from ´Through the Brazilian Wilderness`

In 1913 Theodore Roosevelt decided to spend his post-presidential years exploring Brazil, largely to escape US politics... he wrote some interesting memoirs...
quote of the day:
“The first settlers came to Brazil a century before the first settlers came to the United States and Canada. For three hundred years progress was very slow – Portuguese colonial government at that time was almost as bad as Spanish. For the last half-century and over there has been a steady increase in the rapidity of the rate of development; and this increase bids fair to be constantly more rapid in the future.
The Paulistas, hunting for lands, slaves, and mines, were the first native Brazilians who, a hundred years ago, played a great part in opening to settlement vast stretches of wilderness. The rubber hunters have played a similar part during the last few decades. Rubber dazzled them, as gold and diamonds have dazzled other men and driven them forth to wander through the wide waste spaces of the world. Searching for rubber they made highways of rivers the very existence of which was unknown to the governmental authorities, or to any map-makers. Whether they succeeded or failed, they everywhere left behind them settlers, who toiled, married, and brought up children. Settlement began; the conquest of the wilderness entered its first stage…”
Theodore Roosevelt from ´Through the Brazilian Wilderness`
1914