8 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



canoes built on the spot. The Paraguay is regularly navi- 

 gated as high as boats can go. The starting-point for our 

 trip was to be Asuncion, in the state of Paraguay. 



My exact plan of operations was necessarily a little 

 indefinite, but on reaching Rio de Janeiro the minister of 

 foreign affairs, Mr. Lauro Miiller, who had been kind 

 enough to take great personal interest in my trip, informed 

 me that he had arranged that on the headwaters of the 

 Paraguay, at the town of Caceres, I would be met by a 

 Brazilian Army colonel, himself chiefly Indian by blood. 

 Colonel Rondon. Colonel Rondon has been for a quarter 

 of a century the foremost explorer of the Brazilian hin- 

 terland. He was at the time in Manaos, but his lieuten- 

 ants were in Caceres and had been notified that we were 

 coming. 



More important still, Mr. Lauro Miiller — ^who is not 

 only an efficient public servant but a man of wide culti- 

 vation, with a quality about him that reminded me of 

 John Hay — offered to help me make my trip of much more 

 consequence than I had originally intended. He has taken 

 a keen interest in the exploration and development of the 

 interior of Brazil, and he believed that my expedition 

 could be used as a means toward spreading abroad a more 

 general knowledge of the country. He told me that he 

 would co-operate with me in every way if I cared to un- 

 dertake the leadership of a serious expedition into the un- 

 explored portion of western Matto Grosso, and to attempt 

 the descent of a river which flowed nobody knew whither, 

 but which the best-informed men believed would prove to 

 be a very big river, utterly unknown to geographers. I 

 eagerly and gladly accepted, for I felt that with such help 



