The Sorocabana with its general westerly direction is one of the lines which are pushing ahead towards the Matto Grosso boundary; building on from Salto Grande on the Paranápanema river, the line reached Caramarú in 1916. As we saw when on the subject of the line from Santos to S. Paulo, railroads in the State of São Paulo only began forming a network at the top of the plateau after the Serra had been conquered[6]; the next to be constructed was the Paulista, which has its northern terminal at Barretos, in the heart of good cattle lands: a flourishing packing house owned by the Companhia Frigorifica e Pastoril of S. Paulo is situated near Barretos, and has as its president the same energetic Paulista who heads the railway, Conselheiro Antonio da Silva Prado. Both packing house and railway are purely Brazilian enterprises financed with Brazilian money, but the construction of the road was headed by an American named Hammond, and was in consequence known for a long time as “Hammond’s road” to distinguish it from “Fox’s road” as the pioneer line to Santos was called after the English engineer. The Paulista both served and created coffee plantations, following the lines of richest deposit of the red diabasic soils that have made S. Paulo the great coffee country of the world; the same may be said of the Mogyana, almost parallel to the Paulista but farther north, also a Brazilian owned and operated company, and the Northwestern. Today these paralleled lines are linked with branches and possess steel arms reaching out into rich developing districts so that there is a genuine “rede ferroviario” over Paulista territory. The great coffee centre of Campinas is the point of departure for a star of lines, and so is the more northerly Riberão Preto, in the heart of the dark blood-red lands. In a particularly fortunate position with regard to communication with other States as well as interior service, S. Paulo is linked directly to Rio by the line owned and operated by the Federal Government, the Central system, and onward from Rio due north to the port of Espirito Santo State; to the interior of Minas Geraes by way of Uberaba, Araguary and over the border into Goyaz to Catalão and Roncador; by following the Central’s lines the capital of Minas, the new town of Bello Horizonte, is reached; southward, the series of lines controlled by the Brazil Railways take the traveller from S. Paulo all through the States of Paraná, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande to the Republic of Uruguay, with connection at the border town of Santa Anna do Livramento with a line running south to Montevideo.