From Rio it is possible also to go by railroad to Bello Horizonte, the remarkable capital of Minas Geraes, the most densely populated of all the Brazilian States. This city is unique in that it did not have its beginning in the usual way and get itself chosen as the capital; it was built only a few years ago on a previously unoccupied site _for the very purpose_, and at a cost, for only the buildings owned by the government, of more than $30,000,000. It is located in a lovely, wooded, farm-dotted valley, through the length of which flows a river, interrupted at intervals by cascades. Near the city, both sides of the stream have been converted into a delightful park. One of the avenues that run through the center of the city is named for its founder, Affonso Penna, and is a hundred and fifty feet wide and shaded by three rows of trees. The hotels are comfortable, train service good, and the journey through a country of beautiful scenery and interesting people and towns. This is the great mining State of Brazil. Of it Marie Robinson Wright says: “Few countries can boast of such an abundance and variety of mineral resources as Minas Geraes, which derives its name, signifying General Mines, from the industry that gave it existence, and which owes to this principal attraction the preponderance of its population.” Gold was not discovered during the first two hundred years after settlement had been begun by the Portuguese, but, when it was at last discovered, the yield was very great. In 1792 the amount registered in Rio—and this record, of course, was incomplete—was 360,000 pounds in weight. An English authority has estimated the total output up to within recent years at £200,000,000 sterling. “Of all the fabulous tales related of bonanza princes,” Mrs. Wright goes on to say, “the palm for extravagance belongs to the history of the early mining days in Brazil, when horses were shod with gold, when lawyers supported their pleadings before judges with gifts of what appeared at first sight to be the choicest oranges and bananas, but proved to be solid gold imitations, when guests were entertained at dinner by the discovery of gold pebbles in their soup instead of grains of corn, when nuggets were the most convenient means of exchange in the money market;” but here, as in some of our own mining regions, with the gradual exhaustion of the surface deposits and the impossibility of continuing by primitive methods, mining came to be more and more neglected. Modern methods and machinery are once more bringing the industry into prominence, and a considerable amount of gold is even now being taken out by the few companies that have already installed up-to-date plants.