File:Brazil, the Amazons and the coast (1879) (14760370936).jpg

Identifier: brazilamazonscoa00smit (find matches)
Title: Brazil, the Amazons and the coast
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Smith, Herbert H. (Herbert Huntington), 1851-1919
Subjects: Folklore -- Brazil Brazil -- Description and travel Brazil -- Economic conditions Amazon River Valley -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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et long cavalcades of horses, each with aheavy pack slung over its back. Often these packs werebundles of hides folded square ; or bales of cotton, or sacksof sugar ; if the caravan were passing in from the coast, therewere leather trunks and sacks, filled with provisions andclothes. Sometimes, in long journeys, leather water-bottleswere carried, one on either side of the saddle. Most of thehorses in these cavalcades were without halter or bridle ; afew only were mounted by boys or men, who perched them-selves above the packs, with their feet dangling on eitherside of the horses neck, or crossed over it. Women rode in 404 BRAZIL. the same way, often with their children in baskets, slung, likethe packs, one on either side of the horse. Two or threemen, armed with guns and swords, kept guard over eachcaravan, and, to vary its character, a few mules were oftenmingled with the horses, and perhaps a sheep, with a smallpack like the rest. A principal commerce of the country was in hides and
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J -J ^?A^ Road-side Scene, Ceara. jerked beef. Before the drought, many of the proprietorscounted their cattle by tens of thousands, and kept somehundred herdsmen under their orders ; men who were inthe saddle half their lives, so that riding became an instinctto them. Some of their feats were astonishing. Clad in fullleather suit—^hat, coat, vest, breeches, and long boots,—theywould ride after a wild bull, at full gallop through the tangledforest, regardless of thorns and smaller branches, dodging CEARA AND THE DROUGHT. 405 tree-trunks, and passing through openings such as no saneman would venture at in cold blood.* Cattle-raising was almost confined to the warm plains.Along the cooler mountain-sides there were plantations ofsugar, coffee and cotton, and all these articles were exported. Ceara has no harbor, but a few ports are scattered alongthe coast. The largest of these is the capital, Fortaleza. In1876 it contained about twenty-five thousand inhabitants.The streets were wide

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