Saint'Hilaire, was a botanist and in his travels he traveled through the following states: Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Goiás, São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul. He got to know the sources of Jequitinhonha and São Francisco up to Rio Claro. He traveled on horseback or on the back of a donkey, through the backlands generally of dusty paths and most of the times along paths opened with a machete by his companions, even if they were slaves. The state of Minas Gerais alone visited three times, as it identified with its inhabitants. When he arrived in Goiás, he stayed for 15 months.
August, like the other travelers at the beginning of the last century, had to overcome the scarcity of civilized food, the fatigue and deprivation, sleeping in thatched huts, get used to the hammock, transform a suitcase into a chair and table for your notes, lose the fear of wild animals, put up with mosquitoes and share the vigil with the other companions. adventure. For him, for many years, there was no homeland, family or friends who spoke his language.
He was called a lieutenant colonel by his collaborators, and even when the circumstances of the trip were difficult, the threat of abandonment was the first argument.
It was not difficult for Saint’Hilaire to be seen by the sertanejos as a doctor, and so he was often forced to teach remedies, after all harvesting plants was a habit only for doctors and healers in this country unknown.
Despite the many difficulties, the botanist was absolutely seduced by the plant richness, and from this seduction he drew strength and courage to continue traveling.
In 1818, he had been across the country for two years, when he was told about the beauty and hell of the Rio Doce. August, had no doubt, set out on the march towards the hell that people called Rio Doce in Espírito Santo. For the botanist, hell had revealed itself to be a paradise and he describes it: "the river slides majestically through the forest of its borders". He felt humiliated before the austere and powerful nature: "my imagination is somehow frightened, when I think of the immense forest, of all sides surrounding me, extends to the north far beyond the Rio Grande, occupies the entire eastern part of Minas Gerais, covers without interruption the provinces of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo, São Paulo, all of Santa Catarina, the north and west of Rio Grande do Sul and goes to the Missions north of the Paraguay.
August, like other Europeans, is horrified by the burning of virgin forest and comments: "Trees gigantic ones, set on fire by the foot, toppled over with a noise, breaking others, not yet hit by the fire. Then, on the ground in ashes where the virgin forest had been, the wreckage of branches and trunks reduced to charcoal. And all this the country people do to harvest a few bushels of corn, risking, through lack of precaution, to lose a forest, as if without a forest there could be culture. Simple people, dazzled by nature and believing that their gifts will never be lacking, destroy the forest as they wasted the gold extracted from the mines." August, like most other travelers, points out in his work our mistakes, but also gives advice for fix them.
None of the travelers who traveled through Brazil showed themselves as Saint’Hilaire so capable of observing its various aspects, geography, statistics, agriculture, commerce, art, religious, administrative and judicial life, customs, uses of civilized people and the Indians.
About our flora he wrote: "Usual plants of the Brazilian people and Flora of Southern Brazil". His work is still consulted and mentioned in the teaching of botany at Sorbone.
All of August's work was built with the intention of telling future generations what the fertile land was like: "Flowering cities will take the place of miserable huts, where only I have found shelter, and in this future its inhabitants will see in the writings of travelers not only how cities began, but also how the smallest were born. villages. Taken by surprise, people will know that where the noise of hammers and the most complicated machines resounds, formerly only the croaking of batrachians and the singing of birds could be heard; where immense plantations cover the earth, trees once grew, admirable many of them useless for their abundance. Looking at regions covered by locomotives, perhaps even more powerful vehicles, men will smile when read that in other times it was considered happy whoever, for a whole day, managed to advance a frame or five leagues."
Saint’Hilaire returns to France in 1822 after being poisoned by wasp honey. His nervous system deeply shaken, he returned to seek relief in the south of France. His first work was Viagem do Rio a Minas Gerais, published in 1830. From the coast to the Diamantino district 1833, From São Francisco and Goiás 1847 and from São Paulo to Santa Catarina 1851. August de Saint’Hilaire died in 1853 at the age of 74. In 1887, his last book was published, called Cisplatina from Rio Grande do Sul.
Source: Biographies - Academic Unit of Civil Engineering / UFCG
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