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 L40 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--it contained 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 geographically and politically the centre of the Republic. With
an area of 747,311 sq. kil. (288,532 sq. miles), the Province had an
estimated population of some 280,000 souls, or less than one to every
square mile.

The region forming the present State of Goyaz was first explored in 1647
by Manoel Correa, a native of Sao Paulo, and in 1682 by another Paulista,
Bartholomeu Bueno de Silva, who both were prospecting for gold. The
latter was successful in locating gold mines and in making friends with
the local Indians of the Goyaz tribe, from whom the Province then took
its name. Some forty-three years later de Silva returned to Sao Paulo
with 918 ounces of gold. The news of these goldfields quickly attracted a
great number of adventurers to Goyaz. The country then saw its most
prosperous days, especially in and near Villa Boa, the present city of
Goyaz, where gold was said to have been plentiful in those days.

The enterprising Bartholomeu Bueno de Silva returned to Goyaz in 1731 as
a Capitao Mor, or Grand Captain, with the right to dispose of land. In
1822 Goyaz was recognized as a Province of the Empire, and subsequently
in 1869 it became one of the States of the Union, with autonomy as
regards local affairs under its own Constitution approved by the Federal
Constituent Assembly in 1891.

Cattle, horse and mule breeding