South America To-day

ight,

PUTNAM

bocker Pres

ODUC

tself. I have no notes of my journey, and I should be sorry to have them, for it is annoying to record impressions in black and w

it. I even found in Brazil an eminent Senator for the State of Saint Paul, Se?or Almeida Nogueira, who declared that the principal event of that Friday, October

overed?-unknown countries?-unheard-of peoples?-virgin civilisations?-or s

from young communities, though we are too ready to talk in generalities about them. We

oints of contact between the men of every country. One of our first needs is to correct the vague or false concep

ns, perhaps, were not astonished. Christopher Columbus himself died in ignorance of the continent on which he had landed, convinced that he had reached the east coast of Asia. To-day it is another matter. From the Poles to the torrid zone are at work innumerable explorers who only

ormidable savants who, having theorised upon everything, can only see everything from the standpoint of their studies. Statisticians had better avoid me; I have nothing to tell them. Having no preconceived notions, I shall not attempt t

dwellers of Villers-sur-Marne or St. Cloud. Our comic journals and our plays have inflicted the same kind of torture upon the South Americans. Having ridiculed them for so long, has not the moment come when we sho

cal and social equilibrium of the planet that to-day is still, in effect, European. It is always difficult to report faithfully what one has seen, for there is an art in seeing as

It is at least forty or fifty years old!" The towns derive their chief interest from their situation and surroundings; their internal features are only those which Europe has been pleased to send them in superabundance. There remain the land and the people, two worthy subjects of stud

agining, are really old races transplanted. Like us, they bend under the weight of a heavy history of glory and human suffering; they are imbued with all our tr

. Let us refrain as well from generalities, sometimes unjustifiable, regarding the parallel development of two orde

ercial interests are not the only factors in civilisation; if I take from an eminent writer in Brazil, Se?or Arinos de Mello, the curious information that in 1780, at 1400 kilometres from the coast, at the house of his great-grandfather, who had never seen the ocean, a company of amateurs played the tragedies of Voltaire-I must conclude that the influence of Ideas, inherited from our forefathers, is not less certain or durable t

hstanding our mistakes, our eighteenth century-with the Revolution which was its inevitable outcome-has constituted

.

NT

A

ducti