After six hours’ march we came to the crossing of the Rio Sacre at the beautiful waterfall appropriately called the Salto Bello.  This is the end of the automobile road.  Here there is a small Parecis village.  The men of the village work the ferry by which everything is taken across the deep and rapid river.  The ferry-boat is made of planking placed on three dugout canoes, and runs on a trolley.  Before crossing we enjoyed a good swim in the swift, clear, cool water.  The Indian village, where we camped, is placed on a jutting tongue of land round which the river sweeps just before it leaps from the over-hanging precipice.  The falls themselves are very lovely.  Just above them is a wooded island, but the river joins again before it races forward for the final plunge.  There is a sheer drop of forty or fifty yards, with a breadth two or three times as great; and the volume of water is large.  On the left or hither bank a cliff extends for several hundred yards below the falls.  Green vines have flung themselves down over its face, and they are met by other vines thrusting upward from the mass of vegetation at its foot, glistening in the perpetual mist from the cataract, and clothing even the rock surfaces in vivid green.  The river, after throwing itself over the rock wall, rushes off in long curves at the bottom of a thickly wooded ravine, the white water churning among the black boulders.  There is a perpetual rainbow at the foot of the falls.  The masses of green water that are hurling themselves over the brink dissolve into shifting, foaming columns of snowy lace.

On the edge of the cliff below the falls Colonel Rondon had placed benches, giving a curious touch of rather conventional tourist-civilization to this cataract far out in the lonely wilderness.  It is well worth visiting for its beauty.  It is also of extreme interest because of the promise it holds for the future.  Lieutenant Lyra informed me that they had calculated that this fall would furnish thirty-six thousand horse-power.  Eight miles off we were to see another fall of much greater height and power.  There are many rivers in this region which would furnish almost unlimited motive force to populous manufacturing communities.  The country round about is healthy.  It is an upland region of good climate; we were visiting it in the rainy season, the season when the nights are far less cool than in the dry season, and yet we found it delightful.  There is much fertile soil in the neighborhood of the streams, and the teeming lowlands of the Amazon and the Paraguay could readily—­and with immense advantage to both sides—­be made tributary to an industrial civilization seated on these highlands.  A telegraph-line has been built to and across them.  A rail-road should follow.  Such a line could be easily built, for there are no serious natural obstacles.  In advance of its construction a trolley-line could be run from Cuyaba to the falls, using the power furnished by the latter.  Once this is done the land will offer extraordinary opportunities to settlers of the right kind:  to home-makers and to enterprising business men of foresight, coolness, and sagacity who are willing to work with the settlers, the immigrants, the home-makers, for an advantage which shall be mutual.