ific exploration of the chapadao,
their mapping the basin of the Juruena, and their descent of the Gy-
Parana that rendered it possible for us to solve the mystery of the
River of Doubt.

The work of the commission, much the greatest work of the kind ever
done in South America, is one of the many, many achievements which the
republican government of Brazil has to its credit. Brazil has been
blessed beyond the average of her Spanish-American sisters because she
won her way to republicanism by evolution rather than revolution. They
plunged into the extremely difficult experiment of democratic, of
popular, self-government, after enduring the atrophy of every quality
of self-control, self-reliance, and initiative throughout three
withering centuries of existence under the worst and most foolish form
of colonial government, both from the civil and the religious
standpoint, that has ever existed. The marvel is not that some of them
failed, but that some of them have eventually succeeded in such
striking fashion. Brazil, on the contrary, when she achieved
independence, first exercised it under the form of an authoritative
empire, then under the form of a liberal empire. When the republic
came, the people were reasonably ripe for it. The great progress of
Brazil--and it has been an astonishing progress--has been made under
the republic. I could give innumerable examples and illustrations of
this. The change that has converted Rio Janeiro from a picturesque
pest-hole into a singularly beautiful, healthy, clean, and efficient
modern great city is one of these. Another is the work of the
Telegraphic Commission.

We put upon the map a river some fifteen hundred kilometres in length,
of which the upper course was not merely utterly unknown to, but
unguessed at by, anybody; while the lower course, although known for
years to a few rubbermen, was utterly unknown to cartographers. It is
the chief affluent of the Madeira, which is itself the chief affluent
of the Amazon.

The source of this river is between the 12th and 13th parallels of
latitude south and the 59th and 60th degrees of longitude west from
Greenwich. We embarked on it at about latitude 12 degrees 1 minute
south, and about longitude 60 degrees 15 minutes west. After that its
entire course lay between the 60th and 61st degrees of longitude,
approaching the latter most closely about latitude 8 degrees 15
minutes. The first rapids we encountered were in latitude 11 degree