THE TOCANTINS RIVER 
Concepcao as far as Leopoldina (the port for Goyaz City). 
The river was free from obstacles of any kind, even in the 
dry season. There were then three beautiful English- 
built launches on that service. A fine repairing shop had 
been erected at Leopoldina. 
But in these days of civilization, order, and progress, 
the steamers have been purposely run aground and left 
to rot. There was actually a tree growing through the 
hull of one of those launches when I last heard of them; 
the machine shop was robbed of all its tools, and the 
machinery destroyed and abandoned. The Presidente 
told me that the Provincial Government had eventually 
bought the wrecks of the launches and the machine shops 
for <£20; and as it cost too much to leave a man in charge, 
everything had since been abandoned. 
When I visited Goyaz, there was no sign and no hope 
of re-establishing steam navigation on that marvellous 
waterway. 
The Tocantins River, which intersected the province 
from Goyaz to its most northern point, was also another 
serviceable stream; but no one used it, except, perhaps, 
some rare private canoe taking up goods to settlements 
on its banks. 
The navigation of the Tocantins, when I was in 
Goyaz, extended merely to the Port of Alcoba^a, 350 
kilometres from Para, from which point rapids existed 
which made steam navigation impossible as far as Praia 
da Rainha. The distance of 180 kilometres between those 
two places was eventually to be traversed by a railway, a 
concession for which had been granted to the Estrada de 
Ferro Norte do Brazil. In the High Tocantins I believe 
two steam launches were temporarily running as far as 
Porto Nacional or perhaps a little higher. 
Undoubtedly the State of Goyaz will some day, 
notwithstanding its apathetic inhabitants, see great 
changes for the better. The new epoch will begin when 
vol. i.— 7 97 
