any luxury, or of any comfort save of the most
elementary kind. The pioneer who is always longing for the comfort and
luxury of civilization, and especially of great cities, is no real
pioneer at all. These settlers whom we met were contented to live in
the wilderness. They had found the climate healthy and the soil
fruitful; a visit to a city was a very rare event, nor was there any
overwhelming desire for it.

In short, these men, and those like them everywhere on the frontier
between civilization and savagery in Brazil, are now playing the part
played by our backwoodsmen when over a century and a quarter ago they
began the conquest of the great basin of the Mississippi; the part
played by the Boer farmers for over a century in South Africa, and by
the Canadians when less than half a century ago they began to take
possession of their Northwest. Every now and then some one says that
the "last frontier" is now to be found in Canada or Africa, and that
it has almost vanished. On a far larger scale this frontier is to be
found in Brazil--a country as big as Europe or the United States--and
decades will pass before it vanishes. The first settlers came to
Brazil a century before the first settlers came to the United States
and Canada. For three hundred years progress was very slow--Portuguese
colonial government at that time was almost as bad as Spanish. For the
last half-century and over there has been a steady increase in the
rapidity of the rate of development; and this increase bids fair to be
constantly more rapid in the future.

The Paolistas, hunting for lands, slaves, and mines, were the first
native Brazilians who, a hundred years ago, played a great part in
opening to settlement vast stretches of wilderness. The rubber hunters
have played a similar part during the last few decades. Rubber dazzled
them, as gold and diamonds have dazzled other men and driven them
forth to wander through the wide waste spaces of the world. Searching
for rubber they made highways of rivers the very existence of which
was unknown to the governmental authorities, or to any map-makers.
Whether they succeeded or failed, they everywhere left behind them
settlers, who toiled, married, and brought up children. Settlement
began; the conquest of the wilderness entered on its first stage.

On the 20th we stopped at the first store, where we bought, of course
at a high price, sugar and tobacco for the camaradas. In this land of
plenty the cam