Uberabinha with the railway; the wide uplands of S. Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande do Sul; and the interior plateau of Goyaz and Matto Grosso. The proof that permanent, and not too costly roads, can be made in Brazil lies in the fact that they have been made: the Russian carters of Paraná take their teams over rough but serviceable trails on prairie lands, and across the high sertão of Matto Grosso that great and gallant explorer, Rondon, has built roads over which services of automobile trucks are maintained for the convenience of the telegraph building, geological and charting work of the Commission. The tale of the magnificent work in the interior done by the Rondon Commission is an epic of the Brazilian interior, and one of its great merits has been the proof that this unknown country is no terrible jungle, but an open, honest country awaiting the plough. _II. Rail_ Initiative in railway construction in Brazil is credited to a clever priest who acted as Regent during part of the minority of Pedro II. In October, 1835, Padre Feijó presented a bill to the Legislative Assembly in Rio de Janeiro advocating the creation of a railway system; amongst other suggestions his scheme included a limitation of rates for freight and passengers—the former to a maximum of twenty reis for each arroba carried a league, and ninety reis for each passenger carried a like distance. Nothing was done for seventeen years, and then in June, 1852, the Brazilian Government sanctioned a concession for a railroad to link the port of Pernambuco to a point upon the river S. Francisco, above the falls which blocked the way of boats traversing the busy interior river highway. This road was never built. In 1853, another concession was granted for a line to reach the river from the more southerly port of Bahia: this plan was carried out and the road opened to traffic (Bahia to Joazeiro) in the year 1860, but before that day three other railways had been built and brought into operation. The first of all railways to operate in Brazil was the Emperor’s road running from the outskirts of Rio city across level ground to the foot of the Serra: it was opened in 1854. This, and the subsequent mountain climbing section extending from the _Raiz da Serra_ to the _Alto da Serra_, are part of the important system of lines owned and operated by one of the big English companies, the Leopoldina: I refer in detail to this series and its development work on another page. A short strip, now part of the (English) Great Western of Brazil Railway, running on level country from the city of Pernambuco was opened in 1857, and a line from Rio de Janeiro to Queimados, a distance of sixty kilometers, was opened to traffic by Dom Pedro in the year 1858: it forms part of the valuable series of penetrating lines owned and operated by the Federal Government today.