CHAPTER III 
On the Mogyana Railway 
I ARRIVED at Riberao Preto at 3.45 p.m. on March 
twenty-ninth. Riberao Preto — 421 kilometres 
north-northwest of Sao Paulo and 500 kilometres 
from Santos — is without doubt the most important 
commercial centre in the northern part of the State of Sao 
Paulo, and is a handsome, active city, neat and clean¬ 
looking, with an Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese popu¬ 
lation of some 25,000 souls. Its elevation above the sea 
level is 1,950 feet. The people of Riberao Preto subsist 
chiefly on the coffee industry. There are one or two 
theatres in the city, the principal being a provincial one. 
There are several hotels of various degrees of cleanliness 
and several industrial establishments. Unlike other cities 
of the interior, Riberao Preto boasts of a good supply of 
agua potavel (drinking water), and the town is lighted by 
electric light. 
The value of land in the vicinity of Riberao Preto 
varies from 300 milreis to 1,500 milreis for the alqueire , 
a price far superior to that of other localities on the same 
line, where cultivated land can be purchased at 300 milreis 
an alqueire and pasture land at 100 milreis. An alqueire 
is reckoned at 10,000 square boa$as, a boa<^a being about 
6% feet, or a little over two metres. 
At Riberao Preto I was to leave the Dumont Railway. 
Arrangements had been made for me to meet at that 
station a special Administration car, which was to be 
attached to the ordinary express train on the Mogyana 
Railway. 
34 
