226 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



presents a solitary spectacle of decadence in the State o£ S. Paulo. It has been 

 ruined by the railways which have brought prosperity to so many other places. 

 Till recently it was the central market for cattle, and especially for mules for- 

 warded by the Rio Grande do Sul stock-breeders. As many as 200,000 animals 

 were often seen at its fairs, and the mules of Rio Grande are still distributed over 

 the States of Santa Catharina and Parana, and even enter that of S. Paulo through 

 the Faxina route. But on reaching the various stations they are at once for- 

 warded by rail direct to the plateaux and coastlands, so that the Sorocaba market 

 receives yearly less and less of this traffic. 



The iron industry of Ipanema, in the same district, has also suffered, though 

 from another cause. This place, which takes its name from an affluent of the Rio 

 Sorocaba, is famous for its ferruginous ores, yielding from 70 to 80 per cent, of 

 excellent metal. Nevertheless, the works established on the spot have not suc- 

 ceeded, despite government support. Everything costs more than it fetches, and 

 the ferruginous mount Aracoyaba (3,180 feet), commonly called o morro do ferro, 

 " Iron Mount," remains little utilised. 



At present (1894) Botucatii is the last important place in the cultivated region. 

 Be^'ond the surrounding coffee plantations begin the vast unexplored solitudes 

 comprised between the lower Tieté and the Paranapanema. Since the seventeenth 

 century a great shifting of the aboriginal populations has taken place in this 

 region. Over 100,000 civilised Indians were grouped round the settlements of 

 8. Ignacio Mayor and other places on the Paranapanema and Parana rivers. But 

 the land was depopulated by the slave-mongers, and the work of colonisation, and 

 even to some extent of geographical exploration, has to be begun again. Some 

 progress, however, has already been made, and in 1890 the annual production of 

 cattle was estimated at 100,000. A beginning had also been made with sugar, 

 coffee, cotton and tobacco growing. 



The southern part of the State, still unconnected with the capital by carriage 

 roads or railways, constitutes, with the conterminous districts of Parana, a perfectly 

 distinct geographical region. It is but thinly settled, and its chief towns are 

 mere villages, such as Apiahy, now forsaken by the gold-hunters : Xiririca, with 

 unworked quarries of lovely white marble ; Iguaj)é and Ca)ianea, two small 

 riverside ports, the former near the mouth of the Ribeirao, communicating by 

 a navigable canal with the so-called 3Iar Pcqxieno, "Little Sea," which 

 extends for over 60 miles along the banks. Cananea, occupying an island in 

 this flooded depress^ion, is accessible to large river craft at high water. This 

 port marks the spot where Christovâo Jacques and Amerigo Vespucci landed 

 in 1503, and from the same place set out the first bandcira of eighty adventurers 

 in search of gold, not one of whom ever returned. 



Towns of the State of Parana. 



Cnritiba, capital of the State of Parana, stands, like S. Paulo, on a plateau 

 bounded eastwards by the Serra do Mur, and, like it, is connected by rail with an 



