exported, for Bahia has many mills of its own. The State is also a great producer of rubber, while the cultivation of cocoa increases year by year. Cattle-raising forms yet another occupation of the Bahians. The transport facilities are also good; several railway systems connect the city with the producing districts, and fleets of coastwise vessels make other ports on the Brazilian seaboard quite easy of access. A brisk export trade is transacted with foreign countries, one of the best of Bahia’s customers being the United Kingdom. [Illustration: THE BARAS DE AQUINO. The curious winding track of the Leopoldina Railway.] Further up the coast lies Pernambuco, and this likewise will be found a most desirable halting-place. It is a conglomeration of four towns, Recife, the commercial quarter, Santo Antonio, which contains the Government offices; San José, where the public works and railway stations are situated; and Boa Vista, the fashionable residential quarter. The several townships are connected by handsome bridges, a feature which gives Pernambuco a distinct character of its own, and has earned for it the sobriquet of the “Brazilian Venice”; a coral reef about five hundred feet from the shore runs along the entire front of the city, and forms a natural protection to the magnificent harbour. This reef marches with the coast from Bahia to Maranhão, a distance of nearly a thousand miles. [Illustration: THE RAILWAY OVER THE CONFLUENCE OF THE PAQUEQUR AND PARAHYBA RIVERS.] One is charmed with the aspect of Pernambuco long before one sets foot upon its quay. The palm groves and the red roofs of the houses compose into a really charming picture. The population of the city verges upon two hundred thousand. Its docks are spacious and well managed, and its importance as a commercial centre is demonstrated by the fact that no fewer than ten cable lines link it up with the great outer world. Several railways, of which the most important are the Great Western of Brazil, the Recife and San Francisco, and the Alagoas, connect it with the interior, and bring down to the port supplies of sugar, cotton, rice, tobacco, indigo, cinnamon, pineapples, grapes, oranges, bananas, and other commodities. The shippers of Pernambuco are favourably placed for despatching their merchandise to its destination, for the port occupies a point on the American seaboard nearer to Europe than any other.