Availing of an opportunity to accompany a friend to this province, we left Rio on Tuesday, the 18th of February, on board the steamer Ptolemy, with a remarkably smooth sea, and a light, but cool breeze. We reached Santos early the following morning. The steamer was at once moored alongside an iron wharf, facing the Custom House, and Mr. Miller, one of the railway officials, came on board with the unpleasant information that the railway was stopped, owing to the heavy rains, which appeared to have prevailed here as at Rio. The town did not look very inviting under the influence of a hot sun, but Mr. Miller kindly offered us rooms at the station, where he himself lived, and made us very comfortable. There was every prospect of our being obliged to walk up to the top of the Serra, but fortunately, on the 20th, a telegram came to announce that the line would be opened to San Paulo the next morning, when we started with a small train, arrived at 2.33, and drove to the Hotel d'Italia, where rooms had been engaged for us.

The province of San Paulo has played a distinguished part in the history of Brazil, and has latterly attracted much notice from its production of cotton, in addition to the large quantity of coffee grown and shipped from the port of Santos, both of which articles are expected to be greatly increased by the railway facilities. There can be no doubt that the province offers splendid scope for emigration, if properly applied, and this important subject will be specially treated of after I have collected together the requisite materials. Certainly the size, extent, and evident prosperity of the city of San Paulo surprised me, no less than its superiority in most of the comforts and luxuries to places more favourably situated by their proximity to the sea; but the large number of old churches, convents, colleges, and public institutions date its origin from the time of the Jesuits, who must have been very industrious and wealthy to have found the means for building such huge places, with the object of perpetuating their order, and for the spread of the Roman Catholic religion. I much regretted that the stoppage of the railway, and very unfavourable weather—constant thunder storms, with deluges of rain—prevented me travelling some distance into the interior, where the coffee and cotton plantations lie, but the accounts received from others, who possess a thorough knowledge of the localities, enable me to speak most highly of its resources.

His Excellency, Saldanha Marinho, the President of San Paulo, and who by his affability and business habits has won the esteem and affection of the people, received me kindly during my stay here. He is a determined supporter of every practical measure having for its object the improvement of the city and of the province. Respecting the great work of the railway, on which so much of the future welfare of the province depends, I will endeavour to give a tolerably ample description; but to begin with, it may not be out of place to quote as follows from the work of Mr. Scully, entitled “Brazil and its Chief Provinces”:—

“Passing over the Mugy river you arrive quickly at the foot of the gorge formed by the two out-jutting spurs of the buttress-like mountain, and the black defiant ravine is suggestive of anything but a railway course. Here the line climbs boldly up the side of the Mugy spur, at a usual ascent of one in ten, crossing mountain torrents, leaping gloomy chasms, cutting through solid rocks, holding hard on to every foot gained, until it attains a resting-place upon the table land, 2,600 feet high, after five miles of gigantic excavations, removing 1,100,000 cubic yards of granite rock and earth.

“Here we must give a slight idea of how this daring plan is utilised, which was at one time laughed at as an engineering impossibility, and which even yet stands pre-eminent among similar works.

“This entire and almost straight ascent of upwards of five miles is divided into four “lifts” of about a mile and a quarter each, having a level platform of some 400 feet in length between them. On these lifts, as in general on all the line, the track is single, except at the upper half, where it is doubled to admit of the ascending and descending trains passing each other. At the upper end of each platform is placed a powerful stationary engine of 200 horse-power, whose two cylinders are 26 inches diameter and 5 feet stroke, calculated to haul up 50 tons at the rate of ten miles an hour, which are supplied by five Cornish boilers, three of which suffice for the duty.

“A steel wire rope, tested to a strength far exceeding the requirements which will ever be made upon it, passes over a friction-wheel on each side of the fly-wheel drum upon which it is wrapped round, and, one end being attached to an ascending and the other to a descending train, it is intended to make the “lift” partially self-acting, as it now wholly is at one of the inclines which is not supplied with its stationary engine, the weight of the descending train drawing up the ascending one. Powerful brakes that will stop a train instantly are supplied to guard against a breaking down of any part of the machinery, or a rupture of the rope. From this short description our readers can form an idea of the mechanical contrivances for effecting the ascent.

“Throughout these wonderful inclines the most majestic and wild scenery is observed along the slightly winding way. On the third lift occurs a ravine still more gloomy than the rest, which is called the Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell); that, having a width of 900 feet, is crossed by an iron viaduct, which lies on rows of iron columns resting on stone piers 200 feet below in the centre of the line.”

I have great pleasure in endorsing all Mr. Scully says as to the excellent qualities of the railway officials, and can also affirm that to Mr. Aubertin and Mr. Hutchings is due the extraordinary development that has been effected in the production of cotton.