Sugar-cane and tobacco could be profitably grown in the State. The small quantity of tobacco grown there was of excellent quality.
The Main Square of Goyaz City,
Showing Prison and Public Library.
Some of the Baggage and Scientific Instruments used by the Author on his Expedition.
The Government of Goyaz Province consisted of three Powers: the Executive, represented by the President, elected for three years by universal suffrage; the Legislature—a Chamber of Deputies equally elected for three years by suffrage; and a Judicial power constituted by the High Court of Justice, Juges de droit—law judges—and District Judges. To be elected President of Goyaz State all that was necessary was to be a Brazilian citizen, over thirty years of age, and able to read and write. The same applied to the election of Deputies—for whom a residence of only two years in the State was sufficient.
The capital of Goyaz—situated on the Rio Vermelho, a tributary of the great Araguaya River—had, according to the census of 1900, a population of some 13,475 people, but I rather doubt whether it possessed as many as 8 to 10,000 souls when I visited it. One could notice indications that Goyaz had been in days gone by a flourishing place. There were a number of fine churches, and a large cathedral in course of construction—but since abandoned. Some of the buildings, too—the finest was the prison—must have been quite handsome, but were now in a dilapidated condition. It was really heart-breaking to see such a magnificent country go to rack and ruin—a State naturally the richest perhaps in Brazil, yet rendered the poorest, deeply steeped in debt, and with the heavy weight of absurdly contracted loans from which it had no hope whatever of recovering under present conditions. They had in the province the most beautiful land in Brazil, but it was a land of the dead. People, industries, trade, commerce, everything was dead. Formerly, in the time of the Emperor and of that great patriot General Couto de Magalhães, Goyaz city could be reached—within a few kilometres—by steam on the beautiful river Araguaya, which formed the western boundary of the province, an ideal waterway navigable for 1,200 kil.—in Goyaz province alone. In the time of the Emperor, when Brazil was a wild country, steam navigation actually existed up the Araguaya River from Conceição as far as Leopoldina (the port for Goyaz city). The river was free from obstacles of any kind, even in the rainy season. There were then three beautiful English-built launches on that service. A fine repairing shop had been erected at Leopoldina.
