for the first time, including the vellozia, a kind of tree lily peculiar to these mountains. One of the varieties was called the ‘Canela-de-Ema’ (Vellozia squamata). It had a stem like an old twisted rope, out of which spring branches of the same, terminating in a bunch of sharp-pointed hard leaves like the yucca; out of these again come the most delicate, sweet-smelling blue-grey flowers with yellow centres, much resembling our common blue crocus in shape. There are many other vellozias, all having the same dagger-like leaves; some send up long stems with bunches of brown or green flowers.
It was most tantalising to pass all these wonders, but time was precious and my friend was suffering, and our next night behind a curtained alcove in an extremely draughty room after a good day’s soaking did not improve her. The third morning found her voiceless, but she was determined to get home that night, though it was a full forty miles’ ride; so on we came, and she bore it bravely. Suddenly a violent discharge of fireworks in front warned Mr. G. he was coming amongst friends, and we stopped to breakfast at the house of a black man, whose late master had left him his freedom as well as house and property. There were many bits of curious old carved furniture here, as well as fine silverwork in the little chapel, and our host treated us as if he loved us (for a consideration). Over the wall round his house were masses of bright scarlet-flowering euphorbia, from the juice of which the Indians poison their arrows, and of which the Jews say the crown of thorns was made. The journey was a weary one; for we were all anxious about her who was generally the life of our party, and when we reached the bridge over the deep riverbed where we were to change mules, I thought she would have been suffocated. Soon, however, the hill of Morro Velho came in sight, and though still far off, her spirits rose and her troubles grew less in proportion as the distance shortened.
A fearful storm came on, and our waterproofs were of real use and brought us in a comparatively dry state to the house of a very remarkable old lady, Dona Florisabella of Santa Rita, who hugged us all round in the heartiest way, and then led us up by a rough ladder to a set of handsome rooms, which had been frescoed in a most gaudy and reckless manner with every bright tint of the rainbow. The open verandah attracted me at once. From it there was an exquisite view of the Rio das Velhas, winding through its wide green valley, surrounded by hills wooded to two-thirds of their height, and a noble ceiba, or silk cotton tree, standing sentinel by the house, which I afterwards saw covered with the most lovely pink hibiscus-like flowers—a perfect mass of colour, looking in the distance like a large old cabbage rose against the green hills. Across the river I now saw the pretty church and village almost hidden in groves of bananas and palm trees. Above were the peaks of Morro da Gloria, the property of our old leader, and from which we gave him his title.
From this view, politeness required me to turn at last to our hostess and her abundant conversation. She was of good family and had seen better days; her children were dispersed in the world and had left her to make what she could of a small property. She had spirit enough to work that or anything else, and her power of talk and pantomime beat even her rival the Baron’s. She wore a once-handsome silk dress and a gaudy silk handkerchief bound over her head so as to hide every trace of hair; but in spite of the disfiguring costume, showed remains of great beauty. Soon Mary rushed out to meet her brother, the clever young engineer. She found her voice at the same moment; and we all sat down to a grand dinner, excepting our hostess, who stood and helped us all, and woe betide anyone who refused to eat or drink what she offered them. After she had filled all our plates, she seized the drumstick of a chicken in one hand and a bit of bread in the other and took alternate bites at them, after which she washed her hands at a side table, and began carving again, drinking to all our healths separately, and making speeches to each as she did it. One of her dishes had a duck in it sitting upright as if it were swimming, with a lime in its mouth. Her doce were excellent, particularly a kind of sweet pudding made with a great deal of cheese in it.
It was no easy task to get away from this hospitable lady, but at last we started, and about a mile farther crossed the great bridge over the river and were on the company’s property. About twenty of its officers were waiting to receive us, all mounted on mules, and there was a general handshaking, most of the party being English. The Baron was low-spirited, for he was no longer our leader, and his work was over. Mr. G. and I led the way and jogged over the muddy road uphill and down to the village of Congonhas, when the rockets and firing and hand clasping began in good earnest, amid torrents of rain.
The mules became quite unmanageable, either from the noise or from the nearness of their well-loved stables, and we all took to galloping violently up and down the steep paved streets, which were now torrents of liquid mud—such a clattering, splashing, umbrella-grinding procession! Mr. G.’s mule objected to a rocket stick on his nose and kicked his rider’s hat off, after which the Baron galloped on ahead to stop the fireworks if possible; he looked very picturesquely wild, with his red-lined poncho flying out on the wind like the wings of a blue and scarlet macaw.
At last we were stopped by the band awaiting us and had to tramp solemnly behind it into the grounds of the Casa Grande—a mass of close-packed dripping umbrellas and damp bodies; and before I knew where I was, I found myself dismounted and hugged and welcomed by one of the best and kindest women I ever met in all the wide world, and called dearie in a sweet Scotch voice; no wonder Mary longed to be at home! And I felt that I was right and the Rio people wrong about coming to Morro Velho, and the only drawbacks to the journey left were blistered lips and slightly browned hands.
The Casa Grande of Morro Velho was indeed a rare home for an artist to settle in, and I soon fell into a regular and very pleasant routine of life. I had the cheeriest and most airy of little rooms next my friends, with a large window opening on to the light verandah, in which people were continually coming and going and lingering to gossip. Beyond that was the garden, full of sweetest flowers; a large Magnolia grandiflora tree loaded with blossoms within smelling distance; around it masses of roses, carnations, gardenias (never out of flower), bauhinias of every tint (the delight of hummingbirds and butterflies), heliotropes grown into standard trees, and covered with sweet bloom, besides great bushes of poinsettia with scarlet stars a foot across; beyond these were bananas, palms, and other trees, and the wooded hillsides and peeps of the old works and stream in the valley below.
About January the heat became more oppressive—eighty-six degrees was the average, though it was often ninety-one degrees in the shade—but the nights were always cool enough for sleep at Morro Velho, which is about three thousand feet above the sea, and I was never uncomfortably hot. The Gordons, however, who had lived sixteen years in the climate, longed for a change; so they determined to go to pay a long-promised visit to Mr. R. at Cata Branca, taking a young Scotch lady who had been spending Christmas with them, and myself.
It was a beautiful day’s ride of about twenty-six miles, the road winding for the greater part of the way along the high banks overlooking the Rio das Velhas, which eventually runs into the Rio São Francisco and enters the sea above Bahia. The river we followed was about as broad as the Tweed at Dryburgh, running through wooded hollows. A good road was in the course of being made along this valley, on which some hundreds of the company’s blacks were working, who greeted us with hearty cheers. In the fresh clearings I saw many new and gorgeous flowers as well as some old friends, including the graceful amaranth plant of North Italy, with which the wine of Padua and Verona is coloured. How did it get to the two places so far apart? I longed more and more for some intelligent botanical companion to answer my many questions.
We rested awhile at a collection of huts that have been put up for the work-people near some fine falls of the river, and the headman there told us of one curious fish he had caught that seemed to have a sort of inner mouth, which it sent out like a net to catch small fish or flies with. He showed us a rough drawing he had made and was very positive about the story, which is not more difficult to believe than many other well-proved wonders of nature.
After leaving this settlement, we mounted up bare hillsides another thousand feet, and came to the green plateau of Cata Branca, with its groups of iron rocks, piled most fantastically like obelisks or Druid stones standing on end, dry and hard, and so full of metal that the compass does not know where to point. Amidst these rocks grow the rarest plants: orchids, vellozias, gum trees, gesnerias, and many others as yet perhaps unnamed. One of these bore a delicate bloom—Macrosiphonia longiflora (No. 67 in my catalogue at Kew)—like a giant white primrose of rice paper with a throat three inches long; it was mounted on a slender stalk, and had leaves of white plush like our mullein, and a most delicious scent of cloves. Another was a gorgeous orange thistle with velvety purple leaves. I was getting wild with my longing to dismount and examine these when we met our kind host Mr. R. coming out to meet us, and in another half hour we were in his pretty cottage, where he had been living for the last two years watching a dying mine, in almost perfect solitude, expecting to be released any moment. The once-famous mine of Cata Branca had long been filled with stones. All around were the ruins of fine houses, which had helped to ruin so many people, and the small cottage we were in was the only habitable place on the hill, with the exception of a negro hut or two, and must have been a dreary position for so sociable a character as our host.
The summer of St. Veronica was endless that year, and we had the most glorious weather. The air was much fresher on the height and did us all good. Everyday’s ramble showed me fresh wonders. There was a deep lake near the house, said (of course) to be unfathomable; it was surrounded by thick tangled woods and haunted by gay butterflies. In it ounces—wild cats— were said to drink morning and evening. I never saw them, but they had lately carried off two of our host’s small flock of sheep, and I saw some skins of these small tigers, which were richly marked and coloured. One morning we spent on the actual peak, which rises a perfect obelisk of rock five thousand feet above the sea. Some of the more adventurous of our party mounted to the very top.
The earth had entirely disappeared from the crannies, leaving the huge iron stones loosely piled on one another. In spite of the want of soil, these rocks were loaded with clinging plants, bulbs, orchids, and wild pines. Tillandsias and bilbergias of many sorts crowded round them; the latter were very curious—great green or lilac cornucopias with feathery spikes and many-coloured flowers, or beautiful frosted bunches of curling leaves, from the centre of which fell a graceful rose-coloured spray of flowers. There were also many euphorbias and velvet-leaved gesnerias, trailing fuchsias, ipomoeas, and begonias with wonderful roots like strings of beads. It was impossible to carry away half I longed for, even if possible to climb over such rocks with two loaded hands.
One day I rode with Mary and the Baron to visit a dairy farm some miles off, where we sat and gossiped, ate toasted cheese, and drank enough strong coffee to poison any well-regulated English constitution; but our life was far too healthy to be hurt by such little luxuries. Another day we rode down to visit some people on the plain below. All these expeditions showed fresh beauties of nature and miseries of humanity. At last Mr. G. came to fetch us, and on the Sunday before we left he read the Service, three Cornish miners coming up from below to assist at it. Their captain afterwards made a speech to say what a pleasure and a privilege it was, etc., on which Mr. G. said if they would only come up, he would read it every Sunday in the same way. “Oh no, it warn’t that, it war them four ladies all stannin’ of a row; it war so long sin’ I seen four English ladies all at once, it war!” The poor old man almost cried over the extraordinary event. He went down to his expiring mine again, and we rode home, leaving our kind host to utter loneliness.
About the end of March 1873, we all started up the hills with bag and baggage, crossing over a shoulder of the Coral mountains, and on to Sabara, the chief town of the district, where we took coffee at the house of “a most respectable brown woman,” who hugged all my friends most warmly. Mrs. G. told me she was much to be pitied, having lost her only son, to whom she was devoted. “Was she a widow?”—“Oh dear no; she had never heard of her being married, but as Brazilians go she was a most respectable person!” Opposite her house we saw a room full of remarkably clean little black boys, all dressed alike, and an ill-looking, dandified man in charge of them. He was a slave dealer, buying up well-grown boys over twelve years of age for the Rio market. The law now forbids the sale of younger children, and every year a year will be added, so that children of eleven are safe for life where they are, and all the next generation will be free. These boys looked very happy, and as if they enjoyed the process of being fatted up.
Our road followed the banks of the river for some way; sometimes along the low banks amongst reeds and bushes of Franciscea; often over the higher sierras, among strange scraggy trees, which were covered with more flowers than leaves. On one, especially, the white lily-like flowers were very fascinating. The ipomoeas and bignonias, or trumpet flowers, were in great variety. One large lilac ipomoea grew in massive bunches on the tops of the trees; and a smaller white one had fifty or sixty buds and flowers on every spray, making the trees look as if they had just been covered with snow. The round-backed Piedade Mountain got nearer and nearer, and we put up for the night at Caitá, a village at its foot.
It was a perfect fairyland. The great blue and opal morpho butterflies came flopping their wide wings down the narrow lanes close over our heads, moving slowly and with a kind of seesaw motion so as to let the light catch their glorious metallic colours, entirely perplexing any holder of nets. Gorgeous flowers grew close but just out of reach, and every now and then I caught sight of some tiny nest, hanging inside a sheltering and prickly screen of brambles. All these wonders seeming to taunt us mortals for trespassing on fairies’ grounds, and to tell us they were unapproachable. At last we left the forest, and the real climb began amidst rocks grown over with everlasting peas, large, filmy, and blue haresfoot ferns, orchids, and on the top grand bushes of a large pleroma with lilac flowers and red buds like the gum cistus, and beds of the wild strawberry, which some Italian monk had introduced years ago. Two old ladies, beate, lived alone in the old convent, which was still in good repair.
The Baron took charge of the two girls and myself over the hills; and at the edge of the Bossa Grande property its superintendent met us, showed us his trim little mine and big wheels, and gave us luncheon, then took us up the hill to admire the view, and accompanied us through two leagues of real virgin forest, the finest I had yet seen, to the old Casa Grande of Gongo—a huge half-ruined house that had originally belonged to some noble family.
The great gold mine here had at one time yielded more than £100,000 a year. In that day there were a thousand miners there, and twenty servants in the great house alone. The superintendent used to drive a carriage with two horses over the tangled and stony path by which we had just come; now, one old black man and his family alone inhabited the place to keep the keys (which didn’t lock) and hold up authority. Gaunt ruins of the different houses stood around; but though their roofs were whole, and unbroken glass in their windows, they were scarcely accessible or even visible from the thick growth of tangled trees and greenery that had wreathed itself around and over them. All was thick mat and forest, except on one side where the grassy hills rose, affording abundant food for the flocks and herds that supplied the mines on the other side of the mountains. To this old deserted place Mr. D. had sent furniture, food, and slaves, and persuaded his mining captain to let his pretty little wife go and keep house for us, taking baby Johnnie to amuse her and us too. She soon made us at home.
After tea we played a game of whist in the ghost-like old hall with its heavy wainscoted cupboards, and great gilt hooks from which the mirrors and chandeliers had formerly hung, and on which a late superintendent had once committed suicide. When the present one would have ridden back through the forest we begged him to stay and keep the Baron company and the ghosts out, and wishing the two goodnight we began our retreat towards our own part of the house; but when we came to the grand staircase, behold! a gambat was coming down it very quietly. Now a gambat is a fascinating quadruped. He only sees in the dark, and his wife carries her young in her pocket like a kangaroo. He is like a tiny bear with most human-looking hands, and a long prehensile tail so enormously strong that when once he has twisted it round some firm anchorage it would resist the pull of a strong man, and hold on though bleeding and torn. He has also the power of emitting a horrible smell like the skunk, thereby driving away his enemies. Once I remember Lopez was himself so objectionable after killing one of these creatures that he had to be locked up for a day or two; he was, unfortunately, not with us now, and we all cried out for help. The poor little beast, looking extremely puzzled at seeing his usually quiet premises invaded by strange creatures, with strange lights in their hands, was too brave to turn and, I am sorry to say, was killed ruthlessly by our two knights, who had rushed to our assistance.
The next morning our Baron, who had begun life as a blacksmith, went round and mended the locks of all the doors we were likely to use, and our party dispersed, leaving me to enjoy a fortnight of perfect quiet in the great empty house and rich forest scenery, with Mrs. S. and her baby boy to keep me company: to her it was an agreeable change, to me the thing of all others I had longed for. I used to start every morning on my mule, with Roberto on another, for some choice spot in the forest, where I gave him my butterfly net (which he soon learned to use very deftly and judiciously), while I sat down and worked with my brush for some hours, first in one spot and then in another, returning in time for a good wash before dinner.
Washing and dressing were very necessary, as the abundant vegetation here was covered with garapatas, the most intolerable of insect plagues, and at this season in their infantine and most venomous stage. One blade of grass might shake a whole nest onto the passing victim, no bigger than a pinch of snuff, and easily shaken off then; but if left, the hundreds of tiny grains would diverge in every direction till they found places they fancied screwing their proboscis into, when they would suck and suck till they became as big as peas and dropped off from over repletion. Of course none but idiots would allow them to do this; but the very first attempts of these torturing atoms poisoned one’s blood and irritated it for weeks after. When the insect grew older and bigger it was less objectionable, as it then could be easily seen and removed before it did any injury; it attacked one then singly, not in armies. But even this plague was worth bearing for the sake of the many wonders and enjoyments of the life I was leading in that quiet forest nook.
I used generally to roam out before breakfast for an hour or two, when the ground was soaked with heavy dew and the butterflies were still asleep beneath the sheltering leaves. The birds got up earlier, and the alma-de-gato (Piaya cayana; squirrel cuckoo) used to follow me from bush to bush, apparently desirous of knowing what I was after, and as curious about my affairs as I was about his. He was a large brown bird like a cuckoo, with white tips to his long tail, and was said to see better by night than by day, when he becomes stupidly tame and sociable, and might even be caught with the hand.
One morning I stopped to look at a black mass on the top of a stalk of brush grass, and was very near touching it when I discovered it to be a swarm of black wasps. When I moved a little way off I found through my glass they were all in motion and most busy. When I returned again close they became again immovable, like a bit of black coal, and I tried this several times with always the same effect; but foolishly wishing to prove they really were wasps got my finger well stung. This little insect drama was in itself worth some little discomfort to see. The brush grass on which these wasps had settled was itself curious, each flower forming a perfect brush—a bunch of them made the broom of everyday use in the country; scrubbing brushes were generally formed out of half the outer shell of a cocoanut.
One had always been told that flowers were rare in this forest scenery, but I found a great many, and some of them most contradictory ones. There was a coarse marigold-looking bloom with the sweetest scent of vanilla, and a large purple-bell bignonia creeper with the strongest smell of garlic. A lovely velvet-leaved ipomoea, with large white blossom and dark eye, and a perfectly exquisite rose-coloured bignonia bush were very common. Large-leaved dracaenas were also in flower, mingled with feathery fern trees. There were banks of solid greenery formed by creeping bamboos as smooth as if they had been shaved, with thunbergias and convolvulus and abutilon spangling them with colour. Over all the grand wreaths of taquara bamboo, and festoons of lianes, with orchids and bromeliads, lichens and lycopodiums or clubmoss on every branch.
I had one grand scramble in a neighbouring forest with Mr. W., and brought home a great treasure—a black frog. His face and all the underparts, including the palms of his hands and feet were flesh colour; he had black horns over his garnet-coloured eyes, which he seemed to prick up like a dog when excited, and which gave much intelligence to his countenance. I kept this pet for three months, and then trusted him to a friend to take to the Zoological Gardens in London; but alas! he died after three days of sea air. If he had been corked up with some moss in an air-tight bottle he would probably have lived. In the same woods we found several specimens of the exquisite little butterfly, the Zenobia batesii, which appeared to come out twice a year here. The large semi-transparent green dido (Philaethria dido) was also abundant, but very shy and clever at eluding my net. A messenger at last recalled us to Morro Velho. Visitors had arrived, and Mrs. Gordon wanted us to help in entertaining them; so we obeyed at once, stopping by the way to breakfast with the Baron’s family, to his great delight.
My last night on this journey was an unquiet one, in another solitary house near the new railway works. It was Sunday, and half-drunken navvies came and thumped at the door all night. My room opened on the verandah and got its share of thumps too, but I knew if the Baron or Roberto wanted anything they would begin, “O Dona Pop!,” and not hearing that, I hugged the cold blankets and kept still till called as usual at four, for I knew there was a wooden bar across the door that would resist any quantity of thumping. But the mules had got into sweet pasture and would not be found, and the thick cloud made it no easy task to hunt for them. Four hours it took, when the poor men came in soaked and shivering, and the Baron stormed and grumbled: there had been such a row he had not slept a wink; it was too cold even to take off his boots, and the coffee was burned, etc.; so he grumbled himself into high good humour long before we entered the trim German suburb of Juiz de Fora. The next morning, after squeezing the good old Baron’s hand for the last time with real regret, I packed myself into the crowded coach and was whirled away towards Rio.
The distant Organ Mountains peeped at us over the ends of the green valleys, and I again thought nothing in the world could be lovelier than that marvellous road; and then what a welcome the kind M.’s gave me, and what a cosy little room in their house at Petropolis! It was rather pleasant too to see my old box again and its contents. Of what priceless value those shoes and stockings and paints seemed to me! And how I longed for them! I had intended starting for Pará in a week, but was persuaded to give it up, as the yellow fever was still lingering all along the coast; and I had a longing first for rest in my pleasant, comfortable quarters, and then still more for a sight of home, friends, and books again.
Meanwhile I made two visits to Rio, the chief object of which was to see the Emperor, to whom I had a letter from my father’s old friend Sir Edward Sabine. The Emperor is a man who would be worth some trouble to know, even if he were the poorest of private gentlemen; he is eminently a gentleman, and full of information and general knowledge on all subjects. He lives more the life of a student than that to which ordinary princes condemn themselves. He gives no public entertainment, but on certain days he and the Empress will receive the poorest of their subjects, who like to take their complaints to them. He kindly gave me a special appointment in the morning and spent more than an hour examining my paintings and talking them over, telling me the names and qualities of different plants, which I did not know myself. He then took the whole mass (no small weight) in his arms, and carried them in to show the Empress, telling me to follow. She was also very kind, with a sweet, gentle manner, and both had learned since their journey to Europe (of which they never tired of talking) to shake hands in the English manner. They had both prematurely white hair, brought on by the trouble of losing their daughter and the miserable war in Paraguay.
On my second visit to the palace the Emperor was good enough to show me his museum, in which there is a magnificent collection of minerals. He took especial delight in showing me the specimens of coal from the province of Rio Grande do Sul, which promises to be a source of great riches to the country if his schemes of facilitating the transportation can be carried out. At present, though the coal itself is close to the surface of the ground, there are so many transhipments necessary in bringing it to Rio that it is cheaper to bring it from England or the States. I have not the slightest knowledge of mineralogy, but I blacked the ends of my fingers with a wise air and agreed heartily with the Emperor’s opinion that if the precious stuff could be brought into consumption cheaply, it would be of more use to Brazil than all the diamonds of Diamantina. Then he showed me many of the most precious books in his library, some views of the San Francisco, etc.
The palace is not in a good situation, but the Emperor passes a great part of the year at Petropolis, around which there are endless beauties. One spot there especially attracted me, where an old companion of Humboldt’s had settled himself in an unpretending cottage. He had planted all sorts of rare plants and palms around it, and the real virgin forest sloped down to it at the back, while a glorious view of blue mountains was seen from the front windows, with some few great forest giants left as foreground, their branches loaded with parasites and festooned with creeping plants. This little house was the highest inhabited house of the neighbourhood, the path up to it sufficiently steep to keep off ordinary morning visitors, though I am told it is a favourite walk of the Emperor’s, who found the old German naturalist a pleasanter companion than many in the world below. When I was there this old man was dying, and his pretty place would soon be a ruin. Already his treasures of moths, books, birds, and butterflies were half destroyed by mould and devouring ants; even the bridge that crossed the cascade and the path up to his house were falling away. I never felt anything more sad.
Petropolis seemed full of idle people and gossip, and it was thought rather shocking and dangerous for me to wander over the hills alone; wild stories were told of runaway slaves, etc. I felt out of place there, and got more and more homesick but determined to have at least a glimpse of the Organ Mountains before I went. I was told the way was most difficult, and even dangerous; neither mules nor guide could be got. Still I persevered, and finally heard of a mason at Petropolis who knew the way and would like a change of air and a holiday, but he could only spare four days. Mr. M. kindly lent him a famous old mule, and sent it on the day before to San Antonio, where I was also to find a horse; and, in spite of the persistent rain at Petropolis, I and the mason started by the Juiz de Fora coach at six o’clock and were set down about sixteen miles on the road at a venda near a bridge, where we saddled our steeds and mounted, my small bag and paintbox being fastened to the crupper of my guide’s mule.
My horse was of the Rosinante order, very bony and old, with two great gaping wounds on her shoulders caused by the bites of vampire bats, into which the flies walked in the most distressing manner. After winding along two or three valleys, we began to mount in good earnest. The only danger on our path was from the hanging wreaths of bamboo, and the acacia called cat’s paw, which had been long untrimmed, and might easily do serious damage to the faces of unwary travellers. My guide used his long knife, and I met with no accident, and soon reached the top of the pass, having left all rain and humidity at Petropolis. It was a curious view and well worth some trouble to see; but the “difficulties and dangers” we in vain searched for.
