The - magnificent regions of Matto Grosso promise in the 
near future, to be great centers of population and consequently 
a future focus of civilization by probable fusion of the different 
elements of immigration, which will certainly come together 
there in the flight of time, and the increased facilities in the way 
of transportation. Somewhere it has been said, that colonization 
without doubt will come from the South, from Paraguay and 
Argentina; but at the present time, with the completion of the 
Madeira-Marmoré Railway, undoubtedly colonization will also 
come from the North, communication being facilitated by the 
Amazon River, the Madeira being one of its tributaries, on the 
right bank of which is situated Porto Velho, the initial point of the 
Madeira-Marmoré Railway. These effects are already commenc- 
ing to produce results as may be seen from founding of a new 
municipality and district of Matto Grosso, called the municipality 
of St.. Antonio of the River Madeira, reached by the above- 
mentioned railway and to which region we will devote a special 
chapter later on. 
Already one sees the farthest northern side of Matto Grosso 
filling with people, while the southern side really contains the 
greater number of inhabitants. 
Matto Grosso is one of the regions of least roughness on the 
continent of South America. There are no elevations of the 
land which constitute real mountains. 
_The elevated lands have their points of culmination in the 
western bases. of the Mantiqueira, the Aymores, and the Espin- 
haco, and continue, gradually lowering from this side to the 
West of Goyaz, and on the other side are the elevated lands at 
the basé of the Andes, which incline to the East with its sup- 
ports. Elysée Reclus says that an intermediary plain, separating 
the two geographical districts, goes winding in the form of a 
valley, that in other ages certainly was a maritime strait separat- 
ing the two islands—Western Brazil and the Andes. 
To-day rivers run in the depression where formerly there 
was a sea and the plain is actually full of alluvial soil. The true 
center of South America is between the two cities of Cuyaba and 
Corumba. 
To those who do not know the region, the slopes of the hills 
are mistaken for mountains and geographical maps show a chain 
of mountains more or less continuous, between the basins of the 
Tapajoz and the Madeira, between the head waters of the same 
Tapajéz and Paraguay and finally between the Tapajéz and the 
Araguaya. Nevertheless this semi-circular plain exists only in 
fragments, because the elevations which are found in the plains 
of the upper Paraguay and its tributaries are only a high, level 
ground of horizontal sections or slight elevations and worn away 
by the rivers which flow into the great Amazon, 
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