Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1914-09-13

roofs of red tiles and window-shutters OF
latticed woodwork, come down from colo
NAL days and tracing back through Chris
tan and Moorish Portugal to remote Arab
ancestry. Pretty faces, some dark some
light looked out from these windows; their
mothers mothers, for generations past,
must thus have looked out of similar win
dows in the vanished colonial days.
But now even here in Caceres the spirit
of the new Brazil is moving fine new gov
ernment school has been started. and we
met its principal, an earnest man doing ex-
cellent work, one of the many teachers who.
during the last few years, have been brought
to Matte Crosse from Sac Paulo, center
OF the new educational movement which
will do so much for Brazil
Father Zahm went to spend the night
with some French Franciscan friars, capital
fellows. | spent the night at the comfort
able house of Lieutenant Lyra hot-weath-
er house with thick walls, big doors, and an
open patio bordered by gallery.
Lieutenant Lyra was to accompany us:
he was an old companion of Colonel Ron
don's explorations We visited one or two
of the stores to make some final purchases,
and in the evening stroled through the
dusky streets and under the trees of the
plaza, the women and girls sat in groups in
the doorways or at the windows, and here
and there a stringed instrument tinklcd in
the darkness.
Familiar Ground for Colonel Rondon
From Caceres onward we were entering
the scene of Colonel Rondon's explorations
T. IA -
thther Immediately after leaving the mill
tary school in Rio Janero, in which he
studied in company with the present foreign
minister of Brazil, Lauro Muller For some
Is years he was occupied in exploring and
i'll opening telegraph lines through the east
ern or north-middle part of the great forest
state, the wilderness state of the "matto
grosso"-the great Wilderness" or, as
Australians would call it, "the bush"
Then, in 1907, he began to penetrate the
unknown region lying to the north and west.
He was the head of the exploring expedi-
tons sent out by the Brazilian government
to traverse for the first time the courses OF
the rivers which from the same divide run
into the upper portions of the Tapaos and
the Madeira, two Of the mighty affluents OF
the Amazon, and to build telegraph lines
across to the Madeira, where line of Bra
lillian settlements, connected by steamboat
lines and railroad again occurs.
Three times he penetrated into this abso-
lutely unknown, lndian-haunted wilderness,
being absent for year or two at time. and
suffering every imaginable hardship, before
he made his way through to the Madeira
4 Il. IL
The officers and men of the Brazilian army,
and the civilian scientists. who followed
him, shared the toll and the credit of the
task.
Some of the men died OF beriberi some
were killed or wounded by the Indians he
himself almost died of fever; again and
again his whole party was reduced almost to
the last extremity by starvation, disease,
hardship and the overexhaustion due to
wearing fatigues
In dealing with the wild. naked savages,
he showed an extraordinary combination Of
fearlessness, warness, good Judgment and
resolute patience and kindness The result
was that they ultimately became his firm
friends, guarded the telegraph lines, and
helped the few soldiers left at the isolated,
widely separated little posts. He and his
assistants explored and mapped for the first
time the Juruena and the Gy-Parana two
important affluents of the Tapajos and the
Madeira, respectively.
The Tapajos and the Madeira, like the
Orinoco and Rio Negro have been high
ways of travel for couple of centuries.
The Madeira Gas later the Tapajos) was the
chief means of ingress, century and a half
ago, to the little Portuguese settlements OF
th;c far interior region of Rrazil one of