Brazilian “estradas de ferro” have nearly all one promising feature in common: they are pioneer paths, with new towns camped beside their tracks, and new industries growing up about them: with the exception of the old mining settlements in the interior of Minas and Bahia, scarcely any development existed in the Brazilian hinterlands until the railroads drove a way; nearly all give access, and as they move farther across sertão and through forest, will give greater access, to virgin lands uncharted and unknown. In the southern states many of the concessions given to railway companies carried colonization clauses as a continuation of the deliberate, thoroughly worked out plan of the authorities by which during the nineteenth century settlements were made of Poles, Russians, Swiss, Germans and other European races, with the object of feeding the lines and stimulating agriculture. The European War has checked these plans: settlers from Europe will in all probability be scarce for many years to come, engaged as the racked countries will be in their own rehabilitation. But to other nations where populations are crowded or conditions no longer offer wide land spaces and large agricultural rewards, the railroads of Brazil open a country of unsurpassed beauty and fertility. What railway construction is waiting in Brazil for capital, good engineering, and—an urgent necessity in dealing with huge empty spaces— imagination? The great heart of Brazil, which is also the great heart of South America, is only newly entered by little pioneer tracks. What bold projects could open up the interior sertões to the planter? Frontin’s daring scheme to build a line from Pirapora (due west from Caravellas in Bahia) along the valley of the Tocantins to Pará has already been mentioned: the scheme lags for want of money. Another conception is that of a railroad which would run almost parallel with the Pirapora-Pará line: it would extend from Cuyabá in the middle of the diamond district of Matto Grosso almost due north along the valley of the Tapajoz river to the town of Santarem, a pretty trading point at the junction of the black river with the yellow Amazon. A third ambitious project is a railroad to run from Manáos northwards, along the valleys of the Negro and the Branco into British Guiana.