ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
Nothing interested him except his family, and life was 
not worth living. He believed in nothing. He was an 
atheist because he had not been as successful as he wished 
in the world, and attributed the fault to God. He cared 
little about the future of his country. If his country and 
all his countrymen went to a warmer place than heaven, 
he would be glad to see them go that way! As for going 
exploring, mapping unknown regions, studying the coun¬ 
try and the people, building roads, railways, and tele¬ 
graphs, it little mattered to him, but it seemed all 
nonsense. 
“ Instead of coming to these wild, deadly regions, why 
do you not go and spend your money enjoying yourself 
in Paris or Vienna?” was his advice to me. 
“ Perhaps I need a change occasionally, and I enjoy 
things all the more by contrast when I return to 
Europe.” 
The Presidente was evidently not in good health and 
spirits. He was a Senator of the Republic, and a man 
formerly of great ambitions, which were more or less 
shattered when he was elected Governor of Goyaz 
Province, with its population of corpses, and at a salary 
of £40 a month — very little more than I paid my head 
muleteer — so that little could be expected from the 
Governor of such a province. 
It was thus that the State of Goyaz, one of the 
naturally richest in Brazil, containing pasture lands 
unique for their beauty, forests with valuable woods, 
plenty of water and great navigable rivers draining it 
both north and south, of which it was sufficient to mention 
the magnificent Araguaya River, the Rio Tocantins and 
the Paranahyba (or Parana), was instead one of the 
poorest. In the very heart of Brazil, Goyaz was geo¬ 
graphically and politically the centre of the Republic. 
With an area of 747,311 square kilometres (288,532 
square miles), the province had an estimated population 
92 
