PHYSICAL FEATURES OF MATIO GKOSSO. 251 



The alternative fluvial route by the Amazons, Madeira, and Guapore is even 

 less used than it was in the eighteenth century, after the exploration conducted 

 in 1742 by Manoel de Lima. The few travellers who venture to descend the 

 Guapore in boats have to surmount long portages before reaching Santo Antonio 

 at the head of the steam navigation on the Madeira. On the other hand the 

 direct route from Para, by the Amazons, the Tapajoz, and the Juruena, is too 

 tedious and difficult to be utilised by commerce. It is used only for the importa- 

 tion of the guarana bean {paiilliuia sorbilts), which is collected by the Mauhé 

 Indians on the banks of the Amazons, and also imported by the Madeira route. 

 When ground to a powder, and mixed with water, this bean makes a beverage 

 preferred by the people of Matto Grosso to all other drinks. 



Nevertheless Matto Grosso is being gradually drawn closer to the rest of 

 Brazil. A telegraph line has already been established between Rio and Cuyaba, 

 while the railway by S. Paulo has advanced beyond the Rio Grande, thus 

 covering over a third of the total distance between Cuyaba and the coast.* 



Extensions of the existing routes are being planned in all directions, and the 

 steam traffic of the navigable waterways is being developed, while the rivers 

 themselves are being connected by lateral highways across the intervening steppes 

 and forests. Thus the two rivers, Ivahy and Paranapanema, traversing the States 

 of Parana and S. Paulo, are to be continued beyond Parana by following the course 

 of the Ivinheima, and of the Bjilhante as far as the uplands in the neighbourhood 

 of Miranda, in South Matto Grosso. Such communications, however, are far from 

 sufficient to meet the requirements of a large stream of immigration, whenever 

 it sets in the direction of these magnificent regions about the Paraguayan and 

 Amazonian divides and slopes, regions which have every prospect of becoming a 

 great centre of population in the near future. 



The first movement of colonisation will most probably be made by the southern 

 route from the direction of Paraguay and Argentina. Of the present scanty 

 population of Matto Grosso, the great majority is concentrated on the southern 

 slopes. With the exception of a single town and its environs, the whole of the 

 territory draining north to the Amazons still remains unoccupied and uninhabited, 

 except by a few scattered Indian tribes. 



Physical Features. 



Matto Grosso is one of the least hilly regions of the continent, and although 

 the natives reckon their " serras " by the dozen, there are nowhere any heights 

 constituting real mountain ranges. All the East Brazilian uplands fall gradually 

 west of South Goyaz, and the space between these highlands and the Andean 

 foothills was at one time traversed by a marine strait, separating the two great 

 Alpine regions of East Brazil and the Cordilleras. Fluvial waters now flow in 

 this marine depression which has been largely filled by their alluvial deposits. 



* Distance in a straight line from Rio de Janeiro to Cuyaba, 880 miles ; by the Buenos Ayres route, 

 3,840 miles. 



