LAST DAYS IN BRAZIL. 219 



a time the road, which is the Antigo Caminho de Minas 

 (old road to Minas), died out completely, and I had to 

 cross a broad burn, the Rio Itamaraty, full of lichen- 

 covered boulders - f and at length, by following this river, 

 in an hour and three-quarters after leaving the hotel, I 

 reached the great cotton factory, named Petropolitana, 

 which is situated in a wild bare spot in a broad valley at 

 the junction of the Itamaraty with the Piabanha, below 

 the waterfall of the latter, and surrounded by mountains 

 almost devoid of any vegetation except burnt-up grass. I 

 visited the manager, but being unprovided with an intro- 

 duction was not allowed to inspect the works ; however, I 

 saw something, as I had to pass through several shops to 

 find the manager, and I also looked through an open door 

 into a large room where were two or three hundred men and 

 women attending to spinning machines. All the machinery 

 is worked by the power derived from the Cascatinho, where 

 the Piabanha which after leaving Petropolis descends by 

 a very easy gradient suddenly dashes over some six 

 hundred feet of rock, just above the cotton mill. 



Leaving the mill, I ascended by a private road towards 

 the main coach-road, and then examined the contrivance 

 for making use of the river. The waterfall was represented 

 being now the dry season by a thin thread trickling over 

 the smooth face of rock, the main body of water being led 

 away for about two or three hundred yards, and then 

 sent down an almost vertical pipe, some two feet six inches 

 diameter, to the turbines of the mill. I then gained the 

 coach-road from Petropolis to Entre Rios, and a splendid 

 road it is broad, well made, well kept, with large heaps of 

 broken granite at the roadside every few yards, after the 

 most approved English Macadam system. Just after 

 reaching the road I came to a stone marked " 9 K.," and 



