of twenty million sacks, five times what it had been a quarter of a century before. Then, when the supply was found to exceed the demand, when prices fell by leaps and bounds, and financial disaster seemed imminent, the shrewd Paulistas conceived and adopted the much-criticised expedient of "valorisation," the State itself purchasing an enormous quantity of the crop, and holding it up until prices became again normal. It was in this and in many {166} other ways that the Paulistas showed the clearsightedness and acumen which justly gained for their State and their capital the reputation of being the most enterprising and progressive on the whole South American continent. The abbot and I finished our afternoon's drive with a little expedition to Cantareira, a hollow among wooded hills, some twelve or fourteen miles distant (the access is by a steam tramway), where, set in charming gardens, are some of the spacious reservoirs feeding the city. We drank our coffee in a rustic arbour, with bright-hued hummingbirds glancing and circling round our heads; and returning in the luminous violet twilight (which struck me always as particularly beautiful in this clear, high smokeless atmosphere), called to pay our respects to the Archbishop of the province and diocese of S. Paulo. A zealous parish priest in the city, where he had built a fine church (St. Cecilia's), he had been made Bishop of Coritiba at only thirty, and translated to the metropolitan see two years later. He was not yet thirty-eight. I assisted, before our school broke up for the three months' summer holidays, at some of the examinations, which were conducted in presence of a _fiscal_ (Government official), our college being at that time considered "equiparado," i.e., equivalent to the State secondary schools, a condition of the privilege being some kind of more or less nominal Government inspection. The school work, it struck me, had all been very thoroughly done, though perhaps of a somewhat elementary kind. A distraction to us all during the last hour was the news of a great fire raging in the principal business street of the {167} city. A big German warehouse, the Casa Allema, was in fact burned to the ground; and we surveyed the conflagration (said, but never proved, to be the work of incendiaries) from the belfry of our church tower.