Sao Paulo, with its population of 300,000 and its two-
million-dollar opera house, which fills the space of three New York
blocks, is worthy of mention. Bahia, founded in 1549, has 270,000
inhabitants, and is the centre of the diamond market of Brazil. Para,
with its population of 200,000, who export one hundred million
dollars' worth of rubber yearly and keep up a theatre better than
anything of the kind in New York, is no mean city. Pernambuco, also,
has 200,000 inhabitants, large buildings, and as much as eight
million dollars have recently been devoted to harbor improvements
there.
Outside of these cities there are estates, quite a few of which are
worth more than a million dollars; one coffee plantation has five
million trees and employs five thousand people.
With its Amazon River, six hundred miles longer than the journey from
New York to Liverpool, England, with its eight branches, each of
which is navigable for more than a thousand miles, Brazil's future
must be very great.
CHAPTER XII.
A JOURNEY FROM RIO JANEIRO TO THE INLAND TOWN OF CORUMBA.
Brazil has over 10,000 miles of railway, but as it is a country
larger than the whole of Europe, the reader can easily understand
that many parts must be still remote from the iron road and almost
inaccessible. The town of Cuyaba, as the crow flies, is not one
thousand miles from Rio, but, in the absence of any kind of roads,
the traveller from Rio must sail down the one thousand miles of sea-
coast, and, entering the River Plate, proceed up the Parana,
Paraguay, and San Lorenzo rivers to reach it, making it a journey of
3,600 miles.
"In the time demanded for a Brazilian to reach points in the
interior, setting out from the national capital and going either by
way of the Amazon or Rio de la Plata systems of waterways, he might
journey to Europe and back two or three times over." [Footnote:
Sylvester Baxter, in The Outlook, March, 1908.]
The writer on one occasion was in Rio when a certain mission called
him to the town of Corumba, distant perhaps 1,300 miles from the
capital. Does the reader wish to journey to that inland town with
him?
Boarding an ocean steamer at Rio, we sail down the stormy sea-coast
for one thousand miles to Montevideo. There we tranship into the
Buenos Ayres boat, and proceed one hundred and fifty miles up the
river to that city. Almost every day steamers leave that great centre
for far interior points. The "Rapido" was ready to sail for Asuncion,
so we breasted the stream one thousand miles more, when that city was
reached. There another steamer waited to carry us to Corumba, another
thousand miles further north.
The climate and scenery of the upper reaches of the Paraguay are
superb, but our spirits were damped one morning when we discovered
that a man of our party had mysteriously disappeared during the
night.
