th their
powerful jaws the Indian corn which each had received in a nose-bag soon
after we had halted, removed the loads and saddles from their backs, and
properly groomed them!

When we started the next morning we went through most beautiful grazing
land for some 20 kil., and through marvellous grassy slopes on the
mountains beyond. Streamlets of clear abundant water were passed. From
2,050 ft., the elevation of the stream, we rose to 2,650 ft., then
descended gradually to the village of Corumbahyba, with its brand-new
red-tiled roofs and whitewashed houses--very tiny, and, with one
exception, all one-storied. The windows and doors were gaily decorated
with bright blue paint. There was a church, of course, on one side of the
large square smothered in high grass, and by the church two wooden
pillars supported a beam from which hung a bronze bell. Then in the
centre of the square stood, most prominent of all in the village, a huge
wooden cross in a dilapidated condition. What little life seemed to exist
in the place was to be found in the local store, where an inquisitive
crowd had collected when I arrived.

[Illustration: Goyaz Railway in Construction.

The cut leading to the Paranahyba River.]

[Illustration: Author's Caravan crossing a Stream.]

My mules were let loose to graze in the square, joining a number of cows
that were there already. As I sat in the shop, closely examined by the
inhabitants, I returned the compliment by analysing them. What a
strange, dried-up, worn-out appearance young and old presented! What
narrow, chicken-like chests, what long, unstable legs and short arms.
And, dear me! what shaggy, rebellious hair, which stood out bristle-like
in all directions upon their scalps! Yet those people came from ancestors
who must have been, centuries ago, magnificent types of humanity to be
able to accomplish what they did in the way of colonization. With the
habit we possess of looking for finer, healthier specimens of humanity in
the country than in the cities, this condition of affairs came somewhat
as a surprise to me, since that rule generally applied to most nations I
have visited except Brazil. Those people, partly by constant
intermarriage among themselves, partly by the mixture of black blood with
the white, and greatly owing to the effects of the most terrible
complaint of the blood in existence--universal in Brazil--partly, too, by
the dull, uninteresting, wasted lives they led and the povert