of the ablest men in Brazil in his ministry, who, with the assistance of the best engineers and architects in the country, set about the reconstruction of the city. Dr. Lauro Muller (the present Minister for Foreign Affairs) was responsible for the general plan of the improvements, and his scheme was worked out in detail by Dr. Paul de Frontin, one of the most talented and all-round engineers in the republic, and at present the General Manager of the Central Railway, the largest in Brazil. Dr. Frontin has had a career crowded with many successes, and he still finds time to fill the professional chair of mechanics and astronomy in the National Gymnasium. He has been associated with nearly all the big engineering schemes in the republic of recent years, and has built canals, railways, bridges, waterworks, and docks, as well as opening out the avenues of the capital, which necessitated the removal of hills that to many would have been mountains. He has done much to make the new Rio almost worthy of its magnificent setting. In Rio the automobile has almost supplanted the “Tilburies,” those curious, old-fashioned gigs, capable of holding only one passenger, who sits beside the [Illustration: THE GAVEA, RIO.] driver, a few specimens of which may still be seen plying for hire. Electric tramways (called, curiously enough, the “Bond,” by the natives, who associate them with the bonds that were issued for the capital of the first companies) run through the winding city and distant suburbs. These tramways are run by the Rio de Janeiro Light and Power Company, which owns extensive concessions and properties throughout the State, including some twenty-two miles of territory on either bank of the Parahyba River, seventy-five miles distant from the city of Rio, and an installation fifty miles from the capital, where the Lages River passes through a narrow ravine about three hundred feet wide, betwixt solid rock. Here a dam has been constructed, so that the waters above are formed into a lake fifteen miles long by some seven or eight miles wide. From this huge reservoir the water is conducted a distance of one and a half miles through steel tubes to a power-house some thousand feet below in elevation, providing an enormous power for the generation of electricity both for motor and lighting purposes in the city.