At the time when these extraordinary expeditions began the interior of South America was still unknown. The high sertão and the forests were still full of mystery, although the coast had been stripped of such marvels as the giants who frightened Pinzon’s sailors, the men fourteen feet high seen by Magalhães, and the alligators with two tails which Vespucci reported. In the interior magic still reigned, with its trees yielding soap and glass, Lake Doirada with shining cities about its margin, and the marvellous kingdom of Paititi, lure of many disastrous expeditions, where some of the natives were dwarfs, others fifteen feet tall, some had their feet turned backwards and others had legs like birds. The bandeirante opened the sertão and dispelled these wonders. In his book, _O Sertão antes da Conquista_, Sampaio says that the Paulista “was compelled by his habitat to be a bandeirante: the conquest of the interior was written in his destiny.” If that is true, at least these labours were taken up with a kind of fierce joy. There was scarcely an able-bodied man of the time who did not join one or more of the bandeiras, and there is on record the case of Manoel de Campos who made twenty-four of these journeys. Many bandeirantes never returned, remaining in the sertão to found towns in Minas, Matto Grosso or Goyaz; some, returning after years of absence, found their wives married to other men, while “many heroes brought back from the sertão children whom they had not taken in,” says Rocha Pombo. The bandeira went always under the supreme command of a leader to whom implicit obedience was due; before setting out the bandeira in a body heard mass, the leader confessed and made his will, invariably including the phrase ... “_setting out to war and being mortal and not knowing what God our Lord will do with me_.”... A priest accompanied each bandeira, not only to shrive the dying and bury the dead, but by way of easing the conscience of the band regarding their mission and “reconciling it with the Divine Mercy.” The outfit for every man was made at his own cost, and if it is possible to judge by the baggage of Braz Gonçalves, who died on an expedition in 1636, and whose goods were scrupulously recorded and sold at auction, it was simple. His greatest possessions were three negro slaves, but he had also an awl, a bit and a hammer, a pair of worn slippers; some lead and gunpowder, one tin plate, a chisel, a mould for casting shot, a ball of thread, an old cape. It was only possible to face what lay beyond the outposts of settlement when equipped and ready for war; the bandeirantes knew that there was constant risk of attack by Indians and that nature opposed them with as fierce a menace. The country through which they passed was likely to be foodless, and they were prepared to sow seeds of grain in green valleys, camp, and wait until the crop was harvested before going on their way.