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Brazil has to its credit. Brazil has been blessed beyond the 

 average of her Spanish-American sisters because she won her 

 way to republicanism by evolution rather than revolution. 

 They plunged into the extremely difficult experiment of 

 democratic, of popular, self-government, after enduring the 

 atrophy of every quality of self-control, self-reliance, and 

 initiative throughout three withering centuries of existence 

 under the worst and most foolish form of colonial govern- 

 ment, both from the civil and the religious standpoint, 

 that has ever existed. The marvel is not that some of 

 them failed, but that some of them have eventually suc- 

 ceeded in such striking fashion. Brazil, on the contrary, 

 when she achieved independence, first exercised it under 

 the form of an authoritative empire, then under the form 

 of a liberal empire. When the republic came, the people 

 were reasonably ripe for it. The great progress of Brazil — 

 and it has been an astonishing progress — has been made 

 under the republic. I could give innumerable examples 

 and illustrations of this. The change that has converted 

 Rio Janeiro from a picturesque pest-hole into a singularly 

 beautiful, healthy, clean, and efficient modern great city 

 is one of these. Another is the work of the Telegraphic 

 Commission. 



We put upon the map a river some fifteen hundred 

 kilometres in length, of which the upper course was not 

 merely utterly unknown to, but unguessed at by, anybody; 

 while the lower course, although known for years to a few 

 rubber-men, was utterly unknown to cartographers. It is 

 the chief affluent of the Madeira, which is itself the chief 

 affluent of the Amazon. 



The source of this river is between the 12th and 13 th 



