The learn, learn, learn of a civilized couple who decide to tackle the far horizons and pioneer in central Brazil. To win her husband, seagoing Captain Howen, the author agrees to live with the natives on the coast until he comes to get her and there begins her education in finding a local way. Then the chance to earn a homestead by hacking a way through the wilderness and the paid killers and migrants that work for them, the necessary etiquette of frontier customs, the unending emergencies and problems that left her too lacking in courage to complain, and the medical ministrations that landed them in a murder charge. And the unbecoming humiliation when she found out that her companions of the road judged her to be incapable and incompetent, her unwelcome suggestions that she and Bowen acquire or produce from the bounty of the land (practical but unpalatable), and their change of plans as Sayao, the empire builder hires them to switch their course for the opening up of lands for the hitherto floating tenant-farmer population. How they were dispossessed and how their rewards led them to a coffee plantation and a contented rich sense of accomplishment tailor this for those who feel a ready-made existence irksome. Buoyant.