Nobrega's first act was one which has exercised the most beneficial influence over the social system of Brazil, namely, the establishment of a college on the then unreclaimed plains of Piratininga.
Owing to the general condition of poverty which prevailed after the French evacuation in the second decade of the 19th century, attention was turned to the means of industry offered by the unreclaimed heath-lands in the eastern provinces, and in 1818 the Society of Charity (Maatschappij van Weldadigkeid) was formed with Count van den Bosch at its head.
Towards the north-west the country is very marshy and nothing is to be seen for miles but tracts of unreclaimed swamps and rice lands, with a few huts scattered here and there and raised on mounds of earth.
In Australia, as in America, horses imported by European settlers have escaped into unreclaimed lands and multiplied to a prodigious extent, roaming in vast herds over the wide and uncultivated plains.