1930 BRAZIL, RIO De JANEIRO magazine article, people, history etc South America

Description

Selling is a magazine article from 1930:
Brazil, Rio de Janeiro
Title: GIGANTIC BRAZIL AND ITS GLITTERING CAPITAL
Author: FREDERICK SIMPICH
Quoting the first page “I'd like to roll to Rio,
Some day before I'm old."
After humming them twenty years, I succumbed to those tilting lines. Brazil faces the Atlantic Ocean for 3,700 miles, Its coastline extends from the River Oyapock, which separates it from French Guiana on the north, all the way south to Uruguay. That is twice the distance from Portland, Maine, to Key West, Florida.
And Rio de Janeiro, basking on golden sands almost astride the Tropic of Capricorn, is the capital of this vast Brazil, which is 65 times larger than England. And, amid all Brazil's amazing coastal panorama of prismatic forests, mysterious rivers, foaming cascades, untrod mountains, and polyglot, populous coast towns, Rio remains the very acme of human interest and beauty.
When, after weeks of travel down this incredibly long coast, you come suddenly to the glittering gates of Rio and behold this alabasterlike city of palms, marble, mountains, and color, you are astounded. Your very thinking slows down. There is really no such city, the mind repeats.
Surely, here is some illusion from out an Arabian Nights dream, a magic supercity never built by man. Look at those amazing mountain peaks that rise from the sea. They cannot be of this world; they are unreal, like a landscape on the moon pictured through a telescope. Dumb before the sheer beauty of it, phantom childhood fancies recur. In a dream of long, long ago, wasn't there a city vaguely like this, with pearly gates?
"Get ready for the quarantine doctor," warns the voice of authority. So Rio is a regular city, after all. You breathe and look again at the shimmering. peak-punctured bay, dotted with palm-grown isles and fringed with placid inlets that lead to the mouths of tree-lined mountain avenues. In vain men have compared this with the Golden Horn or the Bay of Naples. But it is like nothing else. It is the Bay of Rio-majestic, matchless, the supreme architecture of God.
And. as the harbor is Nature's master-piece, man strives to make Rio fit the picture. Its ornate, flamboyant water front suggests the glittering skyline of Baghdad as you first glimpse the oriental city from a steamer sailing up the Tigris, with its domes, mosques, and minarets.
To enter this great world port you walk down the gangplank and straight out into a formal garden with a big bronze fountain. This leads off into a Fifth-Avenue-like boulevard, which ill turn flows into a wide, world-famous beach drive, past embassies, clubs, and more palms and geometric gardens. Dingy docks, pawnshops, pool halls, quick-and-dirty cafes, cheap rooming houses, touts and runners, dirt, smells-all the trash and claptrap of many other water fronts are missing here.
"This, at last, is Spotless Town." says a touring ad-writer from Chicago. “I couldn't he more astonished if I should see the newsboys wearing morning coats, tile hats, and white carnations."
"And the colors!" murmurs the lady from Newark, who painted posters for a billboard firm. "If ever there's a beauty contest among queen cities of the world, Rio will win. And my guide says they actually scrub the streets every night."
To reach our hotel, we turned left into the Beira Mar, or "Edge of the Sea," often styled the finest ocean boulevard in the western hemisphere. Again we saw the startling profile of the singular peaks that rise about the bay, compared by some to a herd of big elephants sitting in grotesque pose. They include the much-photographed Sugar Loaf, the oddly shaped Corcovado, or Hunchback, with a great figure of Christ now being erected on its top, and the 3346-foot Tijuea.
Rising fully 1,200 feet and almost straight out of the sea, Sugar Loaf is easily Rio's outstanding landmark. Incoming air pilots, if half lost in fog or rain, hail its familiar outlines with grunts of relief. In a queer aerial trolley-a dizzy trip which is a supreme triumph for…”
7” x 10”; 46 pages, 55 B&W photos plus map
These are pages carefully removed from an actual 1930 magazine.
30L2
Please note the flat-rate shipping for my magazine articles. Please see my other auctions and store items for more old articles, advertising pages and non-fiction books.
Click Here To Visit My eBay Store: busybeas books and ads
Thousands of advertisement pages and old articles
Anything I find that looks interesting!
Please see my other auctions for more
goodies, books and magazines.
I’ll combine wins to save on postage.
Thanks For Looking!
Luke 12: 15
Note to
CANADIAN
purchasers:
Since 2007 I've only been charging 5% GST on purchases. Thanks to a recent CRA audit I must change to the full GST/HST charge. Different provinces have different rates, though most are just 5%. My GST/HST number is 84416 2784 RT0001