Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of the press, universal suffrage, and gradual elimination of slavery. Times were turbu-
lent indeed. DomPedro'sattention, buffered asit was bythe comforts ofhistropical life
and his sycophantic courtiers, was apt to wander in later years when the subject at hand
strayed much beyond his library or his lovers. 14 Gouty, diabetic, and, like the family
nemesis Napoleon, epileptic, he increasingly preferred to stay with his domestic circle
andloyalretainersenjoyingthecomfortsofhislovelypalaceinPetrópolis,situatedcom-
fortably in the mountains away from Rio's heat and pestilence. For him, power was ves-
tedindivineright,imperial tradition,andagraciouslifeintheenvironsofRio,although
the experience of his progenitors certainly ought to have provided a cautionary tale. 15
Aswell-bredcarriagehorsescloppedthroughRio'sleafysuburbs,visitorsdescribedRio
as “exotic,” “lush,” and “exuberant” and were simultaneously attracted and repelled by
the oddly decadent and old-fashioned air of this very pretty metropolis. 16
Rather than struggle with the inconveniences of domestic travel, Pedro II took long
trips to the United States, the Mideast, and Europe, visiting friends, relatives, and his
old amours. Although he did make one successful trip to the Northeast and visited Porto
Alegre for a time during the Paraguayan War, he preferred, on the whole, not to visit his
country's immense interior. Pedro II, who adored natural history, was acquainted with
his great hinterland mainly through accounts of its biotic marvels. He enjoyed his realm
mostly by proxy, content to view it through the eyes of visitors, expeditions sponsored
by European royals or American tycoons, or through scholarly topics. 17 He was thrilled
to meet with Amazon explorers, such as the delightful Agassiz family—Louis Agassiz,
who helped establish Harvard's natural history museum, which now bears his name, his
wife Elizabeth (later one of the presidents of Radcliffe College), and the team of young
student geologists and naturalists from Harvard and Cornell that traveled with them in
the Thayer and Morgan commissions. These included young scientists who would later
become giants of tropical geology such as Frederick Hartt and Orville Derby but also
well-connected college students such as William James (the eminent religious philo-
sopher/psychologist and brother of the novelist Henry James). Hartt and Derby were the
pioneers of Brazilian geology and biogeography and with their local counterparts, es-
pecially the geographer Teodoro Sampaio, provided the intellectual foundations for the
extensive geomorphologic and biogeographic studies of the Sertão (backlands) and the
Amazon selva on which Euclides da Cunha would later rely.
Dom Pedro II remained largely indifferent to the turmoil brewing just beyond the vel-
vet curtains of his carriages—his country's dubious and increasingly conflictive bound-
aries and ever more intractable populations. The period after the end of the Paraguay-
an War was marked by rising internal tension as slavery began to unravel and federalist
movements gained strength. In these years Pedro became increasingly diabetic and de-
mented. He left the country for years at a time, delegating his rule to his daughter, Isa-
Search WWH ::




Custom Search