What I Saw
on his father. This way of seeing can be criticized or disapproved, but in my case, it would be very fair, because I owe everything to my Father: advice, examples of work, audacity, economy, sobriety and the means with which I could realize my inventions.
I owe everything to him, since the examples.
Born in the city of Diamantina, Dr. Henrique Dumont graduated in Engineering at the Central School of Paris and, after working several years in the E. F. Central (it was in a little house located in João Aires valley that I was born) he dedicated himself to farming in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Seeing that there was nothing great he could do, he left with my mother and eight children, all children at the time, to Ribeirão Preto, which was three days away by horseback from the end of the Mogiana tracks.
He had previously explored the interior of the State of São Paulo and was amazed by the Ribeirão Preto woods.
⁂
In this essentially agricultural country, he was the prototype of the audacious farmer, and, with an energy as great as his confidence in the future, he cleared the backlands and cultivated the soil; there
— 45 —
