The writer followed this route in December, 1915. The journey took six days and nights, three of the latter being spent in the train and three at points en route while waiting for connections, certain trains running but twice a week. My path was smooth by official courtesy and the trip was pleasant as well as interesting; the sparsely occupied country, with colonies set down here and there near the track, has a delightful freshness born of bright empty spaces, woods and a multitude of shallow rapid streams. The pine forests of Paraná and Santa Catharina with their flowery carpets were a series of fine pictures, while the wide-spread sunny pastures of southern Rio Grande, a perfect cattle country with a cool climate, are waiting for more white immigrants. Herds stray on the sides of gentle grassy slopes and in the valleys where a cluster of green marks the bed of a little river, fields are marked out and a red-tiled house nestles—but these are all too few. The Brazil Railway Company was formed in 1906 through the initiative of Percival Farquhar with the object of unifying railway lines in South Brazil, then in several different hands as a result of the concessionary system which was the only way of inviting foreign capital in earlier days: the project also included the control of accessory ports and large industrial development along the line of the roads. About the same time the syndicate formed by Farquhar obtained interests in railways in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Chile; a huge unification plan was foreshadowed. Some of these plans have fallen through—the narrow-gauge Argentine lines leased have, for instance, returned to their former control, and Chilean interests have been dropped—partly because disturbed conditions in Europe since the first Balkan war in 1912 ended opportunities for obtaining more metal props.