Because of peculiar economic conditions, the railroads of Brazil, as originally planned, were not intended, like ours, to facilitate commerce among the States, but only for the purpose of bringing the products of the various developed sections of the country to the nearest shipping points. Thus Recife, the seaport of the State of Pernambuco, is the focus of one system, São Salvador da Bahia of another, Rio de Janeiro of a third, Santos, the port of São Paulo, of a fourth, and Porto Alegre, the chief port of Rio Grande do Sul, of a fifth. Not long ago, when these conditions began to undergo radical changes, the government realized the desirability of establishing connections by means of lines running north and south. The Rio de Janeiran system was extended north to the growing port of Victoria, in the neighboring State of Espirito Santo, and connected with the systems of São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1910 pushed still farther south into Uruguay, so that by the end of the year it was possible to travel by rail from Victoria to Montevideo, a distance of more than two thousand miles. The lines north of Victoria, however, have not yet been connected and the nearly twenty-five-hundred-mile journey from Belém to Rio, therefore, must still be made by sea. But, long though the trip is, it is very far from being a monotonous one, if only the tourist has the time to make it on a coastwise steamer that stops at the principal ports of call. São Luiz da Maranhão, “the City of Little Palaces”; Fortaleza, the port of Ceará, regarded as one of the loveliest in Brazil; Pernambuco, with its canals and lagoons and bridges, a city that inspired a famous Brazilian poet to exclaim: “Hail, beautiful land! O Pernambuco, Venice transported to America, floating on the seas!” and terraced, crescent-shaped São Salvador, enthroned on the hills beside its magnificent bay—all these are so interesting that they richly repay a visit. All are older than the oldest English settlement in the northern continent, yet, unlike Jamestown, there is not one of them that has not kept pace with the national progress. The huge breast of land on which these cities are located, that reaches out in a direct line toward the western extremity of Africa and lies in the track of all ships bound by way of the Atlantic to and from the country south of the equator, is the great sugar, cotton, and tobacco region, and was the first in Brazil to contain a large European population. The French coveted and poached on it and were the first to settle São Luiz in Maranhão; the Dutch seized it in 1630, while Holland was at war with Spain and Portugal and her possessions had fallen under Spanish suzerainty, and held it for twenty-five years in spite of all the Portuguese and Spanish could do, only to be driven out at last by the persistence and courage of the colonists themselves.