The lines of southern Brazil could scarcely be made a real railroad in the American sense without complete rebuilding, for they constantly squirm and twist and wind their way over the lightly rolling country, seeking always the higher levels and never by any chance running for a yard straight forward. One of the trainmen asserted that if a cow got in the way of the surveyors who laid out the line, they moved the transit rather than exert themselves to go and drive her away. Less facetious officials explained that the engines are so weak that anything steeper than a one per cent. grade was avoided in the building, and that this was done on contract by Brazilians and by the mile. From the car-windows we had frequent views of the engineer and the fireman in their cab; we darted from side to side so often that, it would have been easy to imagine the little engine in terror of the many wide-horned cattle scattered over the rolling landscape. The brakes were frequently called upon to keep us from running over the time-table; stations or crossings were so rare that the whistle was uncomfortably startling; at the rare places where we did officially stop an extended argument usually arose between the station master in his red cap and the trainmen in their blue ones as to when it would be fitting and advisable to jolt onward.
Beyond the large town of Passo Fundo appeared, first singly, then in roomy clusters, the splendid _pinheiro araucarai_, the slender yet sturdy Brazilian pine-tree, erect and entirely free from branches to the very top, from which these suddenly spread thickly out at right angles to the trunk. The parasol-pine makes excellent lumber, being lighter yet stronger than our northern pine, but above all it beautifies the landscape. The rare small clumps of it in the hollows became more and more numerous until, at Erechim, we found ourselves in an entire forest of parasol-pines, with an atmosphere strikingly like our northern lumber woods. The weather had grown so warm that in the middle of the day it was uncomfortable to sit in the unshaded car window, and creepers and lianas were beginning to appear in the semi-tropical forests, silent but for the song of the tree-toad.