they are in France and indeed in Chile.  The colonel’s seven children have all been formally made members of the Positivist Church in Rio Janeiro.  Brazil possesses the same complete liberty in matters religious, spiritual, and intellectual as we, for our great good fortune, do in the United States, and my Brazilian companions included Catholics and equally sincere men who described themselves as “libres penseurs.”  Colonel Rondon has spent the last twenty-four years in exploring the western highlands of Brazil, pioneering the way for telegraph-lines and railroads.  During that time he has travelled some fourteen thousand miles, on territory most of which had not previously been traversed by civilized man, and has built three thousand miles of telegraph.  He has an exceptional knowledge of the Indian tribes and has always zealously endeavored to serve them and indeed to serve the cause of humanity wherever and whenever he was able.  Thanks mainly to his efforts, four of the wild tribes of the region he has explored have begun to tread the road of civilization.  They have taken the first steps toward becoming Christians.  It may seem strange that among the first-fruits of the efforts of a Positivist should be the conversion of those he seeks to benefit to Christianity.  But in South America Christianity is at least as much a status as a theology.  It represents the indispensable first step upward from savagery.  In the wilder and poorer districts men are divided into the two great classes of “Christians” and “Indians.”  When an Indian becomes a Christian he is accepted into and becomes wholly absorbed or partly assimilated by the crude and simple neighboring civilization, and then he moves up or down like any one else among his fellows.

Among Colonel Rondon’s companions were Captain Amilcar de Magalhaes, Lieutenant Joao Lyra, Lieutenant Joaquin de Mello Filho, and Doctor Euzebio de Oliveira, a geologist.

The steamers halted; Colonel Rondon and several of his officers, spick and span in their white uniforms, came aboard; and in the afternoon I visited him on his steamer to talk over our plans.  When these had been fully discussed and agreed on we took tea.  I happened to mention that one of our naturalists, Miller, had been bitten by a piranha, and the man-eating fish at once became the subject of conversation.  Curiously enough, one of the Brazilian taxidermists had also just been severely bitten by a piranha.  My new companions had story after story to tell of them.  Only three weeks previously a twelve-year-old boy who had gone in swimming near Corumba was attacked, and literally devoured alive by them.  Colonel Rondon during his exploring trips had met with more than one unpleasant experience in connection with them.  He had lost one of his toes by the bite of a piranha.  He was about to bathe and had chosen a shallow pool at the edge of the river, which he carefully inspected until he was satisfied that none of the man-eating