plantations, rest-pastures for the passing cattle, and embryo villages along the route, all the way to the city of S. Paulo. There are three chief fans of radiating railroad lines in Brazil, starting from the coastal border from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco. The first two form networks of lines of much greater extent than the third, and besides these systems there are several points along the littoral where a railway penetrating inland is already the handle of a new fan. The southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, is well served, lines running through the middle of her territory from north to south (the Auxiliaire, now part of the Brazil Railways group) and east to west, so that the state is in touch with Argentina, with Uruguay, with the States of S. Paulo, and Santa Catharina and with the seat at each end of the Lagôa dos Patos, a busy lagoon with the town of Rio Grande at the entrance and Porto Alegre at the northern end: the railroad splits into two at Cacequy in order to serve both the rival ports. Superior docking at Porto Alegre sent practically all visiting vessels to the upper end of the lagoon until the end of 1915, when the new harbour of Rio Grande was formally opened. The work, a long and expensive series of tasks, was performed by a French company, and includes the deepening and maintenance of the channel to permit the entry of deep-draught vessels, docks and wharves; Rio Grande is a fine state with a cool climate, an industrious population, and thriving business. It has been carefully colonized with white European settlers, has space for a million more, and with its easy access to other centres of population by sea and rail has much to attract newcomers. Increasing exchange is carried on with the Argentine, chiefly by water. Santa Catharina’s rail service consists of the north-and-south link of the São Paulo-Rio Grande line, a short local line between the colonies of Blumenau and Hansa, and two short strips running inland from the sea, one from Imbatuba to Laguna and thence inland to Lauro Muller, serving the coalfields of that region; the other from the excellent little island port of São Francisco, across to the mainland at Paraty, and thence inland to Joinville, Rio Negro and Tres Barras, where the lumber yards of a company controlled by the Brazil Railway Company feed it with freight. The Tres Barras yards operate with the Paraná pine for which the southern States of Brazil are famous, ship it to many other parts of the Brazilian Union, and in 1915 arranged to supply Argentina alone with forty million feet a year. S. Francisco port has entered upon a new life since the lumber business has been flourishing; a double row of settlements has sprung up beside the track of the railroad and agriculture is showing development in a region that has been steadily if slowly settled by the descendants of the early colony of Joinville.