INTRODUCTION. 
17 
(lie piano down to the palito (tootli-pick), is still imported from Enrojie 
and IS^’orth America, and, in spite of the long voyage and the enormous 
custom-house duties, is cheaper than if it were manufactured on the 
sjiot. 
The greater the distance from the sea, the greater, of course, arc the 
difficulties of conveyance. The want of good, easy ways of communi- 
cation has been one of the chief drawbacks not only to llrasdl, hut to all 
the South American States. Nowhere iu the whole Continent, a hundred 
miles from the coast, is there a regular carriage-road to he found ; and 
the mule, or, at best, the creaking ox-cart, with its enormous wooden 
wheels fixed oii the axletrccs, are the indispensable vehicles. It is true 
that conveyance on mules’ backs is the only one possible on paths which, 
in the rainy season, are knee-deep, and sometimes breast-deep, with mud, 
Avhich show ascents of twenty or thirty feet in a hundred, and which 
sometimes are obstructed by huge masses of loose rocks and stone's ; and 
very often it requires all the sagacitj'’ of the tropeu-o (mule-driver), and 
all the tough perseverance and sure-footcdness of his mules, to liring 
themselves and their loads Avhole and sound to their soA'eral destinations. 
In consequence of these difficulties, and of the e.xeeeding slowness of 
ynogress (scarcely ten or twelve miles a day), this mode of transport is so 
dear that even valuable products, like coffee, do not pay the cost of 
conveyance to a seaport, if the distance exceeds throe hundred miles; 
and as the freight, moreover, necessarily packed in small colli, and 
loaded and unloaded so often, is cxpoised to all sorts of risks, it is clear 
that the central parts of the continent are in a sort of continual blockade, 
that allows neither agricTiIturc nor trade to prosper. 
In Brazil considerable oxealions have been made, within the last 
eighteen years, to remedy this state of things ; and these efforts are to 
be rated the more highly, seeing that the cost of fresh means of com- 
munication is Amry great — about three times more than iu Cfennany — ami 
immediate financial advantages can scarcely be expected from any such 
enterprises. But as they are indispensable for jArogross, and as the gain 
from an ethno-coonomical point of A'iew cannot be denied, it certainly 
devolves on the Government to build roads and railways, to intersect rivers 
Avith canals, and to establish lines of steamers, be the pecuniary sacrifices 
neAnr so great. 
Since the opening, in 1854, of the first Brfwilian railAvay (the Little 
Maiiii Eailroad) that loads from Eio de Janeiro to the foot of the Sen-a, a 
c 
