108 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



and stretches of ranchland in which Germans, 

 Itahans, and CathoUc, Orthodox, or Uniate 

 Slavs, were important, and sometimes pre- 

 ponderant, elements of the population. There 

 were German Lutheran churches and also con- 

 gregations of native Protestants started by 

 American missionaries; for Brazil, like Ar- 

 gentina and the United States, enjoys genuine 

 religious liberty. 



This rich and beautiful country of southern 

 Brazil is part of the last great stretch of coun- 

 try — south-temperate America — which remains 

 in either temperate zone open to white settle- 

 ment on a large scale; the last great stretch 

 of scantily peopled land with a good climate 

 and fertile soil to which white immigration can 

 go in mass. 



Of part of tropical Brazil I have written 

 elsewhere, and I allude to it elsewhere in this 

 book. Here I am speaking not of the tropical 

 but of the temperate country. 



Portions of temperate Brazil are open prairie, 

 portions are forest. The climate is never very 

 hot, nor is there ever severe cold. The colo- 

 nists with whom I conversed had not found the 

 insects specially troublesome; not much more, 

 and in places rather less, troublesome than in 

 Louisiana and Texas. There was no more sick- 



