A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



were the environment and formed the actors of the German sagas 

 and folk-tales ; in the folk-songs of our people we hear the rustle 

 of our trees and the song of our birds ; and even our German folk- 

 lore and art and architecture evolved in contact with Nature, and 

 the more homegrown they were, the more harmonious were the 

 forms which they assumed. Thus, in Germany Nature and the 

 people have always been united; their relation has been like that 

 of mother and child, and to this relation we owe the best that is 

 in us, the best that we have achieved. 



There have indeed been seasons of estrangement from Nature ; 

 we are passing through such a period even now; and there have 

 always been times when German art was at its feeblest. But the 

 whole inheritance of native art and culture is still ours, and in all 

 parts of Germany, despite much destruction, Nature, the eternally 

 youthful, still survives, with her rustling forests, her flower-bedecked 

 meadows, and the song of her birds. And there have been and will 

 always be those among us to whom the emergence of all that is 

 truly German from the German land itself was and will always be 

 a thing to remember, a thing to hold fast; those who will hand on 

 this inheritance from the days of old to the generations yet to come. 



It is otherwise in Brazil. Modern Brazil is not evolving in a living 

 relation to the Brazil of antiquity. There is a great rift in the history 

 of the country: the year 1500. The old immemorial evolution was 

 suddenly cut short; the new is the child of an alien hemisphere, 

 which has transplanted its achievements in a foreign continent 

 without seeking to achieve an organic relation to the country. Thus, 

 the architecture introduced was Baroque: a style born of the 

 European spirit, which had neither time nor opportunity to make 

 itself at home in a land of such alien character. 



More : the new arrivals, the white conquerors of America, had 

 no intention of creating a new home ; for them the newly-discovered 

 country was a land of colonies, which they sought to exploit with 

 all possible speed, in order to return home with their gains, and 

 consume them in Europe. And even to-day this point of view is by 

 no means extinct in South America. Even to-day there are many 

 who regard the country merely as an object of exploitation, and 

 who seek their pleasures in the great cities of Europe, or in those 

 South American cities which are striving to form themselves on the 

 European pattern. 



A third injury is inflicted by the accelerated tempo of the century. 

 The new-comer feels that he has no time to naturalize himself in 

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