THE BEAUTY OF BRAZIL 



the electric tram — whose open transverse benches are swept by the 

 sea-breeze. Looking comfortably about him, the passenger glides 

 through the business quarter with its sea-girt islands (Plate 3), with 

 their lofty buildings, or the residential district. Here the houses are 

 almost exclusively of one storey only, so hidden in their gardens 

 that even from the hill one sees nothing but green, and asks oneself 

 in astonishment wherever the city can be, since the only houses 

 visible are the tall commercial buildings on the "Recife" or reef. 

 But a ride through the garden city was always a pleasure to me, 

 for every time one or another species of tree had decked itself in a 

 splendour of blossom such as I had never seen. And there was always 

 the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the people in the streets, who 

 enhanced the charm of the picture not only by their white or brightly- 

 coloured clothes, but also by the alternation of white, brown and 

 black faces ; for the negroes and mulattoes give the street scenes 

 of Pernambuco — and still more those of Bahia — a character of 

 their own. 



But the best thing about the tropics, in my opinion, is that one is 

 always, by day and by night, in touch with Nature. Just as the lightly- 

 clad body is in immediate contact with the air, so that one feels 

 always free and comfortable, so in the tropics there are no closed 

 rooms. A lady in India once told me that she could no longer live 

 in Europe, the rooms were so oppressive; she often had the feeling 

 that she could not breathe. 



Most of the houses in Pernambuco, Parahyba, and other States 

 of tropical Brazil have no glazed windows, but only shutters with 

 diagonal slats, a protection against the sun by day and intruders 

 by night. One enters the house as in Europe one enters a garden- 

 room or arbour, in which one does not even feel that one has left 

 the garden (Plates 3 and 32). All the windows and doors are open; 

 even in the railway-carriages no one is afraid of draughts, and the 

 windows are open on both sides. 



Even in the cloisters I was surrounded by the fresh air and by 

 living creatures. There were all sorts of animals which were only 

 waiting to be caught, and which I kept for a while in order to 

 observe them. In my room were a boa-constrictor, a coral-snake, 

 lizards and frogs — all in suitable cages ; a lively land-crab clattered 

 with his claws under my bed, and once I had for a guest a peccary, 

 who behaved like a little dog. Outside, in the cloisters, were whole 

 rows of boxes and cages, containing armadillos, marsupials, bird- 

 spiders and insects of every kind. All these creatures I kept a few 



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