THE AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AMERICAN CONSULATE, PERNAMBUCO MAY, 1928 Luxurious and Resourceful Everyone who drives Dodge Brothers great Senior Six instantly concedes that it is needless to pay more than the Senior price to enjoy the utmost in performance and luxury. Its superb resourcefulness under all driving con¬ ditions is the subject of universal comment. Moreover, to those who value refinement above the gaudy and the spectacular, Senior design and appoint¬ ments represent a welcome adherence to good taste. DODGE- DRDTHE-R5, INC. THE FOREIGN S JOURNAL YOL. V. No. 5. WASHINGTON, D. C. MAY, 1928. Pernambuco By NATHANIEL P. DAVIS, Consul, Pernambuco THERE was a time when, if you told a col¬ thing milder than neat whiskey was looked upon league that you had been assigned to Per¬ as tantamount to suicide. nambuco, he would laugh uproariously if It is no wonder, then, that Pernambuco has he knew you well enough; otherwise he would earned a reputation as not the most desirable post congratulate you on the assignment with osten¬ in the service. It cannot be claimed that it has sible sincerity while secretly pitying you. If you risen to that position—does any consul claim proceeded to your new post from New York or publicly that his post is the most desirable?—but Europe, fellow passengers would encourage you it is undoubtedly true that today Pernambuco is with tales of streets hub deep in mud, bad water, more to be sought after as a post than many disease rampant, and heat worse than that to places which readers of this can mention with which the proverbial snowball is subjected. For feeling. Pernambuco had a reputation for all of these In recent years the city has been greatly im¬ things which apparently will never die. And it proved and modernized, and that development is is true that at one time the worst you heard of still going on. Sanitary conditions also have been Pernambuco was no exaggeration. Although revolutionized, and yellow fever, once the scourge conditions are no longer the same, the reputation of this whole coast, is now practically unknown lingers. The archives of the consulate tell of the here. The arriving consul now lands from his deaths from yellow fever of entire crews of steamer to a modern stone quay. His baggage is American vessels in port, and inscriptions in taken from the ship by electric cranes and car¬ the British cemetery tell a similar story. There ried by a railway along the docks to be deposited was a time, not so many years ago, when in a modern concrete customhouse. He rides large steamers could not enter the harbor, but from the customhouse to his hotel in a motor remained in the outer roadstead while passen¬ car—probably American—over well-paved streets gers were disembarked by the precarious method lighted by electricity and remarkably clean. of hoisting them over the side in baskets and Until he reaches the hotel he cannot believe that dropping them on the heaving deck of a lighter. this is the city his fellow passengers have been There was a time, within the memory of officers describing to him in such vivid language. still living who have served at this post, when His travel status having ended with his arrival during the wet season the consul waded to his at the hotel, the new consul rides to the office office through a morass of mud and sugar drip¬ the next morning in an up-to-date street car, pings. It is not many years since to drink any¬ built in Philadelphia and operated by a British 137 company. Arrived at the office, he finds himselt The duties of the consuls in the early days were entering a modern stone and concrete bank build¬ confined largely to those connected with shipping ing and riding up to the second floor in an Otis and seamen, and the records tell of many dark elevator, unless, as frequently happens, the opera¬ and bloody deeds, such as the throwing overboard tor has taken French leave for the time, in which of one master and the cutting of the throat of case the new consul climbs a steep, dark stairway. another, not to mention lesser pleasantries prac¬ At the top he finds himself in the consulate, a ticed by Yankee sailors on the long voyage around suite of three bright, well-ventilated rooms over¬ the Horn. looking a pleasing public square, with a view But times have changed, and the few Ameri¬ beyond of a part of the harbor and the sea. can vessels now visiting Pernambuco give the The earliest record in the archives of the con¬ consulate little trouble. Thanks to its unenviable sulate is dated February 1, 1821, and is the rec¬ reputation, a reputation no longer justified as has been said above, American seamen are usually ord of a marine note of protest entered before careful not to get left behind here, and it is rare Consul James H. Bennett by the master of the indeed in these days that any are on the beach brig Union. From that date until the present the here. Today the bulk of the work is commercial, consulate has functioned without a break, the and it calls for the consul’s best efforts. Per¬ officers in charge having been variously commis¬ nambuco is the third city in Brazil in size, with sioned as consuls, vice consuls, consular agents, a population of upward of 355,000, and its port and acting consuls. According to the not wholly ranks third among Brazilian ports in bulk of in¬ complete records, 42 officers have been in charge ward and outward cargoes. The consular dis¬ of the office since it was first opened in 1821. trict, comprising five of the smaller states of the The record for long service is held by Mr. Republic, is somewhat larger than Germany in Thomas Adamson, who was consul at Pernam¬ area but has a total population of not much over buco for six years from 1862 to 1868. It is a 6,000,000. But next to the large cities of the south Pernambuco buys more American goods remarkable fact that in spite of the former sani¬ than any other town in Brazil, and this commerce tary conditions and prevalence of yellow fever, is rapidly growing. One American automobile there is no record of the death of any officer at manufacturer operates an assembly plant in the his post. Mr. Edwin Stevens, who was consul city, and another is about to open. There is also from 1890 to 1893, died in Pernambuco in 1902, an American bank, and of course the American nine years after he had retired from his office. oil companies and the ubiquitous Singer Sewing Machine Company are well represented. But the American colony is nevertheless relatively small. It is estimated that there are only about 60 Americans in the en¬ tire district, of whom half are in or near Pernam¬ buco. Of the 60, nearly half are missionaries who maintain schools and colleges in the cities and preaching missions in the interior. American business men and salesmen are visiting the city in increasing numbers and actively and successfully disputing the former commercial su¬ VIEW FROM CONSULATE WINDOWS premacy of Europe. 138 On the Banff - Windermere Highway By LEE R. BLOHM, Consul, Vancouver Give to me the life I love— through a magnificent canyon (Sinclair) portal, Let what will be o’er me; which is in keeping with the proportions of the Give the face of earth around Rockies that nature has carved as a natural gate¬ And the road before me. way to this end of the road. Sinclair Creek tears —R. L. S. its way down this canyon by the side of the road, passing through towering walls of rock, to find AND the road before me! It is always the itself again in the wide and pastoral valley of the road ahead—over the hill on the horizon— Columbia. This portal of the mountains is even or around the corner, that lures me on. more surprising than the gateway cut through the Motoring “the face of the earth around” is like Shoshone hills by that river near Cody, Wyo., a fever which seizes a man in its hot embrace and which amazes and delights the motorist when he periodically instills in him an uncontrollable de¬ leaves the Yellowstone National Park by the sire to seek the open road. For just as in the scenic Cody highway. spring a “livelier iris changes on the burnished Leaving Sinclair canyon the road cuts along dove and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to the base of rugged cliffs and through the so-called thoughts of love,” so, recollection of the delights “Iron Gates,” formed by splendid towers of red of the open road always returns to me upon the rock on either side of the valley. From the sum¬ approach of the summer solstices. mit of the pass, 4,950 feet in altitude, the road In five interesting tours, covering some 25,000 drops down again in great sweeps toward the miles of road in the West and Northwest, which the wide and level valley of the Kootenay, afford¬ 1 have made during as many furloughs in recent ing some wonderful panoramic views. The can¬ vears, one of the most scenic stretches of road yon of the Rockies changes gradually to the can- encountered was the famous Banff-Windermere yonito of the living green of the forest, tall lines Highway in western British Columbia and eastern of slender pines in silhouette on the valley floor.