^^0iT>2 
 
 6, Awtc r 
 
 
 L,ai*|ds 
 
 Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the 
 Presbyterian Church 
 
 501 Witherspoon Building, Philadelphia 
 
 i^nnsHca 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/homelifeinotherlOOhend 
 
HOME-LIFE IN BRAZIL. 
 
 [Note.— T he writer of this leaflet has written of home-life in Brazil, as known to 
 her personally, and as fairly representing that of South America in general, so far as 
 the interior of the country is concerned.] 
 
 While the coast cities and the interior towns connected with them 
 by the few railroads which until the present time have penetrated into the 
 Sertao (as the vast region little known and thinly populated of the in- 
 terior of Brazil is called), have the civilization and modes of life of South- 
 ern Europe, the people of remote country districts retain many of the 
 primitive habits and customs of their Eastern ancestry. It would be easy 
 to imagine one’s self back among patriarchal races and Biblical customs. 
 
The Houses 
 
 of the poor and middle classes are of the simplest con- 
 
 struction, called pdo a pique Heavy posts set in the 
 ground serve as a framework, while upright poles between them, interlaced 
 with pliant boughs (or the c/pds, which climb over the trees in every 
 Brazilian forest), plastered with clay, form the walls. There are wooden 
 shutters to the apertures which serve as windows, and there is a tile roof 
 or grass thatch. A few articles of rude furniture supply the needs in that 
 direction. 
 
 Even the more pretentious houses, with their curtainless windows 
 and bare doors, seem but cheerless homes to the more favored inhabitants 
 of colder climates. The mild climate and open-air life, however, render 
 such civilized appliances less indispensable, and the swarms of children 
 who pour from these humble dwellings prove that they are not unhealthy. 
 
 though ignorant and superstitious, hold a higher position and 
 Woinen^ exert a greater influence than in many other countries. 
 According to their light they are often notable housewives, attending well 
 
 4 
 
to their duties, wliicli consist in the care of the children and the 
 preparation of their food. 
 
 One of the household industries is the preparation of 
 Industries, ^^Jarinha,^’ which supplied entirely the place of wheaten 
 bread until a comparatively recent period, and is still a principal article 
 of food in the country, where baker^s bread cannot be procured. Most of 
 the farms have what is called a “ monjolo'^ a simple contrivance for crush- 
 ing corn, hulling rice, and even coffee in small quantities. It consists of a 
 large, square log, twenty or thirty feet long, suspended on a pivot in the 
 middle. One end is hollowed out into a sort of large spoon, capable of 
 holding several gallons of water, and the other end furnished with a 
 strong, heavy, wooden pestle, which falls into a mortar under it. The 
 spoon of the monjolo is placed under the fall of any small stream of run- 
 ning water. As soon as it is filled, it empties itself by its own weight, 
 and the pestle at the other end falls back with a heavy thud into the 
 mortar. This process repeats itself as long as the water is turned on, and 
 is said to be the most perfectly adapted labor-saving machine ever invented 
 
JFood. 
 
 for the use of primitive people. It is generally protected from the 
 weatlier bv a slight building, which contains a long trough, in which the 
 Indian corn is soaked for several days before crushing, and three or four 
 little piles of brick or stones to support the large sheet-iron pan in which 
 the meal is toasted, after being taken from the mortar and sifted. 
 
 The farinha thus prepared keeps for a long time, and is sprinkled 
 over the food or used with milk. It is an indispensable part of a 
 meal in the interior. Farinha is also made of the mandiom or casmva root 
 and with frijao ” — dark beams, and rice, constitutes the larger part of the 
 family supply of food. ^^Conve ” and the tender green sprouts of the abo- 
 bara ” or cushaw pumpkin, are largely used for green food. The conve is 
 what is known as collards in some parts of the United States. It is shred- 
 ded fine like slaw and scalded. Thus prepared it makes a very wholesome 
 dish, which is much esteemed. The family must be poor, indeed, which 
 has not its little conve patch. The use of the pumpkin shoots was learned 
 from the Indians, from whom many customs were derived. 
 
Palm cabbage is another food in general use. The top of one species 
 of palm is cutoff in a stick two or three feet long and as thick as a man’s 
 arm. Layer after layer is peeled oft' until the tender bud is reached and 
 it supplies a small dish of palmito. A tree is, of course, destroyed to furnish 
 each dish, but this is considered of little importance, as the palms are 
 abundant and of rapid growth. Butter is little used except in the towns, 
 and is imported from Europe ; but home-made cheese is an important 
 article of diet, and milk, fresh from the cow, is largely used and consid- 
 ered very beneficial for invalids. It takes the place of the universal early 
 morning coffee on the farms, and is brought into the towns in bottles 
 strung across the backs of horses or mules. 
 
 Medicines people are quite skillful in the use of vegetable reme- 
 
 dies, the flora of the country being exceedingly rich in 
 medicinal plants and trees. Much of this knowledge was also derived 
 from the Indians, and every experienced head of a household possesses an 
 almost unlimited pharrnacopia. They seem to make up for the want of 
 knowledge derived from books by a much larger amount of practical 
 
 7 
 
knowledge than usual ly falls to the lot of those who have more theoretical 
 information. 
 
 They are a kindly and hospitable folk, almost Eastern in their kindness 
 to strangers. 
 
 Customs made very early, sometimes at twelve years of 
 
 age, and frequently at fourteen or fifteen. As in warm cli- 
 mates generally, children develop very early, and, consequently, the bur- 
 dens of life fall heavily, upon the women especially. The girls are pretty, 
 bright creatures, with sparkling eyes and abundant glossy, dark hair ; but 
 they soon fade and lose their beauty. By the time they are thirty-five or 
 forty they look like old women. Children are much more docile than 
 their more active fellows in colder countries, and even in their plays are 
 rather languid. Their minds seem to partake of the early bodily develop- 
 ment, and where they have the opportunity to attend school they are often 
 more advanced than the children of the same age in Northern countries, 
 but they (the girls especially) frequently leave school so young that the 
 development is apt to be arrested after a certain age. 
 
There is much that is patriarchal in the simplicity of their lives. 
 Some of their ways are quite interesting. When a young person comes 
 into the presence of the parent after a short separation the father or mother 
 extends the hand, palm downward, and the child bows over it and presses 
 it to his lips in a most reverential manner. 
 
 The families are frequently very large, — twenty or twenty-four chil- 
 dren by one mother are not uncommon. In one of the native churches 
 a man of thirty-two years of age had two grandchildren, he having mar- 
 ried at sixteen and his daughter at twelve. 
 
 The custom of going barefoot still prevails largely in the sitios. 
 Tamancos^ a species of wooden soled half-shoe, or c^ine//as— slippers which 
 can easily be slipped off the feet — are generally used. The feet are always 
 bathed at night, and it would be a breach of hospitality not to offer water 
 to guests for that purpose. The earthen floors and careless habit of throw- 
 ing scraps of food and bones on the ground, offer abundant o])portunities 
 for tlie dogs to eat of the crumbs wliich fall from their masters’ tables. 
 
 Until quite recently the custom of ‘‘ weeping and wailing and making 
 
 9 
 
a noise” on the occasion of death prevailed in remote places, and even the 
 hired weeping women are still spoken of by aged [)eople. Corpses are 
 brought into the rural cemeteries wra})ped in a sheet and carried by 
 bearers in a hammock and buried without coffins. In the small towns 
 little children’s bodies, dressed in the gayest apparel obtainable, are borne, 
 in an open pasteboard coffin, hired for the occasion, by their little 
 playfellows to the grave, with the little dead faces exposed for the last time 
 to the sun’s rays and then taken out and laid in the bosom of Mother Earth. 
 
 It is not unusual to see a number of rude baskets, woven of the cane 
 which grows abundantly in the thickets, turned upside down over the tiny 
 graves after they have been used to bring the little bodies from a distance 
 for burial. The earth, they say, was cursed, and the idea of burying in un- 
 hallowed ground is so abhorrent that long journeys are made to lay them 
 away in holy ground. In some places the bells ring out a merry peal when 
 a baby dies, to celehi-ate the entrance of an “aaym/io” — a little angel— into 
 heaven, 
 
 lu 
 
Babies are usually brought for baptism on the eighth day. They are 
 sprinkled with holy water, signed with the cross, salt and spittle from 
 the priest’s lips is put into the mouth and his breath breathed into their 
 nostrils to give them a living soul. If they die before this ceremony takes 
 place, their little bodies are buried in an unconsecrated corner of the cem- 
 etery, and their souls supposed to be in limbo. When death approaches 
 the ignorant people frequently take the dying from their rude beds and 
 lay them on a rude mat or on the ground, to breathe their last, placing 
 candles in their hands to light their way through the dark valley. 
 
 Nannie Henderson. 
 
 Salem, Virginia. 
 
 Price, 2 cents; 15 cents per dozen. 
 
I 
 
 
 ' 'i J 
 
 M