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Monna Brigida would have been compelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submissive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest Romola's remonstrance, and with the other reached out a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in an entreating tone "Take it, good man, and begone."
He commenced hostilities by the capture of the Marques de Olinda, a Brazilian steamer which conveniently found itself at the moment at Asuncion, on its way up the great river system to the Imperial territory of Matto Grosso. The crew and the passengers of the Marques de Olinda were taken ashore as prisoners.
Then he went to Rio, served for a year in the army as an enlisted man in the ranks, and succeeded finally in getting into the military school. After five years as pupil he served three years as professor of mathematics in this school; and then, as a lieutenant of engineers in the Brazilian army, he came back to his home in Matto Grosso and began his life-work of exploring the wilderness.
The two folios were in a box of native cedar. No gift more appropriate, none that I would in the future value more as a reminder of my stay in Matto Grosso, could have been given me. All that afternoon the rain continued.
He worked among and with the Indians, much as Mungo Park worked with the natives of West Africa, having none of the aids, instruments, and comforts with which even the hardiest of modern explorers are provided. He was one of the men who established the beginnings of the province of Matto Grosso.
Canoes sometimes descend from Villa Bella, in the interior province of Matto Grosso, but not so frequently as formerly, and I could hear of very few persons who had attempted of late years to ascend the river to that point.
Thus Lopez's invading army, when it swept through the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, met with practically no resistance worthy of the name, and, in the absence of defending troops, it might, undoubtedly, have taken possession of vast tracts of country, and have continued to hold these indefinitely. It was Lopez's bizarre and wild ambition which frustrated his own schemes.
In the late afternoon of the 5th we reached the quaint old-fashioned little town of Sao Luis de Caceres, on the outermost fringe of the settled region of the state of Matto Grosso, the last town we should see before reaching the villages of the Amazon. As we approached we passed half-clad black washerwomen on the river's edge.
Any Governor who did not bend without question to the will of the President was instantly deposed, and in this way the Governors of Matto Grosso, Ceará, and Amazones were deprived of their posts. Every official, in fact, who did not show himself disposed to serve the new autocrat with a blind obedience was deprived of whatever office he had held.
And to the end that everything might be in keeping, he caused beautiful pieces of iron-work to be made for all parts of the palace, as adornments for it, and the lanterns that are at the corners, which were all executed with supreme diligence by Niccolò Grosso, called Il Caparra, a smith of Florence.
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