For many years past it has been customary for an organization, known as the Madeira and Mamore Association, to hold an annual reunion at one of the leading hotels in Philadelphia.<br><br>The participants were persons who, in the year 1878, had gone to Brazil under the leadership of two firms of American contractors P.T. Collins and Mackie, Scott Co. for the purpose of constructing a railway around the falls and rapids of the upper Madeira River and establishing steamboat lines above and below the obstructions; so as to form, in connection with ocean steamships plying between New York and Brazilian seaports, one great system of international transportation, intended to produce a rapid development of all that vast and fertile territory drained by the Amazon and establish direct communication between the United States and interior Bolivia.<br><br>There was nothing visionary or chimerical about the project which had engaged the attention of members of the association.