124 HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 



open patio bordered by a gallery. Lieutenant Lyra 

 was to accompany us ; he was an old companion of 

 Colonel Rondon's explorations. We visited one or two 

 of the stores to make some final purchases, and in the 

 evening stroUed through the dusky streets and under 

 the trees of the plaza ; the women and girls sat in 

 groups in the doorways or at the windows, and here 

 and there a stringed instrument tinkled in the darkness. 

 From Caceres onward we were entering the scene of 

 Colonel Rondon's explorations. For some eighteen 

 years he was occupied in exploilng and in opening tele- 

 graph-lines through the eastern or north-middle part of 

 the great forest state — the wilderness state of the Matto 

 Grosso, the Great Wilderness, or, as Australians 

 would call it, the Bush. Then, in 1907, he began to 

 penetrate the unknown region lying to the north and 

 west. He was the head of the exploring expeditions 

 sent out by the Brazilian Government to traverse for 

 the first time this unknown land ; to map for the first 

 time the courses of the rivers, which from the same 

 divide run into the upper portions of the Tapajos and 

 the Madeira, two of the mighty affluents of the Amazon, 

 and to buUd telegraph-lines across to the Madeu-a, where 

 a line of BraziUan settlements, connected by steamboat 

 lines and a railroad, again occurs. Three times he pene- 

 trated into this absolutely unknown, Indian-haunted 

 wilderness, being absent for a year or two at a time, 

 and suffering every imaginable hardship, before he made 

 his way through to the Madeira and completed the 

 telegraph-line across. The officers and men of the 

 BraziUan Army and the civUian scientists who followed 

 him shared the toil and the credit of the task. Some of 

 his men died of beriberi ; some were kiUed or wounded 

 by the Indians ; he himself almost died of fever ; again 



