324 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



but for some few miles, at some time or other, he breaks 

 new ground; and his house is built where no house has 

 ever stood before. Such a man, the real pioneer, must 

 have no strong desire for social life and no need, prob- 

 ably no knowledge, of any luxury, or of any comfort save 

 of the most elementary kind. The pioneer who is always 

 longing for the comfort and luxury of civilization, and es- 

 pecially of great cities, is no real pioneer at all. These 

 settlers whom we met were contented to live in the wilder- 

 ness. They had found the climate healthy and the soil 

 fruitful; a visit to a city was a very rare event, nor was 

 there any overwhelming desire for it. 



In short, these men, and those like them everywhere 

 on the frontier between civilization and savagery in Brazil, 

 are now playing the part played by our backwoodsmen 

 when over a century and a quarter ago they began the 

 conquest of the great basin of the Mississippi; the part 

 played by the Boer farmers for over a century in South 

 Africa, and by the Canadians when less than half a century 

 ago they began to take possession of their Northwest. 

 Every now and then some one says that the ''last frontier" 

 is now to be found in Canada or Africa, and that it has 

 almost vanished. On a far larger scale this frontier is to 

 be found in Brazil — a country as big as Europe or the 

 United States — and decades will pass before it vanishes. 

 The first settlers came to Brazil a century before the first 

 settlers came to the United States and Canada. For three 

 hundred years progress was very slow — Portuguese co- 

 lonial government at that time was almost as bad as Span- 

 ish. For the last half-century and over there has been a 

 steady increase in the rapidity of the rate of development; 



