The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1918-04-24
A MESSAGE FROM BRAZIL

Paper read by Mrs. Travers Ewell
before the ocala Woman's Club April
20, 1879
After wandering among tan deserts
and riding a mule over Crazy noun
tains at perilous angles, with the
thermometer at 116 degrees in the
shade, such a welcome home is ire
sistible. Like the Ancient Mariner, I
should like to stop you and tell you
of my adventures-by river boat and
pack-train, across stretches of
country where / was the first white
woman to travel. But today there is
time only to bring you short mes
sage from this same country-the re-
public of Brazil, and great ally to the.
South.
America has not concerned herself
with foreign trade. So few Ameri-
cans have settled in Brazil that few Of
US stop to realize that she has an area
many thousand square miles larger
than the United States. Most of US
don't even know that Brazil is the
one South American country where
Portuguese, not Spanish, is spoken.
Most of all we do not care that Bra
zil has fiattered US by modelling her
representative government on our
own, by practically duplicating our
constitution.
Unfortunately, too, the Brazilians
know very little about US, most of
that little being derived from infer
ior moving pictures that represent us
as prosperous and materialistie peo-
pie, who don't scare for expense"
Everywhere in Northrn Brazil, we
were greeted as Americans by three
stock phrases, 81 like vera mucha
spixka English" and then 81 hka
vera mucha your haga time," (the
local Interpretation of rag-time), and
last and most touching of all tributes
Charlie Chaplin!"
The north of Brazil is peculiarly
isolated. No equally large area of a
civilized country stands in greater
need of instruction in hygiene, of
public health measures, of free clinics,
of physicians and the commonest med
ical remedies. Along the swamps of
the Amazon, west to Peru, and south
on the dry chappadas alike, fevers
and malaria are rife. Poverty and the
lack of river boat and railway commu-
nication are responsible in measure
for this backwardness. But the cli-
mate with five months Of utter
drought and five months of deluging
rain is the chief trouble. As we went
up the Itapecuri river in our small
boat, trailing innumerable thatched
barges which bumped the banks, we
met at each little settlement evi-
dences of the "pallidisma." After the
spring floods, innumerable mosqui-
toes are bred, and this malaria deci-
mates the population. Everywhere
they begged for quinine, the one spe-
cific; quinine and more quinine. We
were glad to give as much of our
supply as we could spare, since a 10
grain tablet costs there fifteen cents,
a prohibitive price where the daily
wage is about twenty cents. Back IN
the interior Of the "matto," as they
call the scrub, our pack train was
waylaid at eevry palm thatched hut
| for remedies. An Anglo-Saxon is
kind of demi-god to the native, so my
husband, a civil engineer and not. a
doctor, was asked to treat everything
from toothache to leprosyl But If
America has been Indifferent to Bra
I'll. Germany has not. You all know
/ that German colonies were planted in
the southern states of Santa Caterina
and Rio Grande do Sui, that they con-
/ +roIIad tha schooIs lnewsDauers rail
roads and telegraph lines, and that
only the discovery of their gigantic
plot, prevented civil uprising that
might have made are the south of
Brazil German soil. German trade
methods too have been notably insid-
ious in Brazil The Germans have
catered to the native love of color and
ornament. Their motto has been
Anything to please" Such ordinary
/