Lines began to go farther afield, to form networks and connected links; they were part of general improvement plans which presently included harbours and wharves, waterworks and sanitation schemes, city paving and draining and beautifying. It is true that from the time of the Republic is dated Brazil’s plunge into debt upon a great scale, but since the new American countries could not wait until they had sufficient money in the national pockets to pay for railway, harbour and sanitation, and Europe stood ready to lend her surplus gold in aid of the work, Brazil is scarcely to blame for borrowing as did her sisters, north and south. Her very extravagance helped to advertise and advance Brazil, the royal-spending world customer with rich products for sale to justify her; she attracted immigrants, merchants, capitalists, technical men and scholars as she never would have done without her renown as a land of careless magnificence. Borrowing and building went on without any serious check until 1912, when the first Balkan War cast long shadows into the financial world; less than two hundred miles of new railway line have come into operation since that year in Brazil. But the previous fat years, many more than seven, had by that time not only brought about rail access to many fertile interior belts, but also the linking of the more important systems by lines reaching up and down the coast. The brilliant French author, Pierre Denis, was able to say ten or twelve years ago that there was “no general railway system in Brazil; there are small independent systems, covering with their meshes the regions of long-established colonization, but without inter-communicating lines.” He found connection between two groups only, remarking that “the line from S. Paulo to Rio is today the only means of transit between two groups of states, excepting the ocean highway.”